60 slogan and collective video address create a performance identity unrestrained by individual body. This performance of collective presence matters in a society where surveillance power usually flows from institutions toward individuals, as Anonymous breaks the mold by inverting the direction of visibility, “You have nowhere to hide because we are everywhere” (Anonymous 2008). Zuboff argues that “Surveillance capitalism operates through unprecedented asymmetries in knowledge and the power that accrues to knowledge” (Zuboff 2019: 15), as platforms and states accumulate power by making populations visible while keeping their own operations structurally opaque. In the context of a dramaturgical society, Zuboff states that “Surveillance capitalists impose their will backstage, while the actors perform the stylized lullabies of disclosure and agreement for the public” (Zuboff 2019: 120), suggesting that the public performance of consent conceals the hidden extraction of personal data. Hacktivism disrupts this arrangement by dragging backstage processes into circulation through leaks, defacement, parody, archive work or symbolic humiliation of institutions. DDoSecrets offers a practical example of this backstage exposure, a non-profit organisation that “archives and publishes hacked and leaked documents in the public interest” (DDoSecrets 2021), turning hacktivism away from the cinematic image of technical intrusion and toward the more dramaturgical work of exposure, circulation and public staging. According to co-founder of DDoSecrets, Best, “One doesn’t need to hack into systems to be a hacktivist”, as contemporary leaktivism also involves helping journalists interpret dense datasets, preserving information and making archives resilient against censorship (Best 2021). BlueLeaks demonstrates this logic at scale, since DDoSecrets published a 269 gigabyte collection of police data containing emails, audio, video and intelligence documents, which Best described as “the largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies” and “the closest inside look” at agencies involved in policing, COVID response and Black Lives Matter protests (Best, quoted in Green- berg 2020). This supports McKenzie’s claim that the hacktivist’s “primary goal is to hack the social groups attached to specific systems” (McKenzie 2005: 25), as the political force of BlueLeaks lies in forcing the backstage operations of law enforcement into visibility to journalists, activists and the general public. The aesthetic force of hacktivism also comes from détournement (Debord and Wolman, 1956:3) and cultural jamming (DeLaure, Fink and Dery 2017: 39), since these forms allow activists to inhabit the language of capital and redirect it against itself.
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