A recent interview in Tech Crunch, entitled Confessions of a Tunisian Hacktivist, gives an enlightening glimpse into the world of “hacktivism”, Anonymous, and the democratic principles behind a seemingly anarchic movement. K3vin Mitchnik, the pseudonym for this Tunisian hacker, is the 25-year old founder of the hacktivist group the Tunisian Black Hats which played a major role in the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunis which eventually overthrew Ben Ali, that country’s dictator. In addition, he is a member of the global hacktivist group Anonymous.

Though hacktivism is often seen as something closer to vandalism than activism, K3vin relates his story through the lens of growing up a cyber activist in a repressive and highly-censored country. Starting with anonymously publishing tips and tricks on how to get around government censorship of the internet, when the Tunisian Black Hats were formed in 2007 they hacked into two pro-government newspapers and published articles of discontent with Ben Ali. K3vin writes about the increased openness and communication as broadband began to become widely available to Tunisians, and his group was at the forefront of that transition. The movement came to a head in 2010 after the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in protest of the Ben Ali regime. The government began a crackdown that included shutting down social-networking websites and even hiring outside hackers to attack anti-government organizations and then blamed it on Anonymous. At the same time, however, Wikileaks released documents that clearly showed Ben Ali’s families unethical activities, corruption, and amassed wealth at the expensive of Tunisians. This only steeled K3vin’s determination to bring down Ben Ali’s regime.

K3vin aligned with Anonymous members outside of Tunisia to coordinate cyber attacks and “denials of service” on government servers. In addition, Tunisian Black Hats disseminated scripts to Tunisian users that blocked or evaded cyber-attacks by government hackers; scripts which were written by Anonymous members. This allowed Tunisians to keep the cyberpolice from spying on Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail accounts that were being used to coordinate protests, marches, and other actions against the government. Ultimately, Ben Ali’s regime crumbled, thanks largely to K3vin’s efforts to coordinate anti-government communication and hamper government cybersecurity.

In discussing his other work with Anonymous, K3vin painted a picture of a very democratic virtual community, with hundreds of individuals posting in chat rooms (called IRC’s) simultaneously proposing and reasoning cyber attacks that promote the group’s ultimate end. However, in such a loosely affiliated structure, the group’s “end” may actually be many ends. Perhaps it’s the very nature of this decentralized and leaderless-democratic system that has given so many the impression that Anonymous is simply an anti-social group of cyber-pranksters and vandals. Given K3vin Mitchnik’s stories of the overthrown of the Tunisian autocratic regime, I’d say it goes much deeper than that.