Indonesian site attacked 
                By Janet Kornblum
                April 24, 1997, 12:45 p.m. PT 

                Portuguese hackers yesterday capped a two-month
                protest over the Indonesian government's treatment
                of East Timor by breaking into the Indonesian
                Military Network Homepage and altering the page. 

                Hackers--known as crackers in the Internet
                community--altered two Indonesian government
                pages as part of what they call the East Timor
                Campaign. On February 10, the group started the
                protest by altering the Department of Foreign
                Affairs, Republic of Indonesia site, according to
                their own Web page. 

                Joao Oliveira, a Portuguese journalist with the online
                publication Cyber.net, said the protest was waged
                by five Portuguese citizens between the ages of 18
                and 24. 

                After this first attack, Indonesian hackers countered
                by breaking into the East Timor site, Oliveira said.
                Yesterday's attack was in retaliation for the
                Indonesian hack. But the campaign began as "a
                formal protest against Indonesia," he added. 

                East Timor has been under Indonesian occupation
                since December 7, 1975, according to Charles
                Scheiner, the national coordinator of the East Timor
                Action Network in the United States. "When you
                have a country of 200 million occupying a country of
                800,000, there's not a whole lot you can do," he
                said. 

                Indonesia is also known for limiting and controlling
                Net access to its citizens. 

                Scheiner, whose group had nothing to do with the
                hacking, said that people protesting the situation
                have used the Internet to communicate with each
                other, especially through mailing lists and
                newsgroups, to bring attention to the atrocities. 

                Hacking would not in and of itself achieve anything,
                but when a country as small as East Timor fights a
                country as large and repressive as Indonesia, every
                bit of protest helps, he said. 

                But hacking, worried Jonah Seiger, a spokesman for
                the Center for Democracy and Technology, could
                harm the cause more than help it. 

                While Seiger was sympathetic to the struggle, he
                said hacking as a form of protest sends the wrong
                message. "There are effective ways to use the
                Internet to promote social change," he said.
                "Hacking into people's Web sites creates more
                problems than it solves." 

                Hackers in the United States, for instance, have
                altered pages at the Central Intelligence Agency, the
                Justice Department, and other U.S. military pages
                including the Air Force in the name of protesting the
                Communications Decency Act, Seiger said. 

                But the reason for protesting is lost in the method,
                he added. Seiger recommends people use the Net
                as an organizing tool, not one of vandalism.
                "Personally, I don't think it's the best choice of
                tactics. It doesn't put the best face on the Internet
                community or Internet users. We find the Internet to
                be an incredibly effective tool of public organization
                and mobilization."