<nettime> What were the first instances of hacking 4 Whisteblowing

["Gabriella \"Biella\" Coleman" <enid.coleman@mcgill.ca>]

   Hi all,

I am writing a piece that is trying to historicize direct action
hacking/whistel blowing and am trying to pin point any early examples of
hackers hacking in order to access and then leak the information/emails
to ex pose wrong doing..

Obviously Anonymous popularized the tactic and prior to them there are
many exam ples of black hat groups engaging in revenge hacking/doxing
(and the leaked emails likely had that sort of relevant information) but
I am looking for examples that pre-date Anonymous and that more
explicitly follow the whistle blowing mold, if this exists.

One of the earliest and only examples I have is a hack against the
Church of Sci entology (which is very fitting but)...

Just to be clear too: I am not interested in early hacktivist
interventions per se, like DDoS, or web site defacements, or even
dumping of data like credit card s for politics sabotage, but only one
instance: whereby the hack led to evidence (via documents or emails) of
wrong doing.

Thanks!
Biella

--
Gabriella Coleman
Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy
Department of Art History & Communication Studies
McGill University
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, PQ
H3A 0G5
http://gabriellacoleman.org/
514-398-8572

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