Month: June 2013

The Invisible Line Between Private and Public

During my early days of libertarianism I, like most young libertarians, developed a distaste for the public sector while I pointed to the great things accomplished by the private sector. Now that I’m older and, I hope, wiser I’ve learned that the divide between the private and public sectors is nonexistent. Every major corporation in this country has been co-opted into the state’s machinery. The biggest technology companies have granted the National Security Agency (NSA) access to their customers’ data. That access comes with a downside though. The NSA has a limited number of agents so combing through all the collected data, even after automating the process greatly, isn’t feasible. This leaves the NSA with a major problem but, luckily for them, the private sector is always willing to help:

Amid the torrent of stories about the shocking new revelations about the National Security Agency, few have bothered to ask a central question. Who’s actually doing the work of analyzing all the data, metadata and personal information pouring into the agency from Verizon and nine key Internet service providers for its ever-expanding surveillance of American citizens?

Well, on Sunday we got part of the answer: Booz Allen Hamilton. In a stunning development in the NSA saga, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald revealed that the source for his blockbuster stories on the NSA is Edward Snowden, “a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.” Snowden, it turns out, has been working at NSA for the last four years as a contract employee, including stints for Booz and the computer-services firm Dell.

A piece of this recent surveillance fiasco that’s often overlooked is that Edward Snowdan was able to acquire the information he leaked while employed for an NSA contractor. Booz Allen Hamilton, as a contractor, is just as much apart of the state as the NSA itself. Shit like this happens everyday and it makes finding the line between the private and public sectors impossible.

Needless to say, I no longer point to the private sector as an example of greatness. Now I point to the “black” and “grey” markets, which work outside of the state’s authority. Agorists businesses, ones being run in a manner that directly opposes the state, hold a very special place in my heart.

The Purge: An Absurd Idea that’s Fun to Play With

Many of my friends have been discussing the movie The Purge. I haven’t seen it yet because I’m not a fan of siege movies (unless it’s Judge Dredd performing the siege because, well, he’s fucking Judge Dredd) but I’ve been informed about the concept. The Purge plays with the idea of a society where all laws are suspended for a 12-hour period. Several people have noted that the movie demonstrates why anarchism can’t work. Setting aside the fact that people are using a fictional movie to argue against a real societal philosophy we’re still left with the fact that the idea of The Purge, that a period of lawlessness will result in unimaginable violent crime for that entire period, is absurd.

Judging by the movie’s preview and statements my friends have made about the movie, I’m lead to believe weapons are no prohibited The Purge’s version of the United States. In fact it appears as though prohibitions against weapon ownership are nonexistent, at least for the 12-hour period where all law is suspended. Knowing that an annual purge takes place I’m also lead to believe that most people would acquire weaponry to defend themselves, which would likely mean the cost of violence would increase greatly.

Today the cost of performing violent acts in the United States is pretty low. Most people don’t carry weapons on their person and many people either own no weapons or are prohibited from possessing them. In addition to that the general attitude towards violent crime held in America is to let the police deal with it. We’re told not to intervene when we encounter a violent crime and can actually face legal repercussions for doing so. Such an attitude gives violent criminals a good sized window of time to commit their violent act, before dealing with possible resistance (because the police can’t teleport to a location instantly). In a society where all law was suspended for a 12-hour period every year, people would likely arm themselves so they could defend their lives during the lawless period. The cost of violence would increase, which would have the likely affect of discouraging violent crime. Violent criminals generally exploit the fact that they are unlikely to encounter notable resistance while committing a violent crime. When they chances of notable resistance increases it discourages violent criminals from performing violent crimes.

In addition to the likely increase in arms that would occur in a society where no laws were enforced for a 12-hour period there is also the social roadblocks between criminals and crimes. Humans are generally social creatures. We form relationships and those relationships influence our actions. For example, friends and families are likely to help one another. How many people would stand idly by while somebody attempts to murder their mother, father, sister, or brother? How many people would look the other way while one of their friends was killed? In most cases the family member of friend would intervene because they have a vested interest in defending the would-be victim.

If a period of lawlessness was declared by the state, local communities would ban together to defend each other. My claim isn’t unprecedented. The Los Angeles riots were, effectively, a period of lawlessness. During that time period members of the community referred to as Koreatown banned together, loaded their rifles, and defended their community from marauding rioters.

Many people believe that the state is the only thing that separates society from complete collapse but those people are ignorant of history. Consider the American Old West. Hollywood portrays the time period as one of great violence but the actual Old West was notable for two things. First, the state was absent [PDF]. Second, there was a very low rate of violent crime. Medieval Iceland is another example of a society that enjoyed freedom from a state and a low rate of violence. Unlike much of Europe during the time period between the years 1000 and 1300, Iceland had no civil wars because its society was based primarily on arbitration. Violence wasn’t absent but it was mostly ritualized, which helped keep it under control compared to many other societies of the time.

What makes society possible is the general tendency of humans to form communities. Though that tendency we choose mutual cooperation of exploitation most of the time. If the state declared a period of lawlessness communities would simply take responsibility for enforcing laws against violent crime themselves. A realistic version of The Purge would likely involve an increase in cannabis smoking for a 12-hour period followed by run on the local grocery stores to buy up all the Doritos. I would even predict that violent crime would decrease since the police would be roaming the streets and initiation violence against nonviolent individuals.

Edit: 2013-06-11: 20:39: Corrected a few grammatical mistakes graciously pointed out by Steven.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2013

Yesterday Apple held it’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and announced a slew of new software and hardware. Most notable were the introductions of a new Mac Pro and iOS 7. Of course Apple also unveiled a new version of their desktop operating system, OS X. OS X 10.9 no longer follows the tradition naming convention of large cats, instead 10.9 is called Mavericks. Frankly, I think it’s a stupid name but the name really is irrelevant. What is relevant are the features.

The first feature Apple announced in 10.9 is property multi-montior support. Yes, Apple has finally joined the 1990s. No longer are users relegated to a menu bar and dock only on one screen and users can now have a full-screen application running on each monitor! All I can say is that it’s about fucking time.

OS X will also include Apple Maps. What does this mean for consumers? It means they can get the same shitty direction on OS X as they get on iOS and even transfer those shitty directions from their Mac to their iPhone or iPad.

iBooks will also be included in OS X. Mac users can now not read the books they didn’t buy in the iBooks Store because they were too busy buying them from the Amazon Kindle Store. As you can tell I’m absolutely ecstatic about this announcement.

That’s basically it. Apple did talk about new Safari features but nobody uses Safari so nobody cares what features are included in it.

Switching over to more exciting things Apple also announced new MacBook Airs. The new Airs are based on Intel’s new Haswell processor, which means the battery life is mind blowing. Apple claims the 11-inch Air will get 9 hours of battery life and the 13-inch will get 12 hours. Even if those claims are exaggerated and the 11-inch only gets 7 hours and the 13-inch only gets 10 hours those numbers of fucking impressive.

Hell hath also frozen over because Apple has finally announced a new Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro is an impressive piece of hardware. It’s no longer a large box. Instead the computer is shaped like a cylinder with a crap load of ports on the back of the device. It also includes new Xeon processors that are 256-bit, which I didn’t even know existed. The rest of the specs are equally impressive. In the end the new Mac Pro was probably the best thing that was announced. Sadly it’ll probably cost $5,000 because of the obviously alien technology included in the case.

I also mentioned the new version of iOS was announced. The biggest difference between iOS 6 and iOS 7 is the graphical interface. Apple gave iOS a complete overhaul. The shitty skeuomorphic applications are finally gone; replaced with flat icons in pastel colors. I’m not sure if I’m wild about the color scheme since it looks like the Easter Bunny vomited all over the screen but I’ll take a new design that looks a little nutty over the old design that I was getting bored of.

iOS 7 also includes a new feature called Control Center. Control Center is a small dashboard that allows users to quickly disable wireless interfaces, adjust the phone’s volume, adjust the screen brightness, and several other features Android users have been enjoying for ages. I’m glad Apple has finally joined the party, it would have been better if they arrived on time.

There’s also some unspecified multitasking features. I hope this means applications can have some limited access to network resources while sitting in the background but I’m guessing the implementation won’t be as good as I’m hoping. I’ll have to play with this feature before I make any ruling. On the upside Apple has finally copied WebOS’s app switcher, which was basically the best app switcher implemented in smartphone history.

The other iOS features were pretty minor in my opinion. It was good to see Apple didn’t announce any new iPhones or iPads. Why is this good? Because it means iOS 7 won’t be gimped on my iPhone 5. I hate downloading a shiny new operating system only to find out various features are disabled.

Overall this is the first product announcement Apple has done in a while that impressed me. Granted the only thing that really impressed me was the new Mac Pro but impressed I was. I may not be as impressed when I see the price tag but that’s another story.

A Hero Emerges

When the news of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) widespread surveillance operations broke many people were wondering who leaked the information. As it turns out the person who leaked the information decided to come forward (which means he’ll probably be dead soon):

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Some people will call for Mr. Snowden’s head while others, those who actually oppose government snooping, will see him as a hero. Sadly members of the United States government have already begun demanding Snowden be extradited from his hideout in Hong Kong to the United States so he can be disappeared, err, tried:

There was no immediate reaction from the White House but Peter King, the chairman of the House homeland security subcommittee, called for Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong. Snowden flew there 10 days ago to disclose top-secret documents and to give interviews to the Guardian.

“If Edward Snowden did in fact leak the NSA data as he claims, the United States government must prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and begin extradition proceedings at the earliest date,” King, a New York Republican, said in a written statement. “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”

You have to love the double standard Mr. King is espousing. The NSA was caught spying on American citizens, an act that Congress was briefed on and approved, and King is after Snowden’s head for committing a heinous act. Apparently Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the United States but makes an exception for political targets, which means Snowden may be able to fight his extradition for some time.

Mr. Snowden should be treated as a hero for leaking details of the NSA’s spying operations. So long as the state refuses to recognized the people’s privacy the people should refuse to recognized the state’s privacy.

Monday Metal: Washington is Next by Megadeth

Considering the recent news I decided it would be best to post a song about the corruption in Washington DC. If you’re looking for a song with political content there is no better person to turn to than Dave Mustaine. Although he’s often annoying nobody can say he’s a bad guitarist or song writer, especially when it comes to music critical of the fascist state we now suffer under:

Encrypt Everything: Using GPG on Linux

Now that I’ve explained how to use GNU Privacy Guard on OS X and Windows it’s time to cover Linux. Writing a tutorial on Linux is slightly more difficult because different distributions have different ways of doing things, which means I have to limit this tutorial’s scope. This tutorial is aimed at users running mainstream distributions based on Red Hat and Debian. I wrote this tutorial using Xubuntu 13.04 and looked up Fedora Core specific instructions. This tutorial is known to work on Xubuntu, all but entirely guaranteed to work on Ubuntu, and most likely applicable to Fedora Core. The good news is GNU Privacy Guard is in the standard installation of Debian and Fedora-based distributions meaning you don’t have to install it manually if you’re running Debian, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora Core, or Red Hat. I will explain how to install Seahorse, a graphical GNU Privacy Guard front end for Gnome and Xfce.

The first thing you need to do is install Seahorse. On Debian-based systems, such as Ubuntu, you will need to open a terminal and enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install seahorse

On Red Hat-based systems, such as Fedora Core, you will need to open a terminal and enter the following command:

su -c "yum install seahorse"

Seahorse should now be installed. It may or may not be automatically added to your application menu, depending on the distribution you’re running however the application can be launched from all systems by entering the following command in a terminal:

seahorse

You will be greeted with Seahorse’s main screen:

Generating a new OpenPGP key pair is easy. First, click on the green plus button. You will be asked what type of key you want to create:

Select PGP Key and click the Continue button. You will now be presented with a dialog where you can enter the key pair information:

Although it’s not necessary I do recommend click the little triangle next to Advanced key options so you can manually enter a key pair length. By default it’s set to 2048 and I recommend you max it out to 4096 but you’re not required to. Whether you want to manually enter a key pair length or not you should fill in your identifying information. For this example I entered my name into the Full Name field and openpgptest@christopherburg.com into the Email Address field. Once you’ve entered your desired information click the Create button.

You will now be asked to enter a passphrase:

Enter a strong passphrase[1] as it will be used to encrypt your private key, which will prevent it from being used should it fall into unwanted hands. Remember, whoever possess the private key can use it to sign or encrypt data. If a malicious user was able to obtain and decrypt your private key they could impersonate you. After you’ve entered your passphrase into both fields click the OK button. Now comes the fun part, waiting for your key pair to be generated:

For some reason generating a key pair in Linux took much longer than generating a key pair in either OS X or Windows. It took my system approximately 20 minutes to generate the key pair. During this time Seahorse is waiting to collect enough random data, which will occur faster if you use other applications. After doing some research online I found several methods that are supposed to decrease the amount of time needed to collect enough random data. The most common recommendation I came across was an application called Entropy Gathering Daemon. I didn’t have time to download, install, and test it so I will leave you to experiment with it if you want.

After the key pair has been generated it will appear in your list of keys:

That’s it, you now have an OpenPGP key pair to encrypt and sign e-mails. Now you need to know how to import the public keys used by those you correspond with. Importing a key is easy. First, you need to obtain a copy of the public key you want to input. For this example I will use the public key for blog [at] christopherburg [dot] com. If you obtained a copy of the public key in text format paste it into a text file with a name that ends in .asc. Now go to the File menu and click Import:

In the Import Key dialog box select the .asc file containing the public key. For this example I named the file blog.christopherburg.com.asc:

A dialog box will present information from the key being imported:

If you want to see all the details click the little triangle next to Details. Once you’re satisfied that the details are correct click the import button. You will be returned to Seahorse’s main screen but the key won’t be listed. In order to see imported keys you need to go to the View menu and select Show any:

Now you will see all the keys Seahorse knows about:

As you can see the public key for blog [at] christopherburg [dot] com is listed but isn’t trusted. If you double-click on the key you can open a dialog box that will list the key’s details:

If you click on the Trust tab you can check the box labeled I trust signatures from ‘Christopher Burg ‘ on other keys:

Now the key will show up in your list of trusted keys. If you so desire you can sign the public key with your private key. Signing a public key is a way of alerting other people that you have verified that the person with the corresponding private key is who he says he is.

That’s how you setup OpenPGP key pairs in Seahorse. Now that we’ve covered methods to generate OpenPGP keys on OS X, Windows, and Linux we can move onto using Thunderbird and Enigmail to send encrypted and/or signed e-mails and decrypt and/or verify signatures on e-mails, which will be covered in the next tutorial.

That Awkward Moment When You Realized Those Crazy Crypto-Anarchists Were Right

As if spying on our telephone conversations wasn’t bad enough another disturbing fact was revealed about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) vast spying operations. Although we all suspected that the NSA had access to the databases of the largest technology companies in Silicon Valley we now have proof:

A top-secret surveillance program gives the National Security Agency surreptitious access to customer information held by Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies, according to a pair of new reports.

The program, code-named PRISM, reportedly allows NSA analysts to peruse exabytes of confidential user data held by Silicon Valley firms by typing in search terms. PRISM reports have been used in 1,477 items in President Obama’s daily briefing last year, according to an internal presentation to the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate obtained by the Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers.

This afternoon’s disclosure of PRISM follows another report yesterday that revealed the existence of another top-secret NSA program that vacuums up records of millions of phone calls made inside the United States.

What does this mean? A lot. Effectively the NSA has access to every e-mail sent to or from Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google’s services. It also means that the NSA has access to everything you’ve posted on Facebook including comments, pictures, and private messages regardless of your privacy settings. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google searches are also obtainable by the NSA. In other words, anything you’ve ever send to or accessed from the servers of the involved technology companies is at the fingertips of the NSA.

Concern about this very thing is what lead me to move all of my needed online services to my personal server. My e-mail, calendaring, address booking, Virtual Private Network (VPN), and websites are all hosted on a server physically located in my dwelling. Hosting all of your own services can be a pain in the butt at times but it’s the only way to have any reasonable assurance that your confidential information remains confidential. I recommend everybody buy a domain name and move their online services away from major technology companies and onto their own services. If you’re not sure how to do that then it’s time to learn and I will gladly help anybody want asks for it.

If you can’t pull yourself away from third-party services then you need to encrypt everything. I’ve written a few tutorials that explain how to encrypt e-mail using OpenPGP. As of this writing the tutorial for OS X is completed, the first part of the Windows tutorial is completed, the first part of the Linux tutorial will be posted later today, and the tutorial explaining how to use Thunderbird and Enigmail to send and receive encrypted e-mails will be posted in the near future. When the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was being debated in Congress I wrote a short guide that explained a few technologies that could be used to avoid the state’s prying eyes, learn how to use them (I will write detailed guides at some point).

To quote a famous phrase, shit just got real.

The War on Privacy Explodes

After Wednesday’s reveal that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been indiscriminately spying on all of Verizon’s customers things have exploded. Yesterday morning the White House came out and justifed the NSA’s actions:

A senior administration official said the court order pertains only to data such as a telephone number or the length of a call, and not the subscribers’ identities or the content of the telephone calls.

Such information is “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States,” the official said, speaking on the condition of not being named.

“It allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” the official added.

The revelation raises fresh concerns about President Barack Obama’s handling of privacy and free speech issues. His administration is already under fire for searching Associated Press journalists’ calling records and the emails of a Fox television reporter as part of its inquiries into leaked government information.

That justification, to put it frankly, is weak. A subscriber’s phone number is their identity because each phone number is unique and is almost always associated with only one person. Saying that the NSA is only collecting phone numbers but not identifying information is no different than saying the NSA is collecting Social Security numbers but not identifying information. When you’re collecting data that is associated with a specific person you are collecting identifying information.

Even if we assume the statement is true and the NSA has no idea who possess what phone number we’re still left wondering how they can tell whether or not somebody is calling a known terrorist if they don’t know what the known terrorist’s phone number is. If they only know the terrorist’s number then they can easily obtain the identities of the terrorist’s contacts by asking Verizon for the identities of the persons who possess the called numbers. In other words the NSA is collecting identifying information no matter how you look at it.

Furthermore, any terrorist possessing even a minute amount of intelligence isn’t going to use a phone number tied to their person. Instead they will use another person’s phone (either by asking to borrow their phone or by using a cloned SIM card) or buy a disposable phone with cash. Either way the identity of the terrorist won’t be associated with the phone number so it will be almost impossible to identify who the terrorist is calling. At most the NSA will be able to identify extremely stupid terrorists, bust them, and give the remaining terrorists a reason to educate themselves and, in so doing, become far more difficult to capture or, in all likelihood, kill (that’s what the current administration enjoys doing most).

The White House is, as usual, feeding us bullshit. But that’s not the end of the bullshit train. In order to keep up the appearance that strong disagreement exists between the Republicans and Democrats you would think a powerful Republican would come forth and criticize the Obama administration for allowing indiscriminate spying on Americans. Instead one of the more influential Republicans came forward and defended the NSA’s actions:

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he is “glad” that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records — including his own — from one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies in an attempt to combat terrorism.

Mr. Graham said that he is a Verizon customer and has no problem with the company turning over records to the government if it helps it do its job. The South Carolina Republican said that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about because the NSA is mining the phone records for people with suspected ties to terrorism.

I’m not surprised to hear a state agent saying he’s OK with the state collecting his information. He is on the safe side of the gun pointed at our heads after all. I’m even less surprised to see Dianne Feinstein is in favor of the NSA’s expansive spying operations:

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Feinstein asid. “This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress.

Feinstein said she could not answer whether other phone companies have had their records sifted through as Verizon has.

“I know that people are trying to get to us,” she said. “This is the reason why the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counterterrorism. This is the reason for the national counterterrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active. its to ferret this out before it happens. “It’s called protecting America.”

What makes Feinstein’s comment interesting is her admittance that Congress was briefed on the operation. If any members of congress feign surprise we now know to call them on their bullshit.

Being a nation of laws somebody is obviously going to perform an investigation into this matter, right? Although it sounds like there will be an investigation it doesn’t sound like it will be an investigation into the NSA:

NEW YORK –- The U.S. Department of Justice may try seeking out the source of a bombshell article that revealed National Security Agency surveillance of millions of Americans, according to NBC News Justice correspondent Pete Williams.

[…]

Williams, a well-sourced reporter who just interviewed Attorney General Eric Holder last night about the leak investigations, jumped in with an answer.

“I was told last night: definitely there will be a leak investigation,” he said.

Before the state ascertained the identity of the person who leaked what is now referred to as the Collateral Murder video there was plenty of opportunity to investigate the pilots of the gunship that killed those Iraqi civilians and Reuters reporters. Instead the current administration moved to investigate the source of the leak. The person who leaked the video was Bradley Manning and, once identified, he was arrested, held in solitary confinement, and is now being put on trial for aiding the enemy. If the source that leaked the court order that revealed the NSA’s indiscriminate spying is discovered I’m sure he or she will be arrested, held in solitary confinement, and tried for aiding the enemy as well.

Bitching about this isn’t going to accomplish anything so we must ask what can be learned from this. I think there are several lessons. First, it’s obvious that the current administration is corrupt to the core. While Obama promised the most transparent government in history his administration has been shrouded in secrecy and embroiled in continuous scandals. His administration has also demonstrated that they prioritize hunting down people who leak classified information above hunting down criminals within the government’s employ. Second, we can no longer afford to communicate through unsecured channels. Every piece of data we send to each other must be encrypted and anonymized to prevent the government’s prying eyes from violating our privacy. Third, those crazy conspiracy theorists who have been telling us that the government is spying on our every communication aren’t so crazy. We must now assume that they are correct and that the government is spying on our every communication because, as this most recent leak shows, the government’s spying operations are vast and giving absolutely no regard to due process. Fourth, there is another war being waged by the federal government, a war against our privacy. The only way to defend ourselves in this war is to violate the government’s privacy in turn. Our violations of the government’s privacy will be met with arrests, imprisonments, and possibly executions but will also cause its legitimacy to erode.

The government will continue to use technology to suppress us but that very same technology can be used to suppress the government. We must wield technology more effectively than the government in order to keep our privacy.

Rand Paul is the Master of Political Grandstanding

Now that it’s been proven that the National Security Agency (NSA) is spying on the American people it’s time for Rand Paul to take the stage and perform some political grandstanding. Low and behold, as if on queue, he has come forward with a piece of legislation that he claims will restore Fourth Amendment protections:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Rand Paul today announced he will introduce the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013, which ensures the Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment are not violated by any government entity.

“The revelation that the NSA has secretly seized the call records of millions of Americans, without probable cause, represents an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. I have long argued that Congress must do more to restrict the Executive’s expansive law enforcement powers to seize private records of law-abiding Americans that are held by a third-party,” Sen. Paul said. “When the Senate rushed through a last-minute extension of the FISA Amendments Act late last year, I insisted on a vote on my amendment (SA 3436) to require stronger protections on business records and prohibiting the kind of data-mining this case has revealed. Just last month, I introduced S.1037, the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act, which would provide exactly the kind of protections that, if enacted, could have prevented these abuses and stopped these increasingly frequent violations of every American’s constitutional rights.

Let me get this straight. The federal government violated the Fourth Amendment by spying on the American people and Rand solution is to make that act more illegal? I’m sure the NSA will stop spying on us when it becomes doubleplusillegal! Hell, making spying illegaler will work better than repealing the PATRIOT Act or FISA!

This legislation is likely to be a worthless as his legislation to protect Americans from being executed by drones, which included an exception so vague that it could be applied to anybody.

Rand is turning out to be a master of exploiting crises for political gain and that fact should worry everybody.

Why There are No Libertarian Countries

This article has been making the rounds in libertarian circles for the last few days. In it Salon author Michael Lind believes he has finally found the argument that discredits libertarianism in its entirety. His argument is that the complete lack of libertarian countries demonstrates that libertarianism can’t succeed:

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

Before I continue I should note that Mr. Lind has some criteria that determine whether or not a country qualifies as a real country:

But this isn’t an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.

In order to be a real country there must be some kind of entity providing defense, an unspecified amount of interference in the economy, law enforcement, and some system of support for the poor. Based on Mr. Lind’s previous writings and the tone of this article I am lead to believe that he thinks the state should provide those services and therein lies the problem. Based on Mr. Lind’s criteria there can never be a libertarian country because a libertarian country, by definition, wouldn’t have a state providing those services, they would be provided through voluntary means.

With that said it is now time to jump into the meat of my rebuttal. Although libertarianism is often seen as a political philosophy it is more accurately a philosophy regarding human interaction. Most branches of libertarianism build off of the non-aggression principle, which is a principle that simply states initiating aggression is wrong. Theft, rape, and murder are acts of initiated aggression and are therefore seen as wrong under libertarianism whereas self-defense is seen as a response to aggression and is therefore right. The insidious part about libertarianism is that we live it every day without realizing it. Every time you go to a restaurant and decided to buy your food instead of stealing it you are performing a libertarian act. Voluntary interactions are, by definition, libertarian in nature.

States are the opposite of libertarianism, they are entities built on initiating aggression. The state raises wealth through expropriation. Taxes and fines are both examples of theft because the state is giving the people an ultimatum: pay taxes and fines or face kidnapping, detainment, or death. In fact every law declared by the state has the same ultimatum: obey or be enslaved or killed. Something as minor as a parking ticket can lead to your death. Most people scoff at that claim because they’ve never heard of somebody actually being killed. The reason people aren’t killed over parking tickets isn’t because of the state’s benevolence, it’s because most people perform a cost-benefit analysis and decide paying the ticket offers a greater benefit than a standoff with a state thug. However, if you failed to pay a parking ticket you will likely be kidnapped by a cop who will put you in a cage. After spending some time in a cage you’ll likely be brought before a man in a robe who will order you to pay the ticket. If you don’t pay the ticket that robed man will decided to either put you back in a cage or garnish your wages. The latter option may lead you to work underground so you have no visible income for the state to take and then the state will come after you for not paying income tax. Eventually the only option that will be given to you is a cage and if you refuse to go into the cage you will be forced into it. If you refuse to go quietly, that is to say if you defend yourself, you will be killed. That’s how the state works.

Countries, by definition, are entities recognized by other entities. In our world an entity is recognized as a country if it is ruled by a state. This criteria for recognition isn’t surprising since it’s usually other states that decide whether or not another state is a valid country. The reason there are no libertarian countries is because libertarianism is the opposite of statism and in our modern vernacular the word country is synonymous with state.

Libertarian societies have existed and still exist. Medieval Ireland [PDF], medieval Iceland, the American West, and Neutral Moresnet were all historical examples of, what could be properly referred to say, libertarian societies. Today the region referred to as Zomia still exists as a libertarian society. In the case of Zombia many states claim jurisdiction over the area but none have any actual authority over the people living there because those people refuse to bow down. Instead, for the past 2,000 years, they have preferred a voluntary society based on cooperation, ritual, and tradition instead of coercion.

There are no libertarian countries but there are libertarian societies and each and every one of us lives most of our lives in a libertarian manner. Those who live outside of libertarian manners generally end up in a cage, dead, employes as cops, or politicians.