Oxblood Ruffin is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

. He is a member of the

hacker group Hacker groups are informal communities that began to flourish in the early 1980s, with the advent of the home computer. Overview Prior to that time, the term ''hacker'' was simply a referral to any computer hobbyist. The hacker groups were out ...

Cult of the Dead Cow Cult of the Dead Cow, also known as cDc or cDc Communications, is a computer Hacker (term), hacker and Do it yourself, DIY mass media, media organization founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas. The group maintains a blog, weblog on its site, also ti ...

(cDc), for which he serves as "Foreign Minister." He is also the founder and executive director of

Hacktivismo Hacktivismo is an offshoot of Cult of the Dead Cow, CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), whose beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. It was founded in 1999. The group's beliefs are described fully in The Hacktivismo Declaration, whi ...

, an offshoot of cDc. Ruffin is active in

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

causes and is a vocal proponent of

hacktivism In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism (a portmanteau of ''hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hack ...

, a term which he has helped to define. He has participated in both technology and human rights conferences, both on his own and along with cDc. He also has written articles for ''

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tec ...

'' and '' .net''. Ruffin is also an infrequent contributor to both the cDc blog and the Hacktivismo News blog.

External links

Archive.org snapshot of now defunct Oxblood Ruffin websiteCult of the Dead Cow websiteHacktivismo website"Hacktivism: From Here to There" - a paper presented by Ruffin
at

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...

's Conference on Cybercrime in 2004 Canadian civil rights activists Cult of the Dead Cow members Living people Canadian bloggers Year of birth missing (living people) {{Canada-activist-stub