Contents - Cultural View

Electronic Disturbance Theater 114
The EDT would first execute the FloodNet software in what would be for them a dress rehearsal before attacking
their main targets on April 10 and a month later 1998, on both Mexican and American government websites,
representing both the Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and American President Bill Clinton.
The Flood Net would work on this basic idea taken from street theatre practices and political rallies and protest but
instead present it on a much larger and international stage, with the facilitation of macro-networks and non-digital
forms of action.
The EDT’s mission was to allow the voices of the Zapatista to be heard, after the attack of the small remote village of
Acteal in Chiapas, Mexico. The Paramilitary a government funded military squad would surround a catholic church
during a Tsotsil Mayan, (a spoken Mexican language from around the Chiapas area of Mexico), for the next several
hours the Paramilitary would shot everyone to death. those inside the church and any which tried to escape resulting
in the death of fifteen children, nine men, and twenty one women, four of which were pregnant at the time on
December 22, 1997. This event would become known as the Acteal Massacre. Those who were convicted of this
crime were later released in the Supreme Court to the outrage of many, after ignoring eye witness reports and
allowing those that confessed to this crime on humanity. Instead the Supreme Court forcing on the mismanagement
of the investigation and the fabrication of evidence.
The Electronic Disturbance Theater took notice of these actions, when others did not and arranged their first act of
Electronic Civil Disobedience against the Mexican Government. Those that had downloaded the FloodNet program
in support of the Zapatista’s were asked the input the names repetitively of those that had lost their life’s at the hands
of the Mexican Army in military attacks. This would then target the servers to return an error message each time
these URL’s would be requested. This data request would then be stored on a server’s error log and in the eyes of the
Zapatista and the Electronic Disturbance Theater group, a symbolical list of those forty five Acteal civilians that had
died straight to their murderers. If enough people were to use the FloodNet applet, this would cause the computer
server running the website to overload, so that when a regular visitor or somebody working within the site was to try
and access the website or send company based emails and files, the pages would ether load extremely slowly or not
at all. Working off the same basis of a real sit-in demonstration, where the protestors block the entrance to a public
building of their oppressors and preventing access to the building.
With around twenty five percent of the world’s population, in one way or another connected to the World Wide Web,
with the use of dial-up internet connection, wired or wireless internet broadband connection and even mobile internet
technology, everyone of these means of communication can allow the internet to be used as a means of non-violent
action within our Human Rights, and is viewable around the world, and can be translated into different languages but
most importantly not controlled by the government. The EDT networked performances have already opened access
and communication between three unlikely micro-networks: net.art, net.activism, and net.hackers, with technology
always evolving their no telling how these areas will grow.
However June 10, 1998, the EDT would strike the Mexican Secretaria de Gobernacion, (Secretary of Government),
which is involved in immigration policies as well as Mexico’s federal public security forces working in conjunction
with the military against Zapatista communities in Chiapas unsuccessfully. The Mexican government would have a
programmed countermeasure in place. This is what the EDT believe took place. A countermeasure was built into the
operating Java script was placed in the Secretaria de Gobernacion’s website that was designed to activate whenever
FloodNet was directed toward its servers. Upon activation, the website would open window after window on the
FloodNet user’s internet browser. If the FloodNet user remained connected long enough, their browser whether it is
Netscape, Firefox or Internet Explorer, could crash the activist's computer, forcing the activist to reboot their system
stopping the FloodNet program at the source. The EDT has now since dealt with both the Mexican Government both
online and offline, and the United States Department of Defence, who has now inserted a counter attack system into
their Internet Browser based coding to prevent anymore FloodNet based attacks to the system and server.
The FloodNet system would be used again against the World Trade Organization in 1999, where the group would
release their online civil disobedience software to the public under the name ‘’Zapatista Disturbance Development’s