Electronic Civil Disobedience

Electronic civil disobedience (also known as ECD, cyber civil disobedience or cyber disobedience), can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disobedience often involves computers and the Internet and may also be known as hacktivism. The term "electronic civil disobedience" was coined in the critical writings of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a collective of tactical media artists and practitioners, in their seminal 1996 text Electronic Civil Disobedience: And Other Unpopular Ideas. Electronic civil disobedience seeks to continue the practices of non violent, yet disruptive protest originally pioneered by Henry David Thoreau who in 1848 published "Civil Disobedience."

A common form of ECD is coordination DDoS against a specific target, also known as a virtual sit-in. Such virtual sit-ins may be announced on the internet by hacktivist groups like the Electronic Disturbance Theatre and the borderlands Hacklab.

Computerized activism exists at the intersections of politico-social movements and computer-mediated communication. Stefan Wray writes about ECD:

"As hackers become politicized and as activists become computerized, we are going to see an increase in the number of cyber-activists who engage in what will become more widely known as Electronic Civil Disobedience. The same principals of traditional civil disobedience, like trespass and blockage, will still be applied, but more and more these acts will take place in electronic or digital form. The primary site for Electronic Civil Disobedience will be in cyberspace.

Jeff Shantz and Jordon Tomblin write that ECD or cyber disobedience merges activism with organization and movement building through online participatory engagement:

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