[ht_th]

Yes, terror is certainly in the eye of the beholder, although academic definitions are a bit more nuanced than those being used by the public.

The subtle difference is between using terror to reach a goal and using some action to reach a goal with a side effect that people experience terror. For example:

A group of hackers could hack into the bank accounts of the 1% to distribute their wealth among the other 99%. They don't have any intention to create terror and probably think that the 1% can easily take. Of course, the 1% will see it as an act of terror. And probably journalists, lobbyists, politicians will spin it and use it to create terror among the larger populace.

Another group of hackers is hacking into facebook accounts to make people's secrets public to try to get the public to care about privacy and not to put their trust blindly into social media. In this case, they would use terror consciously as a means to this end.