The Experts below are selected from a list of 105 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Matthias Korn - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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CSCW - Friction in Arenas of Repair: Hacking, Security Research, and Mobile Phone Infrastructure
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2017Co-Authors: Matthias Korn, Susann WagenknechtAbstract:This paper studies how communication infrastructure is explored, examined, and evaluated by self-identifying 'security researchers' at hacking conventions. We analyze mobile phone 'security research' as a case of negotiating infrastructural repair. 'Security research' seeks to re-negotiate with industry actors what 'security' actually means, which technological 'insecurities' need mending, which bugs, mistakes, and risks should be repaired. These negotiations are tense and contested because the relations between 'security research' and industry reach across utterly different identities and commitments, spanning an arena of repair. To investigate how 'security research' situates itself in this arena, we analyze presentations about hacking mobile telephony that have been given at events organized by the Chaos Computer Club between 2000 and 2015. With the help of qualitative coding techniques, we examine the identities and commitments involved in 'security research,' the agendas that 'security research' pursues, and the ways in which it addresses and relates to industry actors. We interpret our findings in terms of friction, highlighting how a social arena of mobile phone repair is constituted through difference, rather than despite it.
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CSCW - Hacking as Transgressive Infrastructuring: Mobile Phone Networks and the German Chaos Computer Club
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW '16, 2016Co-Authors: Susann Wagenknecht, Matthias KornAbstract:This paper applies the theoretical lens of infrastructure to study hacking practices that take issue with large-scale communication networks. The paper analyzes a series of hacks targeting the Global System for Mobile Communications (i.e., networks for mobile telephony) carried out by a cluster of people affiliated or sympathetic to the German Chaos Computer Club between 2001 and 2014. These hacks aim at acquiring proprietary knowledge and facilitating the autonomous operation of local mobile phone networks for communities, independent of corporate network providers. The contribution of this paper is to show how hacking of this kind can be understood as transgressive infrastructuring, a way of engaging critically with infrastructure that, in the case of GSM hacking, relied on three strategies---reverse engineering, re-implementation, and parallel operation, all of which aim at appropriating the targeted network intellectually, legally, functionally, and/or operationally.
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hacking as transgressive infrastructuring mobile phone networks and the german Chaos Computer Club
Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2016Co-Authors: Susann Wagenknecht, Matthias KornAbstract:This paper applies the theoretical lens of infrastructure to study hacking practices that take issue with large-scale communication networks. The paper analyzes a series of hacks targeting the Global System for Mobile Communications (i.e., networks for mobile telephony) carried out by a cluster of people affiliated or sympathetic to the German Chaos Computer Club between 2001 and 2014. These hacks aim at acquiring proprietary knowledge and facilitating the autonomous operation of local mobile phone networks for communities, independent of corporate network providers. The contribution of this paper is to show how hacking of this kind can be understood as transgressive infrastructuring, a way of engaging critically with infrastructure that, in the case of GSM hacking, relied on three strategies---reverse engineering, re-implementation, and parallel operation, all of which aim at appropriating the targeted network intellectually, legally, functionally, and/or operationally.
Susann Wagenknecht - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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CSCW - Friction in Arenas of Repair: Hacking, Security Research, and Mobile Phone Infrastructure
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2017Co-Authors: Matthias Korn, Susann WagenknechtAbstract:This paper studies how communication infrastructure is explored, examined, and evaluated by self-identifying 'security researchers' at hacking conventions. We analyze mobile phone 'security research' as a case of negotiating infrastructural repair. 'Security research' seeks to re-negotiate with industry actors what 'security' actually means, which technological 'insecurities' need mending, which bugs, mistakes, and risks should be repaired. These negotiations are tense and contested because the relations between 'security research' and industry reach across utterly different identities and commitments, spanning an arena of repair. To investigate how 'security research' situates itself in this arena, we analyze presentations about hacking mobile telephony that have been given at events organized by the Chaos Computer Club between 2000 and 2015. With the help of qualitative coding techniques, we examine the identities and commitments involved in 'security research,' the agendas that 'security research' pursues, and the ways in which it addresses and relates to industry actors. We interpret our findings in terms of friction, highlighting how a social arena of mobile phone repair is constituted through difference, rather than despite it.
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CSCW - Hacking as Transgressive Infrastructuring: Mobile Phone Networks and the German Chaos Computer Club
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW '16, 2016Co-Authors: Susann Wagenknecht, Matthias KornAbstract:This paper applies the theoretical lens of infrastructure to study hacking practices that take issue with large-scale communication networks. The paper analyzes a series of hacks targeting the Global System for Mobile Communications (i.e., networks for mobile telephony) carried out by a cluster of people affiliated or sympathetic to the German Chaos Computer Club between 2001 and 2014. These hacks aim at acquiring proprietary knowledge and facilitating the autonomous operation of local mobile phone networks for communities, independent of corporate network providers. The contribution of this paper is to show how hacking of this kind can be understood as transgressive infrastructuring, a way of engaging critically with infrastructure that, in the case of GSM hacking, relied on three strategies---reverse engineering, re-implementation, and parallel operation, all of which aim at appropriating the targeted network intellectually, legally, functionally, and/or operationally.
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hacking as transgressive infrastructuring mobile phone networks and the german Chaos Computer Club
Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2016Co-Authors: Susann Wagenknecht, Matthias KornAbstract:This paper applies the theoretical lens of infrastructure to study hacking practices that take issue with large-scale communication networks. The paper analyzes a series of hacks targeting the Global System for Mobile Communications (i.e., networks for mobile telephony) carried out by a cluster of people affiliated or sympathetic to the German Chaos Computer Club between 2001 and 2014. These hacks aim at acquiring proprietary knowledge and facilitating the autonomous operation of local mobile phone networks for communities, independent of corporate network providers. The contribution of this paper is to show how hacking of this kind can be understood as transgressive infrastructuring, a way of engaging critically with infrastructure that, in the case of GSM hacking, relied on three strategies---reverse engineering, re-implementation, and parallel operation, all of which aim at appropriating the targeted network intellectually, legally, functionally, and/or operationally.
Sebastian Kubitschko - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Chaos Computer Club: The Communicative Construction of Media Technologies and Infrastructures as a Political Category
Communicative Figurations, 2017Co-Authors: Sebastian KubitschkoAbstract:This chapter displays how hackers’ political engagement today relies on a wide range of practices related to media technologies and infrastructures and, at the same time, continues to be oriented towards larger publics as well as ‘traditional’ centres of political power. By employing the concept of communicative figuration, the chapter elaborates how one of the world’s oldest and largest hacker organizations—the Chaos Computer Club (CCC)—communicatively constructs media technologies and infrastructures as a political category in its own right. To implement this approach, the chapter will proceed in three aligned steps. First, the hacker organization itself is conceptualized as a communicative figuration, which also includes direct political action in the form of hacking. Second, the chapter explains how the CCC positions itself in the public discourse surrounding media technologies. Third, the chapter demonstrates how the Club’s internal figuration and its linkages with relevant actors, such as journalists, politicians and judges as well as the general public, creates a spiral of legitimation that enables the hacker organization to constitute media technologies and infrastructures as publicly recognized political phenomena.
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Acting through technology: The proliferation of open source practices and its consequences
2016Co-Authors: Stefan Baack, Sebastian Kubitschko, Julia Velkova, Raul Ferrer, Reinhard Anton HandlerAbstract:The internet has enabled new forms of sharing and collaboration which arguably have been pioneered by early open source communities (Coleman 2013). The availability and modifiability of the underlying technologies and infrastructures combined with the technological affordances of the internet has allowed open source advocates to use technology as a form of expression: they not only act with available technology, but through it by creating technical infrastructures that express ideas and concepts about “how economy and society should be ordered collectively” (Kelty, 2008, p. 28). Kelty (2008) described open source as an experimental system made up of five key practices: sharing source code, defining openness, writing copyright licenses, coordinating collaborations, and forming a movement. These practices can be adopted and appropriated by actors in almost every area of social life, from encyclopedic knowledge (Wikipedia) to activism (Beyer, 2014) or creativity online (Creative Commons). While there have been critical voices for some time, these practices have been regularly seen by the broader public, as well as by academia, as promoting democratic values like participation and knowledge empowerment in the digital mediascape. Much less attention has been paid to the broader consequences of this “reorientation of knowledge and power” (Kelty, 2008, p. 7), i.e. to the actual social structures expressed and promoted through such practices. Tkacz (2012) has shown that promoting openness and transparency introduces new forms of closure which are often overlooked. Drawing from Stuart Hall (1997, p. 230), we suggest that what is at stake in these developments is not a dual choice between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms of social organization, but a more complex transition between different modes of regulation and valuations of technologies which need to be examined carefully. This panel brings together early-career scholars that aim to shed light on how different actors in different domains of social life are acting through technology and what values and forms of social organization they promote through such practices. The first paper (A) will explore the internal social structures among producers who are radically committed to openness through sharing technology and content online. It foregrounds that in these practices, openness and sharing are not only about creating open knowledge, public digital culture and technologies, but also trigger practices of self-control, discipline, and contestation over what is to be made public and how. The author argues that the ways in which these are negotiated have implications for the broader domain of cultural production online. The next two papers each look at the social structures promoted through open source practices by exploring how actors committed to them are trying to affect institutional politics. The second paper (B) explores hacking as a politically motivated practice by showing how one of the world’s largest hacker organizations – the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) – thematizes, problematizes and ultimately politicizes technology. It demonstrates that by acting on the structural features of contemporary political constellations, the CCC is able to bring its political endeavor of politicizing technology to life. The third paper (C) explores the relatively new phenomenon of civic tech, which is about developing tools to solve civic problems by improving government services or by empowering citizens. It shows that civic tech applications do not merely describe, but aim to shape the relationship between citizens in their governments in particular ways through structures encoded in the data they utilize and collect. The final paper (D) introduces another perspective by exploring how established institutions are adapting practices and values from open source cultures, thereby expanding their existing structures and practices. It analyzes an investigative journalism story run by The Guardian that combined open data, crowdsourcing and game mechanics with the purpose of engaging readers. The case shows how news organizations are acting through technology to shift media agency by inviting the readers to take an active role in the investigation, and how such practices can reconfigure civic engagement. As acting through technology becomes more widespread, this panel emphasizes the importance of empirical and cross-disciplinary research by showing how similar practices and values from open source cultures can be used to support different modes of regulations in different areas of social life. References Beyer, J. L. (2014). The Emergence of a Freedom of Information Movement: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, the Pirate Party, and Iceland. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(2), 141–154. Coleman, G. (2013). Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hall, S. (1997). The Centrality of Culture: Notes on the Cultural Revolutions of our Time. In K. A. Thompson (Ed.), Media and Cultural Regulation (1 edition, pp. 207–238). SAGE Publications Ltd. Kelty, C. M. (2008). Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham: Duke University Press. Tkacz, N. (2012). From open source to open government: A critique of open politics. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 12(4), 386–405.
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The Role of Hackers in Countering Surveillance and Promoting Democracy
Media and Communication, 2015Co-Authors: Sebastian KubitschkoAbstract:Practices related to media technologies and infrastructures (MTI) are an increasingly important part of democratic constellations in general and of surveillance tactics in particular. This article does not seek to discuss surveillance per se, but instead to open a new line of inquiry by presenting qualitative research on the Chaos Computer Club (CCC)—one of the world’s largest and Europe’s oldest hacker organizations. Despite the longstanding conception of hacking as infused with political significance, the scope and style of hackers’ engagement with emerging issues related to surveillance remains poorly understood. The rationale of this paper is to examine the CCC as a civil society organization that counter-acts contemporary assemblages of surveillance in two ways: first, by de-constructing existing technology and by supporting, building, maintaining and using alternative media technologies and infrastructures that enable more secure and anonymous communication; and second, by articulating their expertise related to contemporary MTI to a wide range of audiences, publics and actors. Highlighting the significance of “privacy” for the health of democracy, I argue that the hacker organization is co-determining “interstitial spaces within information processing practices” (Cohen, 2012, p. 1931), and by doing so is acting on indispensable structural features of contemporary democratic constellations.
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Media practices of civil society organisations : emerging paths to legitimation and long-term engagement
2015Co-Authors: Sebastian KubitschkoAbstract:In this thesis I wish to analyse the complex relationship between actors’ media- related practices, legitimacy and long-term engagement. Based on a qualitative approach my research investigates two cases –Citizens for Europe, a civil society organisations involved in issues relating to European citizenship, and the Chaos Computer Club, one of the world’s oldest and largest hacker organisations. More concretely, through face-to-face interviews, participant observation and media analysis I analyse the role media practices play for the two organisations to establish legitimation and to sustain their political engagement over time. Accordingly, my thesis seeks to provide an empirically informed interpretive account of the meaning media-related practices have for actors’ political endeavours. From a more operationalised perspective, I am trying to make a convincing argument that practices circulating around and oriented towards media technologies and infrastructures play a configurative role for actors’ ability to co-determine democratic constellations. Instead of suggesting a straightforward causal chain my thesis conceptualises the entanglements between media practices, legitimation and long-term engagement as interlocking arrangements grounded in relational dynamics. Overall, my thesis aims to compliment existing research on the role media technologies and infrastructures play for the formation of political arrangements by looking at organisation-based engagement. In doing so, my research partially bridges a current research gap concerning the relationship between organisational actors’ media-related practices and their ability to establish legitimacy and to perpetuate political engagement over time.
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Article The Role of Hackers in Countering Surveillance and Promoting Democracy
2015Co-Authors: Sebastian KubitschkoAbstract:Practices related to media technologies and infrastructures (MTI) are an increasingly important part of democratic con-stellations in general and of surveillance tactics in particular. This article does not seek to discuss surveillance per se, but instead to open a new line of inquiry by presenting qualitative research on the Chaos Computer Club (CCC)—one of the world’s largest and Europe’s oldest hacker organizations. Despite the longstanding conception of hacking as infused with political significance, the scope and style of hackers ’ engagement with emerging issues related to surveillance re-mains poorly understood. The rationale of this paper is to examine the CCC as a civil society organization that counter-acts contemporary assemblages of surveillance in two ways: first, by de-constructing existing technology and by supporting, building, maintaining and using alternative media technologies and infrastructures that enable more secure and anony-mous communication; and second, by articulating their expertise related to contemporary MTI to a wide range of audi-ences, publics and actors. Highlighting the significance of “privacy ” for the health of democracy, I argue that the hacker or-ganization is co-determining “interstitial spaces within information processing practices ” (Cohen, 2012, p. 1931), and by doing so is acting on indispensable structural features of contemporary democratic constellations. Keywords big data; civil society organization; counter-power; democracy; hacker; locative media; media technologies an
Tréguer Félix - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Résister aux sociétés de contrôle, subvertir l’informatique dominante : une typologie des illégalismes hackers
HAL CCSD, 2019Co-Authors: Tréguer FélixAbstract:International audienceDans les années 1980 et 1990, alors que les premiers réseaux informatiques ouverts au public se développent en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, une élite militante émerge au sein des milieux informaticiens : les hackers. Du Chaos Computer Club en Allemagne aux médiactivistes italiens en passant par les incendiaires français du Comité pour la Libération ou le Détournement des Ordinateurs (CLODO), le point commun de ces divers acteurs dotés d'un fort capital technique est l'opposition au modèle dominant d'informatisation au travers de pratiques de sabotage, de destruction ou de détournement. Avec leurs illégalismes, les hackers apparaissent ainsi comme les « lanceurs d'alerte » de la société en réseau, pointant les vulnérabilités techniques de ce nouveau macro-système technique, ainsi que ses effets politiques délétères, en esquissant aussi le plus souvent des appropriations alternatives en liant avec les mouvements sociaux auxquels ils s'allient. Derrière une identité « hacker » partagée se cache cependant une une multiplicité de trajectoires militantes et de rapports à l'informatique, oscillant entre postures néo-luddites et projets émancipateurs relevant d'une « technophilie critique ». À partir de classiques des hacker studies et de sources secondaires émergentes complétées par certaines archives, cette communication propose ainsi une typologie des illégalismes initiés par la mouvance hacker à partir des années 1980 pour résister aux « sociétés de contrôle » de l'ère numérique. Après un rapide état des lieux sur l'historiographie de la mouvance et ses limites, nous proposons d'élargir la focale pour recenser les différentes modalités de sabotage et de subversion de l'informatique connectée élaborées et expérimentés par ces acteurs militants. Plutôt que de rechercher l'exhaustivité, nous retenons pour chacun de ces modes d'action un moment de genèse, de cristallisation, ou des incarnations paradigmatiques. En conclusion, nous revenons sur certains débats stratégiques au sein de la mouvance et la répression croissante de ces illégalismes hackers. Une répression qui, en lien avec les changements intervenus dans l'économie politique d'Internet, semble avoir refermé la structure d'opportunité qui avait permis leur genèse
Félix Tréguer - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Résister aux sociétés de contrôle, subvertir l’informatique dominante : une typologie des illégalismes hackers
2019Co-Authors: Félix TréguerAbstract:Dans les années 1980 et 1990, alors que les premiers réseaux informatiques ouverts au public se développent en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, une élite militante émerge au sein des milieux informaticiens : les hackers. Du Chaos Computer Club en Allemagne aux médiactivistes italiens en passant par les incendiaires français du Comité pour la Libération ou le Détournement des Ordinateurs (CLODO), le point commun de ces divers acteurs dotés d'un fort capital technique est l'opposition au modèle dominant d'informatisation au travers de pratiques de sabotage, de destruction ou de détournement. Avec leurs illégalismes, les hackers apparaissent ainsi comme les « lanceurs d'alerte » de la société en réseau, pointant les vulnérabilités techniques de ce nouveau macro-système technique, ainsi que ses effets politiques délétères, en esquissant aussi le plus souvent des appropriations alternatives en liant avec les mouvements sociaux auxquels ils s'allient. Derrière une identité « hacker » partagée se cache cependant une une multiplicité de trajectoires militantes et de rapports à l'informatique, oscillant entre postures néo-luddites et projets émancipateurs relevant d'une « technophilie critique ». À partir de classiques des hacker studies et de sources secondaires émergentes complétées par certaines archives, cette communication propose ainsi une typologie des illégalismes initiés par la mouvance hacker à partir des années 1980 pour résister aux « sociétés de contrôle » de l'ère numérique. Après un rapide état des lieux sur l'historiographie de la mouvance et ses limites, nous proposons d'élargir la focale pour recenser les différentes modalités de sabotage et de subversion de l'informatique connectée élaborées et expérimentés par ces acteurs militants. Plutôt que de rechercher l'exhaustivité, nous retenons pour chacun de ces modes d'action un moment de genèse, de cristallisation, ou des incarnations paradigmatiques. En conclusion, nous revenons sur certains débats stratégiques au sein de la mouvance et la répression croissante de ces illégalismes hackers. Une répression qui, en lien avec les changements intervenus dans l'économie politique d'Internet, semble avoir refermé la structure d'opportunité qui avait permis leur genèse.