Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

What Dying Free Speech Looks Like

Free speech is dying and states are killing it. In their zeal to destroy any potential challenge to their power, err, protect us from the terrorists states have been drafting more laws that speech they don’t approve of illegal. France is taking the next step. President Francois Hollande will introduce legislation that would hold Google, Facebook, and other sites that allows comments legally responsible for what users say:

(Bloomberg) — The French government is stepping up the pressure on Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. to help in the struggle against terrorist groups.

President Francois Hollande said Tuesday in Paris the government will present a draft law next month that makes Internet operators “accomplices” of hate-speech offenses if they host extremist messages. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he will travel to the U.S. to seek help from the heads of Twitter Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as well as Google and Facebook. Spokesmen for the companies did not immediately return requests for comment.

In other words, censor any speech he don’t like or face the wrath of the French legal system (which is pretty wrathful when it comes to persecuting Muslims or Romani). With enough legalese one could argue that this law isn’t an abridgement of free speech because companies, not the state, would be charged with the task of censorship. But with enough legalese I could argue that gravity is not longer in effect. Legalese is bullshit.

This is a clear abridgement of free speech by holding the state’s gun to the heads of companies that enable communication. And while it’s being marketed as a means of controlling hate-speech we all know that hate-speech is defined by the state and therefore can be used by it to censor anything it wants.

The story noted that spokespersons from any of the major companies that would be impacted by this law didn’t return any comments. Hopefully they’re all preparing comments that are variations on, “Go fuck yourself, Hollande.” Because that’s the only proper response to this law.

DEA Planned to Surveil Arizona Gun Show Attendees

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is building a system to track motorists throughout the country. Part of the system likely relies on license plate readers. But this isn’t the first incident where the DEA planned to use license plate readers to track Americans. In 2009 the DEA was planning to use them to track attendees of gun shows in Arizona:

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives collaborated on plans to monitor gun show attendees using automatic license plate readers, according to a newly disclosed DEA email obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act.

The April 2009 email states that “DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with ATF on attacking the guns going to [redacted] and the gun shows, to include programs/operation with LPRs at the gun shows.” The government redacted the rest of the email, but when we received this document we concluded that these agencies used license plate readers to collect information about law-abiding citizens attending gun shows. An automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. Mere attendance at a gun show, it appeared, would have been enough to have one’s presence noted in a DEA database.

Responding to inquiries about the document, the DEA said that the monitoring of gun shows was merely a proposal and was never implemented.

Call me skeptical but for some reason I don’t believe the DEA’s claim that it never implemented this strategy. But that is largely irrelevant now that it is implementing a nationwide system that will track motorists indiscriminately. What this proposal does show is that the technology, while indiscriminate in nature, can be used in a discriminatory manner.

Tracking attendees of gun shows is just one example of the type of discrimination widespread surveillance lends itself to. This technology could just as easily be used to identify attendees of a cannabis legalization or gay rights rally. Once you have that type of information in hand you can use it for either legal harassment or blackmail. Imagine the DEA using the fact that somebody attended a gun show and a cannabis legalization rally as probably cause to investigate somebody on the grounds that they may be a user of unlawful substances in possession of a firearm. Even if such evidence isn’t enough to bring charges it is enough to harass and badger the person.

This is the future George Orwell warned us about. I think we’ve reached the post of a boot stamping a human face — forever.

Police Love to Stalk But Hate Being Stalked

Police love stalking people. To this end most departments have invested a lot of money into acquiring technology that makes their creepy behavior easier. But what happens when the tables are turned at the people start keeping tabs on the police? The police cry foul, what else?

Sheriffs are campaigning to pressure Google Inc to turn off a feature on its Waze traffic software that warns drivers when police are nearby. They say one of the technology industry’s most popular mobile apps could put officers’ lives in danger from would-be police killers who can find where their targets are parked.

Talk about a bunch of hypocrites. They’re bitching about people being able to find and target them but the tracking technology they use is totally cool even though it’s used to find and target us. It’s not unheard of for police officers to use department resources to stalk an ex, a potential love interest, or just somebody they feel like harassing. Take this story for example:

Fort Collins police officer was fired following an investigation that determined he used agency resources to discover where a woman worked and lived.

So why aren’t these sheriffs volunteering to dispose of their departments’ license plates scanners, accounts will with cellular providers that allow them to request customer location information, cell phone trackers, and other technology that enables their officers to stalk us? It’s because they love doing to us what they fear us doing to them.

The Justice Department is Building National Database to Track Motorists Throughout the Country

Just when you think you’re paranoid enough the state goes and pulls a stunt like this:

(Reuters) – The Justice Department has been secretly gathering and storing hundreds of millions of records about motorists in an effort to build a national database that tracks the movement of vehicles across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Not surprisingly the national automobile tracking initiative is being operated by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The DEA, thanks to civil forfeiture laws, enjoys the ability to raise a fuckton of money if it can makeup any evidence whatsoever of a possible drug crime. Somebody driving from Colorado to anywhere could very well be enough evidence to seize their property because buying cannabis there is legal but it’s illegal almost everywhere else.

One question that arises from this story is where the DEA is getting its data. Either local governments are either feeding their data to the federal government or the federal government has its own license plate scanners operating throughout the country. My money is on the latter.

Some states have started regulating how long their police departments can hold on to license plat data. Here in Minnesota there are no such laws so police departments pretty much makeup whatever policy that amuses them. The State Patrol only keeps their data 48 hours, St. Paul’s police department keeps their data for 14 days, but Minneapolis’ police department keeps it for a year. There’s talk about implementing state regulations here but that talk doesn’t include whether or not local law enforcement agencies can feed their data to the federal government. In fact, from what I can find, most state regulations don’t touch that subject. That being the case it would be fairly easy for the DEA to setup deals with local agencies to get the data it needs to populate its national database.

As Orwell said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” So long as states exist our privacy will continue to be violated.

HealthCare.gov Sending Personal Information to Tracking Sites

The war over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is still be waged. Democrats are pointing out that the number of people with health insurance coverage is higher than ever, which isn’t surprising since you’re not required to purchase it by law. Republicans are upset because the ACA is still called ObamaCare and they wanted everybody to call it RomneyCare. Libertarians, rightly so, are asking how a government can force you to buy a product. But there’s a problem with the ACA that has received relatively little coverage. From a privacy standpoint HealthCare.gov is a total fucking nightmare:

EFF researchers have independently confirmed that healthcare.gov is sending personal health information to at least 14 third party domains, even if the user has enabled Do Not Track. The information is sent via the referrer header which contains the URL of the page requesting a third party resource. The referrer header is an essential part of the HTTP protocol, it is sent for every request that is made on the web. The referrer header lets the requested resource know what URL the request came from, this would for example let a website know who else was linking to their pages. In this case however the referrer URL contains personal health information.

In some cases the information is also sent embedded in the request string itself, like so:

https://4037109.fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=4037109;
type=20142003;cat=201420;ord=7917385912018;~oref=https://www.
healthcare.gov/see-plans/85601/results/?county=04019&age=40&smoker=1&parent=&pregnant=1&mec=&zip=85601&state=AZ&income=35000&step=4?

That’s a referrer link from HealthCare.gov to DoubleClick.net that tells the advertiser that the user is 40 years old, that the user (assuming a value of 1 indicates true) smokes, that the user is not a parent, that the user is pregnant, the user’s zip code, the user’s state, and the user’s income.

You might be curious why a website paid for with taxes is sending health information about its users to an online advertiser. Usually websites only send user data to advertisers if they’re selling it. I wouldn’t be surprised if HealthCare.gov is double dipping by taking tax dollars and selling data to online advertisers. It wouldn’t be a bad money making strategy. First you force everybody to buy your product and then you sell their data.

DoubleClick.net isn’t the only site that HealthCare.gov is sending user health information to. Akamai.net, Chartbeat.net, Clicktale.net, and many more are receiving this data.

Interestingly enough both the Democrats and the Republicans seem entirely unconcerned about this. The only thing they care about is the political dick measuring contest that has been going on between then since forever. But this violation of privacy has real world ramifications, especially since the advertisers receiving this data already have a great deal of data on many Internet users.

Illinois Legislators Approve Law to Requires Students Surrender Social Media Passwords

Further demonstrating that the state believes it owns us, Illinois legislators have approve a law that would require K-12 and university students to surrender their social media passwords to school officials:

However, with the new law that Illinois legislators approved, school districts and universities in Illinois can demand a student’s social media password. The new law states if a school has a reasonable cause to believe that a student’s account on a social network contains evidence that a student has violated a schools disciplinary rule of policy. Even if it’s posted after school hours.

This week some school districts sent home letters to notify parents and students about the new rules. ” To get into a social networking site and it could be at a school or at home. That we would be able to get that password and get onto their account,” said Leigh Lewis Triad Community Unity School District Superintendent.

I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the law only covered K-12 students. The state does believe that it wholly owns every minor. And if that were the case I would urge any parent to tell snoopy school administrators to fuck off. But the law also covers university students who tend to be adults. So now I must also encourage university students to tell snoopy school administrators to fuck off.

As with all Orwellian laws this one is being sold using fear. We’re told that it’s necessary to stop “cyber bullying” (apparently adding the word cyber to something is supposed to make it scarier). In reality it’s just another tool for school administrators to put the students in their place. The message is very clear, behave or some school administrator is going to do a detailed search of your entire social media presence including private messages. I feel confident in saying this because there is no reason whatsoever for a school administrator to need a student’s password. If a student is the target of harassment they can show administrators the relevant information (and they don’t even have to surrender their password to do it). Screenshots can be taken of any pertinent evidence. It’s very easy.

And since I’m on a kick of turning common statist arguments against them let’s also consider the children. Teenagers have a habit of sending naked pictures to their significant others. There’s no changing it, it’s a fact of life. What’s to stop a creepy teacher who suspects a student has sent or received naked pictures of themselves or others from making up an excuse to demand their password so they can comb through them? Not a damn thing since minors have no real legal rights.

The thing to keep in mind is that this law, like all laws, can be disobeyed. Just because the state says you have to surrender your password doesn’t mean you do. Upon receiving a demand for your password you can just as easily shutdown the account or, better yet, tell the person making the demand to fuck off.

Obama Wants Enable Abusers to Better Surveil Their Victims

Last week David Cameron, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, publicly stated that he wanted all encryption to be broken so him and his cronies could better spy on the populace. Shortly afterward Obama came out in support of Cameron’s desire:

President Barack Obama said Friday that police and spies should not be locked out of encrypted smartphones and messaging apps, taking his first public stance in a simmering battle over private communications in the digital age.

Apple, Google and Facebook have introduced encrypted products in the past half year that the companies say they could not unscramble, even if faced with a search warrant. That’s prompted vocal complaints from spy chiefs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Obama’s comments came after two days of meetings with Cameron, and with the prime minister at his side.

“If we find evidence of a terrorist plot… and despite having a phone number, despite having a social media address or email address, we can’t penetrate that, that’s a problem,” Obama said. He said he believes Silicon Valley companies also want to solve the problem. “They’re patriots.”

Every time a politician tells us that we need to surrender security they always sell it with fear. They tell us that they must be able to read all of our communications otherwise terrorists will kill us, pedophiles will kidnap and rape children, abusers will continue to abuse their victims, and murderers will be able to kill with impunity. I think it’s about time to bring this conversation full circle. Every one of those arguments can be flipped around.

Without having a means of anonymously and privately individuals become much easier for terrorists to target. Imagine an individual inside of a terrorist cell that wants to communicate the cell’s plans to counter-terrorists. Unless he is able to do this anonymously and privately he will likely be killed. The problem with breaking cryptographic tools so the government can bypass them is that anybody who knows about that weakness can also bypass them.

Then we have the children. Everything attack against our privacy is “for the children”. But cryptographic tools can also protect children from predators. Imagine a school setting where an instructor is planning to abduct one of the pupils. He’s obviously not going to do it on school grounds because the likelihood of him being caught is high. However if his target coordinates plans with other schoolmates via electronic communications and those communications are not secure the predator can view them and wait for them to go somewhere more isolated.

Abusers love to surveil their victims. Keeping tabs on where their victims go, what they spend, who they’re talking with, and what they’re talking about allows abusers to wield a great deal of psychological power. This ability to surveil also makes it less likely that their victims will seek help. When the chances of getting caught seeking help are high and the consequences are physical abuse then a victim is more likely to do what maintains to status quo.

Murders, like terrorists, would benefit greatly from broken cryptography. Like terrorists, murderers need to identify and track their target. If somebody is trying to murder a specific individual they may know where that individual works and lives. Businesses and neighborhoods often have too many witnesses around so a smart murderer is going to suveil their target and use the information he uncovered to strike at a more opportune time.

It’s time we start calling the politicians on their bullshit fear mongering. Whenever they bring up terrorists, pedophiles, abusers, or murderers we need to point out that those threats are also good arguments for strong cryptography.

The Government is Quite a Trickster

The United States government is pretty famous for its ability to trick the populace into believing lies. But bullshit unemployment numbers aren’t its best trick. That honor would go to its ability to convince people that the United States is no longer at war:

The holiday headlines blared without a hint of distrust: “End of War” and “Mission Ends” and “U.S. formally ends the war in Afghanistan”, as the US government and Nato celebrated the alleged end of the longest war in American history. Great news! Except, that is, when you read past the first paragraph: “the fighting is as intense as it has ever been since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001,” according to the Wall Street Journal. And about 10,000 troops will remain there for the foreseeable future (more than we had a year after the Afghan war started). Oh, and they’ll continue to engage in combat regularly. But other than that, yeah, the war is definitely over.

This is the new reality of war: As long as the White House doesn’t admit the United States is at war, we’re all supposed to pretend as if that’s true. This ruse is not just the work of the president. Members of Congress, who return to work this week, are just as guilty as Barack Obama in letting the public think we’re Definitely Not at War, from Afghanistan and Somalia to the new war with Isis in Iraq and Syria and beyond.

What’s sad is that I know people who buy into this fairytale. I’ve heard from several friends that Obama ended Bush’s wars. When I point out that we’re still bombing people in the Middle East they either cover their ears, stick their heads in the sand, of call me a neocon. More and more I realize that people don’t care about the truth but only choose to believe what they want. And you know what? I don’t blame them. Because the truth is fucking horrible.

Welcome Back CISPA

While some politicians are exploiting the shooting in Paris to justify the National Security Agency’s (NSA) illegal actions others are exploiting the Sony hack to build on the already sizable police state. Remember the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)? It’s back:

A senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Friday will reintroduce a controversial bill that would help the public and private sectors share information about cybersecurity threats.

“The reason I’m putting bill in now is I want to keep the momentum going on what’s happening out there in the world,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), told The Hill in an interview, referring to the recent Sony hack, which the FBI blamed on North Korea.

The question is not whether or not the bill can be passed; It’s when will a tragedy scary enough make the people beg Congress to pass it. What the politicians aren’t saying is that CISPA wouldn’t have prevented the Sony hack. First of all Sony is a Japanese company. Second of all words on a piece of paper don’t stop malicious people form being malicious. But none of that matters when the goal isn’t to stop crime but to increase control over the populace.

The NSA is Probably Celebrating the Shooting in Paris

Most of the world mourned the deaths of those shot in Paris. But some have been celebrating those deaths. Neocons have been enjoying their raging anti-Muslim erections and the National Security Agency (NSA) has probably been celebrating because the scrutiny of their illegal surveillance program is being silenced:

The push to reform the National Security Agency isn’t getting any easier.

After a reform bill was narrowly blocked on the Senate floor late last year, civil libertarians hoped that an upcoming deadline to reauthorize some of the spy agency’s controversial powers would give them another opportunity to force changes.

But the attacks in Paris last week, where gunmen killed 12 at a satirical newspaper and 4 at a kosher market, is making that job harder, and strengthening the resolve of the NSA’s backers.

“I hope the effect of that is that people realize … the pendulum has swung way too far after [leaker Edward Snowden],” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters on Thursday.

“Hopefully people realize that the NSA plays a very, very important role in keeping Americans safe, and my guess there will be less of a desire to hamstring them unnecessarily,” he added.

You almost have to admire these NSA apologists. Even though the current surveillance apparatus failed to detect the Paris shooters’ plans beforehand its apologists are claiming it’s necessary to thwart the next one. And people are going to lap up this bullshit because they trust people in authority.

There should be a new rule in politics. If an agency’s illegal actions failed to stop a tragedy then nobody should be able to use that tragedy to justify the agency’s illegal actions. But then there wouldn’t be any justification for the state and I would be enjoying a world where a handful of people aren’t dictating what the rest of us can and cannot do.