Keynote: 50 Days of Lulz

TRUTH-TELLERS: The Impact of Speaking Out. The 10th event of the Disruption Network Lab. Keynote: 50 Days of Lulz with Mustafa Al-Bassam (alias Tflow, former core member, LulzSec, UK). Moderated by Gabriella Coleman (Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University, Quebec, CA). This keynote presentation wants to trace back the so-called "50 Days of Lulz" (“lulz” as a derivation of lol, laugh out loud), 50 days of high profile attacks by the hacker group named “LulzSec” in the spring of 2011. This story, which is about truth-telling activity beyond moral conformism and political correctness, as well as fighting for freedom and social rights, facing corporations, oppression and corruption, is told by one of its protagonists, Mustafa Al-Bassam alias Tflow, who was one of the six core members of LulzSec, and at the time only 16 years old. The activity of LulzSec is well documented in the book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (2014) by Gabriella Coleman (who will introduce this Keynote), as a unique example of a collective that was able to find vulnerabilities in high level computer systems, revealing hidden information, as well as straightforward attacks on private corporations (from HBGaryFederal to Sony Pictures), using the strategy of leaking for exposing wrongdoing and sensitive data. LulzSec is shrouded in some degree of deliberate mystery, combining the activity of whistleblowing with the one of opacity, deceit, and play, as the broader entity of Anonymous to whom LulzSec was affiliated. Here the fun of trolling and political activism are bound together, having a large impact on public opinion and media culture. Mustafa Al-Bassam, who also managed the LulzSecurity.com website, is currently a Computer Science PhD student at University College London, and back on the Internet after a nearly two year Internet ban imposed by police. www.disruptionlab.org/truth-tellers (http://www.disruptionlab.org/truth-tellers) Photo: Maria Silvano Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com