Nuove forme di attivismo politico : dissidenza digitale, liberation technologies e hacking

This Article aims to draw a technological and cultural link between the activities of the early hackers and the actions of digital dissidents in modern times that are taking place in different parts of the world. An initial analysis is devoted to the origins of the online activism tradition - the current landscape of liberation technologies is later described in a more general sense. The themes covered are the importance of technology in current political rebellion episodes, the controversy over the role of technologies during recent political events (the so-called Twitter Revolutions) and, finally, the use of computer technologies for the well-being of society and for the creation of a new public sphere. The study explores the concepts of "digital resistance" and "digital dissidents", the importance of technology in critical political contexts ("liberation technology") and cyber-resistance activities. A part of this work also deals with hacking activities from different points of view in the attempt to understand hackers' role in modern technological society, their activities, and their relationship with the world of digital dissidence. A further area of analysis is the action of hacking in the electronic electoral system, and the security issues related to electronic voting worldwide. The central part of this article, adopting a more technological approach, provides a brief description of the instruments and techniques used in critical contexts to circumvent filters, to grant users a good level of anonymity, to encrypt data, to connect to sites banned by several regimes, to spread sensitive information using blog platforms and other means.