I would like to begin this talk by touching on a rather burdensome
mythology not mentioned in the title of this work. The "wired world" is
often presented and perceived as a world without borders. To some
extent this idea is true, particularly when analyzing how the Internet is
used by various military organizations and multinational corporations;
however, in a general sense, the Internet is not a world without
borders. It does not exist in a vacuum. When an individual logs on to
the net, his perception of the electronic experience is partly shaped
and framed by the socialization practices of that person's native
country, and hence are national, not international in origin. The
mythologies of the net which perhaps might seem most relevant to me
are also partly determined by my geographic and cultural identity. The
development of the mythologies through which the meaning of the net
is constructed (or more accurately) imposed typically develop out of
national interests. To sum up, the net is culturally and politically
bordered. For this reason I feel bound to make the following
qualification: As I proceed to discuss the mythology of terrorism on
the net, please remember that what I say comes from the perspective
of someone facing the political struggles against the rampant forces of
authoritarianism in the US. Consequently, some of my comments may
not be applicable to the European or world situation in general, nor
may they apply to the situations of people in specific European or
other nations. I believe that I can also say with a degree of certainty
that a number of elements in this discussion will not be applicable to
third world countries. On the other hand, I do hope that this talk will
contribute to a comparative study of perceptions of the meaning and
function of the net.

It was an experience that I had in London that drew me to this topic
of terrorism and the Internet. In the fall of 94 I was speaking at the
Terminal Futures conference held at the Institute for Contemporary
Art. My topic was "electronic civil disobedience." During the question
and answer period at the end of my talk, an audience member told me
that what I was suggesting was not a civil tactic of political
contestation at all; rather, the tactic that I had suggested was pure
terrorism. I found this comment to be very curious because I could
not understand who (or more to the point, what) this audience
member thought was being terrorized. How can terror happen in
virtual space, that is, in a space with no people-only information?
Have we reached a point in civilization where we are capable of
terrorizing inanimate abstractions? How was it that this intelligent
person had come to believe that electronic disruption equaled terror?
This is an unusual puzzle that I would like to take the first steps
toward solving.
Let me begin by briefly describing terrorism as a political action.
Terrorism is a tactical form of contestation, in which the resistant
faction attacks the designated oppressor by using acts of near random
violence against its citizenry. The resistant faction seeks two
consequences through such actions: First, to create a panic that will
sweep through the population. The panic originates when members of
the public have a perpetual apprehension of their own mortality, due
to what is perceived to be a consistent state of violence. If this panic
can be maintained for a long enough period of time, the public will
eventually demand negotiations to end this socio-psychological state
of discomfort. Second, this tactic is used in the hope that the
oppressor will show its true face-one of extreme authority. That is, the
oppressor will, in a militaristic manner, exert extreme control over its
population. Two crucial events occur when the symbolic order of
domination collapses and the physical order of the military takes over.
First, from the point of view of the citizens, basic freedoms are
sharply curtailed; if this condition is maintained for long enough, the
citizens will eventually shift blame from the terrorist to the state for
their apparent lack of autonomy. Second, a resistant faction believes
that the state is unable to maintain the financial drain on its resources
caused by consistent use of military force. Unlike the deployment of
spectacle, deployment of the military is exceedingly expensive, and
there is no return on the investment other than temporary moments of
social order. Due to financial constraints, the oppressor is eventually
forced to come to the bargaining table. Terrorism then is not a
revolutionary strategy, but one designed to force negotiation over
policy. The essence of terrorism is twofold. First, the terrorist must
encourage the perception that the violence is uncontrollable. This is
done through random elements of terrorist violence which place
everyone in the sacrificial pool and make the acts of the well
organized terrorist difficult to predict and hence difficult to stop. The
second essential quality is that terrorism requires organic bodies to
house the terror. But since terrorist violence cannot occur on a very
large scale (since it is cellular in nature), it requires a third
component-an apparatus that can and will spread the spectacle of
fear in a manner that blankets the given territory. We call this
apparatus "the media." The terrorist's violence allows her to
appropriate this apparatus, and use it to deploy the type of fear that
she sees as most advantageous.
This final component is what leads us to understand that terrorism, as
a necessary radical strategy in the first world, is an anachronism. The
control of spectacular space is no longer the key to understanding or
maintaining domination. In stead, it is the control of virtual space
(and/or control of the net apparatus) that is the new locus of power.
For information economies, the net is the apparatus of command and
control. Since division of labor has reached a plateau of unforeseen
complexity, the most costly disaster that can happen in these
economies is a communication gap; this would cause the specialized
segments of the division of labor to fall out of synch. Those who are
electronically literate and dedicated to resisting both state authority
and the hegemony of pancapitalism can use this development to great
advantage. Through simple tactics of trespass and blockage, these
resisters can force the state, military, and corporate authorities to
come to the negotiating table. Placing the public in a state of fear is no
longer necessary, nor is it essential to inflict violence on people in
order to incite political change. And oddly enough, not even private
property needs to be attacked or destroyed. All that is needed to
accomplish what terrorism rarely does-policy negotiation-is to deny
access to data conduits and bodies of data.
The most powerful weapon against authoritarianism has been
delivered into the hands of the left, and yet we are letting it slip away.
This is what truly worried me about the audience member's comments
at the London ICA. This inherently civil strategy of disobedience is
being deliberately and officially misconstrued under the signs of that
which it is clearly not-terrorism, or in some cases, criminality. Most of
the resistance on the net confines itself to either offering alternative
information services or to organizing around issues of autonomy such
as free speech. To be sure, these issues are important, but they are
also secondary. Whether or not we can use the word "fuck" in our
e-mail seems a rather sophomoric concern. However, the most
important issue is not being discussed, and that is the demand for the
right for people to use cyberspace as a location for political objection.
Currently in the US, the punishment for trespass or for blockage in
cyberspace is jail on the first offense. We must demand that a
distinction be made between trespass with political intent and trespass
with criminal intent. For civil disobedience in physical space the
penalty in the US, if one is arrested at all, is usually a $25 fine and a
night in jail with ones fellow demonstrators. The state can be generous
here, since such tactics are purely symbolic in the age of nomadic
capital. Such generosity is not shown when the political action could
actually accomplish something. This is a situation that must be
changed.

But let us return to our original enigma, why an intelligent person
would believe that civil disobedience is actually terrorism, when it is
clear that electronic resistance has no relationship to terrorism in any
tactical sense- no one dies, no one is under any threat. Further, it
seems clear that the myth of electronic terrorism originates in the
security state and in the US, at any rate, is deployed by state agencies
such as the FBI and the Secret Service as well as by spectacular
institutions such as Hollywood. How are people being duped by such
obvious ploys? My belief is that the prevalence of this myth reflects, a
subtle yet major shift in the validation of reality. The problem stems
not so much from the efficiency of the state propaganda machine, but
from a condition which is much more fundamental-an inclination to
accept the idea of virtual terror.
The social origins of this predisposition in the realm of the social are
difficult to pinpoint, but probably began with the realization that power
can be grounded in information. The first complex manifestation of this
form of power is the bureaucracy-a very ancient form indeed. From
the earliest days of the bureaucracy, official records began to take on
the status of official reality. What has changed since the days of
papyrus and scrolls is that the organization of information has become
amazingly efficient, with the invention of computers with their massive
space saving memories combined with accurate systems for high
velocity storage and retrieval. Combine these powers with computer
networking capabilities which transforms information into a nomadic
phenomenon, and the dominance of information reality becomes
unstoppable. Information management is now generally perceived as a
science of tremendous precision. And with the understanding of this
activity as a science comes an authority and a legitimacy that cannot
be disputed; after all, science is, for better or for worse, the master
system of knowledge in secular society.
Let us return to the idea of the record. From an existential point of
view, the record, optimized by the electronic information apparatus,
has taken the form of horrific excess. Each one of us has files that rest
at the state's fingertips. Education files, medical files, employment files,
financial files, communication files, travel files, and for some, criminal
files. Each strand in the trajectory of each person's life is recorded
and maintained. The total collection of records on an individual is his
or her data body-a state-and-corporate-controlled doppelgaenger.
What is most unfortunate about this development is that the data body
not only claims to have ontological privilege, but actually has it. What
your data body says about you is more real than what you say about
yourself. The data body is the body by which you are judged in
society, and the body which dictates your status in the world. What
we are witnessing at this point in time is the triumph of representation
over being. The electronic file has conquered self-aware
consciousness.
Herein lies a substantial clue as to why some people fear the
disruption of cyberspace. While the organic body may not be in
danger, the electronic body could be threatened. Should the
electronic body be disrupted, immobilized, or (heaven forbid) deleted,
one's existence in the realm of the social could be drastically effected.
One could become a social "ghost," so to speak-seen and heard, but
not recognized. The validation of one's existence could disappear in
the flick of a keystroke. Once a population has accepted the notion
that representation justifies one's being in the world, then simulacra
begins to have direct material effects on the motivations and
perceptions of people, allowing the security state and other keepers
of information to exert maximum control over the general population.
No doubt the erasure of social existence is a threat that strikes terror
into people's hearts. This is, in part, why I believe it has been so easy
to deploy the sign of terrorism on the net. This is also why I believe I
was accused of terrorism when I suggested using tactics of civil
disobedience on the net. Once I moved CD out of the realm of the
physical, where disruption is localized and avoidable, for those who
accept their data body as their superior, I was suggesting their erasure
as a consequence of political objection. What is frightening to me
about this scenario is that electronic erasure is perceived as an
equivalent to being killed in a bomb explosion. Now the perception
exists that the absence of electronic recognition equals death. With
such considerations in mind, those who plan to continue the fight
against authoritarianism, and in support of maximum individual
autonomy, have two important projects to complete. First, organic
being in the world must be reestablished as the locus of reality, placing
back the virtual in its proper place as simulacra. Only in such a
situation can virtual environments serve a utopian function. If the
virtual functions and is perceived as a superior form of being, it
becomes a monstrous mechanism of control for the class that
regulates access to it and mobility within it. The new calls for
consolidation and fencing of the Internet are an indicators that we are
behind in this battle. Second, steps must be taken to separate political
action in cyberspace from the signs of criminality and terrorism. The
current state strategy seems to be to label anything as criminal that
does not optimize the spread of pancapitalism and the enrichment of
the elite. If we lose the right to protest in cyberspace in the age of
information capital, we have lost the greater part of our individual
sovereignty. We must demand more than the right to speak; we must
demand the right to act in the "wired world" on behalf of our own
consciences and out of goodwill for all. To quote the Situationist
Asgar Jorn, "The avant-garde never gives up!"

-Critical Art Ensemble Summer, 95