Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

IBM Executives are Heading to Washington to Lobby in Favor of CISPA

Speaking of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), it appears that executives from IBM are heading to Washington DC to lobby in favor of passing the bill:

Nearly 200 senior IBM executives are flying into Washington to press for the passage of a controversial cybersecurity bill that will come up for a vote in the House this week.

The IBM executives will pound the pavement on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday, holding nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers and staff. Over the course of those two days, their mission is to convince lawmakers to back a bill that’s intended to make it easier for industry and government to share information about cyber threats with each other in real time.

IBM has a history of helping governments collect data on their citizens. Considering the consequences of their last marriage with the state I should be surprised by this news. But we all know that there is big money in selling customer data to the state. It’s always disappointing when a technology company sells computer users down the river. Fortunately CISPA is irrelevant thanks to cryptography technology.

Prediction Time

Yesterday explosives were detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and a fire broke out at the John F. Kennedy Library. The news cycle will likely consist of wall-to-wall coverage of this event until Friday. During that coverage many speculations and accusations of who is at fault for the explosions will be made. The New York Post is already running with the standard schtick that the perpetrator was a brown person from the Middle East. In all likelihood the war mongers will emulate the Post’s direction and blame the act of an extremist Muslim brown person with ties to al-Qaeda while the Southern Poverty Law Center will blame the act on extremist right-wing Christian white people with ties to to the Ku Klux Klan and several neo-Nazi organizations. For all we know the explosives were set off by a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) created terrorist after somebody in ordinance accidentally supplied real bombs instead of the usual fake bombs (that’s called snark, it’s not a serious accusation). In the end it will probably take some time to determine who the culprit was but that won’t stop the state from immediately exploiting the tragedy to justify another power grab.

Here are my predictions of what is to come. First the state will grab for more surveillance powers, as it always does after a tragedy. That means the recent opposition to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) will vanish. CISPA will be pushed through under the auspices of ensuring a tragedy like this never happens again. The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) high speed low drag Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams will be present at every high profile sporting event, not just events that take place in expensive stadiums. VIPR teams aren’t the only thing we’re likely to see at sporting events in the future, I’ll bet good money that restrictions against domestic drone usage will be loosened. The state’s eyes in the sky will probably be patrolling metropolitan areas with notable frequency. Additional powers will also be claimed by the federal government for its war on foreign and domestic terrorists.

In summary we’re in for the same shit as usual. If there’s one thing the state never lets go to waste it’s a tragedy.

Fear Mongering and Cyber War

For some time the United States government has been beating the cyber war drum. We’re lead to believe that foreign nations are going to hack into all of the nation’s networks and cause destruction and mayhem. In fact, according to Mike Rogers, the scary foreign hackers are already inside of your computers:

The House Intelligence Committee is warning that “time is running out” before the next major cyberattack: The Russians, Iranians, Chinese and others are likely already on your computer.

“You have criminal organizations trying to get into your personal computer and steal your personal stuff. And by the way, the Chinese are probably on your computer, the Russians are probably on your personal computer, the Iranians are already there,” House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R.-MI). told Fox News.

One is left to wonder what Mr. Rogers means by the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians. Does he means hackers living in those countries or agents of those countries’ governments? From his statement I’m left to believe he means the government agents of those countries. In all likelihood nobody inside of the governments of Russia, China, or Iran give two shits about the data on your personal computer. There are two things to consider: breaking into a computer requires effort and having access to all data on all personal computers would leave one with so much data to sift through that their efforts would be rendered worthless. If the Russians, Chinese, or Iranians are going to sink resources into compromising systems they are probably going to expect a good payoff. Breaking into one of my systems isn’t going to give them much of value so they are unlikely to sink resources into attempting to compromise my systems. Most of your are likely in the same boat as me. The real threat to most people are regular malicious hackers who want to create botnets. Those hackers generally work for themselves or a non-state crime syndicate.

I believe it’s also worth pointing out the language Mr. Rogers used. He said the Russians and Chinese are probably in your computer but knows for a fact that the Iranians already are. Isn’t it strange that the nation the United States government has been trying to declare war on for the last several decades is known, for a fact, to be in your computer but the most technologically advanced nation of the three, China, is potentially in your computer? It’s almost as if Mr. Rogers is trying to drum up fear of Iran specifically.

We all know what this is about though:

Rogers believes the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) can help counter that threat. The bill was introduced last year and passed the House, though it failed to make it through the Senate following a groundswell of concern from privacy activists.

Be afraid you stupid serfs! Allow us in the state to pass laws that grant us the ability to spy on your communications so we can protect you from the scary people are aren’t from around here!

What Rogers wants is the legal ability for the United States government to compromise your system. He wants the exact thing he’s using to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. Computers are a good tool for the state to use to generate fear. A majority of computer users lack a good understanding of the underlying technology and people tend to fear what they don’t understand. This is why foreign states are also good tools to use to generate fear, most Americans have very little knowledge of foreign countries. Combining the two makes for a very effective tool to generate fear that can be used to sucker the public into supporting most government control over their lives.

Budget Permitting, You Have a Right to a Speedy and Public Trial

The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution says:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

However within that amendment lies a caveat, your have a right to a speedy trial only if the state has the budget to prosecute you:

A judge said it was “stunning” that lawyers might not be ready for the case because of unpaid leave imposed by the so-called sequester.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith last month denied charges in New York that he helped plot the 9/11 attacks on the US.

His trial could now be delayed until next year.

The handcuffed defendant listened to Monday’s proceedings through an Arabic interpreter as it emerged that his case could be held up because of budget cuts caused by political gridlock in Washington.

Since sequestration is actually a $110 billion spending increase there is no ground from which to demand mandatory unpaid leave. Furthermore, there is no reason that the mandatory unpaid leave couldn’t be taken after the conclusion of the trial (which is likely to be a show trial with a preordained result). This maneuver is likely a tactic to further delay the trail as the United States government has demonstrated no desire to actually try those accused of being involved with the 9/11 attacks.

Delaying this trial could set an interesting, and extremely dangerous, precedent. As it currently stands an illusion of due process exists. If this trial is allowed to be delays under the guise of budget issues then there is no reason other trials couldn’t be indefinitely delayed under the guise of budget issues. The state can finally jail people without trail, while maintaining the illusion of being constrained by currently established laws, by simply saying the trial will occur when the budget allows and ensuring the budget never allows for it to occur.

Everybody is an Extremist

Are you a Catholic or evangelical Protestant? Then, according to the Defense Department, you’re an extremists:

The Defense Department came under fire Thursday for a U.S. Army Reserve presentation that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremist” religious groups alongside al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan.

The presentation detailed a number of extremist threats within the U.S. military, including white supremacist groups, street gangs, and religious sects.

I’m sure a lot of people are confused about this classification since Catholics and Protestants aren’t known for committing violent acts (now that the Crusades have concluded). The reason for this classification is simple:

More than half of all Americans identify themselves as members of those two Christian denominations. National Public Radio reported in 2005 that 40 percent of active duty military personnel were evangelical Christians.

The state has a keen interest in labeling everybody a criminal. With so many Americans identifying with Catholicism or Protestantism it gives the state leverage over a large portion of the population if those people are considered extremists. In addition to leverage the state has never taken too kindly to religions that compete with statism, which is likely another reason for labeling people who identify with other religions as extremists.

The ATF Wants to Know Who You Know

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) are legally prohibited from creating a database of gun owners (but they probably do it anyways) but they aren’t prohibited from creating other databases. Recently the ATF expressed interest in a database that would be able to list associations between individuals:

The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.

According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”

Primarily, the ATF states it wants the database to speed-up criminal investigations. Instead of requiring an analyst to manually search around for your personal information, the database should “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches” such as social security numbers (or even just a fragment of one), vehicle serial codes, age range, “phonetic name spelling,” or a general area where your address is located. Input that data, and out comes your identity, while the computer automatically establishes connections you have with others.

In other words the ATF wants a database that can give them a list of potential victims because, we all know, guilt in this country can be easily established by association. Instead of having one victim the ATF can get an entire list of victims.

An interesting side note to ponder is data sources. Obviously a database that is meant to display personal associations would need a great deal of data about individuals and their friends. While it is unlikely that anybody would volunteer such information for the expressed purpose of entering into a government database this information is already available through social media sites. Facebook and Google+, for example, are goldmines of personal information and both services make money by selling user data. In other populating the database requested by the ATF is simple because people have already provided such information to services that make money off of selling that information. Online anonymity is important because any information you provide about yourself is potentially for sale to those looking for it.

Microsoft and the NYPD are Partnering to Spy on You

Fascism, the marriage between the state and private entities, is a lucrative business for both parties. Sadly, unlike mutual exchange, fascism involves more than the exchangers, it involves everybody who falls under the tyranny of the state, and those people always suffer from the unholy union. Last year Microsoft and the New York Police Department (NYPD) announced their partnership in expanding the police state. The two collaborated to create the Domain Awareness System, a system that integrates city-wide surveillance technology to assist the state in spying on the general populace. As it turns out this marriage stands to be very profitable for both parties as other cities are looking to implement the system:

A unique public-private partnership that joined gut-level police acumen with advanced computer algorithms is proceeding toward two goals that rarely coincide: The policing system is making New York safer and it will also make money for the city, which is marketing it to other jurisdictions.

In the six months since the Domain Awareness System was unveiled, officials of Microsoft, which designed the system with the New York Police Department, said they have been surprised by the response and are actively negotiating with a number of prospective buyers, whom Microsoft declined to identify.

“The interest from the United States has come from smaller municipalities, from sheriff’s departments, and police chiefs from several major cities,” said Dave Mosher, vice president of Microsoft Services. “Outside the U.S., large sporting events have approached us, and also law enforcement — people who are interested in providing public security.”

Buyers would pay to access the software (at least several million dollars and more depending on the size of the jurisdiction and whether specifications have to be customized). New York City will receive 30 percent of the gross revenues from the sale of the system and access to any innovations developed for new customers. The revenue will be directed to counterterrorism and crime prevention programs.

The state loves surveillance because it offers a method to expropriate wealth from the general populace without having to hire and pay additional enforcers. I’m not even slightly surprised that Microsoft and the NYPD have been met with such high demand. Let’s face it, most municipalities are hurting for money. The only way those books can be shored up is if more wealth can be expropriated from the general populace. In order to increase expropriation the governments of those municipalities must increase taxes, increase the number of issued citations, or both. Technology like the Domain Awareness System assists in increasing the number of issued citations because it allows enforcers to see more taxable vices (speeding, parking violations, etc.) and record evidence for a court case if a citation is challenged.

There is some goods news. Surveillance systems are vulnerable to a type of exploit known as smashing cameras and audio recording devices.

Absolute Equality

The left, progressives, collectivists, or whatever you want to call them have an overall obsession with equality. They want to see a world where everybody is perfectly equal in all regards. It’s a noble goal, although one that is impossible to achieve. Being impossible has never stopped the state from attempting something, and it periodically attempts to level the playing field, at least for the serfs (the state will never create a level playing field, it wants power to lord over the serfs). The state’s desire for equality manifests in odd, at least from an outside observer’s vantage point, ways. For example, the state continues to leverage its monopoly on declaring individuals criminals to create equality by declaring everybody a criminal. Having created enough decrees to label most adults criminals the state has moving on to declaring children criminals:

During his first term, President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month,” emphasizing that, for students, learning to navigate the online world is as important a skill as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a move that echoed his predecessor’s strong support of global literacy—such as reading newspapers—most notably through First Lady Laura Bush’s advocacy.

Yet, disturbingly, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) of both the Bush and Obama administrations have embraced an expansive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that would literally make it a crime for many kids to read the news online. And it’s the main reason why the law must be reformed.

Equality an be achieved in our lifetime. No longer will there be a lower, middle, or upper class. There will only be a ruling and subservient class. Members of the subservient class will enjoy perfect equality as they all live in tiny concrete cells, eat gruel, and work as slave laborers for the ruling class. The only thing needed to secure this future is for the state to declare everybody a criminal, kidnap them, and lock them in a cage. At the rate things are going this utopian future isn’t far away.

The Real Reason So Many Laws Exist

Anybody reading federal or state statutes would quickly realize that there are a lot of damned laws on the books. Why does the state feel the need to enact so many laws? Somebody who believed the state exists to protect the general population would likely believe that all, or at least a majority, of those laws are necessary for the protection of the people. Those who understand the true nature of the state also understand that the reason for the large number of laws on the books is so the state has a means of threatening individuals into compliance. Alfred Anaya was a victime of that very tactic:

But in late January 2009, a man whom Anaya knew only as Esteban called for help with a more exotic product: a hidden compartment that Anaya had installed in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Over the years, these secret stash spots—or traps, as they’re known in automotive slang—have become a popular luxury item among the wealthy and shady alike. This particular compartment was located behind the truck’s backseat, which Anaya had rigged with a set of hydraulic cylinders linked to the vehicle’s electrical system. The only way to make the seat slide forward and reveal its secret was by pressing and holding four switches simultaneously: two for the power door locks and two for the windows.

[…]

Sometime in late 2008, Anaya received a call from a customer who lived in the San Diego area. The man wanted him to fix a malfunctioning trap located in Tijuana. Anaya was scared to venture across the border; as much as he hated to renege on his warranty, he refused to go to Mexico.

Anaya thought he had protected himself by turning down the job, but the damage had been done the moment he answered the phone. This particular customer was the target of a DEA investigation, and agents had eavesdropped on their conversation. The DEA decided to tap Anaya’s phone too, in an effort to identify other drug traffickers who were having traps built by Valley Custom Audio.

[…]

The agents took Anaya to the DEA’s office in downtown Los Angeles, where they questioned him at length. Anaya spoke freely about his traps, estimating that he had built 15 over the past year. He even boasted about his perfectionism, stressing that he was always careful to conceal his wire harnesses.

The agents told Anaya that he could avoid any potential legal complications by doing them a big favor: They wanted him to outfit his clients’ cars with GPS trackers and miniature cameras, so the DEA could build cases against suspected traffickers. They told him to take a few days to mull over the offer, then they released him from custody.

The next day, a dazed Anaya drove to his father’s grave to meditate on the choice before him. The epiphany he had while kneeling by the headstone wasn’t comforting. “I had a feeling that no matter what decision I made, something bad was going to happen,” Anaya says. “But I couldn’t do anything that would put my family in danger.” And while he felt he could handle jail time, he worried that any trafficker big enough to interest the DEA would have no compunctions about killing his children, nieces, and nephews. That made the decision clear.

When Anaya told the DEA that he was too frightened to become an informant, the agents made a new, more enticing proposition: They would set up Valley Custom Audio in a deluxe storefront, complete with every piece of equipment that Anaya desired. They wouldn’t ask him to place any surveillance gadgets in cars, but the shop would be bugged from floor to ceiling.

Once again, Anaya refused.

On December 10, Anaya was arrested and subsequently charged in Los Angeles Superior Court for “false compartment activity.” He was initially denied bail, in part because an illegal assault rifle and a bulletproof vest had been discovered in his house during a police search. (“Y’know, hey, I like to shoot guns,” Anaya says unapologetically; he has two large pistols tattooed on his chest.) His lawyer advised him that, given his totally clean criminal record, he was unlikely to spend much time behind bars for such a minor offense.

But in March 2010, Anaya received grim and surprising news: The federal government was taking over the case, and it was going to prosecute him in Kansas—a state he had never set foot in.

Although Anaya did nothing illegal the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) used California’s law against building secret compartments to first coerce him. State agents gave him two options to avoid cage time: bug customer vehicles or work in a bugged garage. Both options carried a great deal of risk for Anaya and his family. Drug runners aren’t generally known for being nice people. They are attracted to the high payout that drug running offers and not put off by the fact that they could suffer a great deal of state violence. In fact knowing initiated violence is a likely outcome many of the people attracted to the drug trade are individuals who hold very few moral quarrels with using violence themselves. To protect themselves from state violence drug runners often employ violence against individuals who they fear will turn them over to the state. Thanks to the state the drug market is a vicious cycle of violence. Thanks to the DEA Anaya only had two options: face the violence of the state or face the potential violence of drug runners. He chose the violence of the state.

The reason for the vast number of laws on the books is simple; it gives the state a tool to coerce individuals with. If California didn’t have a law against creating secret compartments the DEA may not have had any leverage to use against Anaya. Thanks to the law they had a tool to threaten him with. Since Anaya didn’t fold under the threat of violence the DEA decided to make an example of him. Now the DEA can tell future compartment builders about Anaya, which may convince those builders to take their chances with the potential violence of drug runners instead of the state’s demonstrated violence.

Violent Criminals are Trying to Recruit Potential Computer Experts

One of the most violent gangs in the United States has begun actively recruiting individuals who show a high aptitude in computer skill. I would advise parents to talk with their children and warn them against joining the ranks of psychopaths such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Fatherland Motherland Homeland Security (DHS):

The secretary of that agency, Janet Napolitano, knows she has a problem that will only worsen. Foreign hackers have been attacking her agency’s computer systems. They have also been busy trying to siphon the nation’s wealth and steal valuable trade secrets. And they have begun probing the nation’s infrastructure — the power grid, and water and transportation systems.

So she needs her own hackers — 600, the agency estimates. But potential recruits with the right skills have too often been heading for business, and those who do choose government work often go to the National Security Agency, where they work on offensive digital strategies. At Homeland Security, the emphasis is on keeping hackers out, or playing defense.

“We have to show them how cool and exciting this is,” said Ed Skoudis, one of the nation’s top computer security trainers. “And we have to show them that applying these skills to the public sector is important.”

One answer? Start young, and make it a game, even a contest.

This month, Mr. Jaska and his classmate Collin Berman took top spots at the Virginia Governor’s Cup Cyber Challenge, a veritable smackdown of hacking for high school students that was the brainchild of Alan Paller, a security expert, and others in the field.

With military exercises like NetWars, the competition, the first in a series, had more the feel of a video game. Mr. Paller helped create Cyber Aces, the nonprofit group that was host of the competition, to help Homeland Security, and likens the agency’s need for hackers to the shortage of fighter pilots during World War II.

The job calls for a certain maverick attitude. “I like to break things,” Mr. Berman, 18, said. “I always want to know, ‘How can I change this so it does something else?’ ”

Between drones and these types of competitions it appears that the United States government is continuing its track record of exploiting young children by making war feel like a video game. What the government recruiters don’t talk about are the harsh realities of war. In the case of computer security working for the government means working for the entity that is actively trying to suppress free speech on the Internet. This entity has continued to push legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, and Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. In addition to pushing destructive legislation this entity has also actively worked against free speech by seizing domain names of websites it finds undesirable (without any due process, of course). This entity has even go so far as to relentlessly pursue an individual for being a proponent of free speech and free information. By every definition of the word the United States government is a terrorist organization.

If you or somebody you know is an upcoming computer expert I urge you to urge them to work on projects that help protect Internet users from the psychopaths in the United States government. The Tor Project and I2P are always looking for more developers. Those of us that want to preserve free speech, free information, and privacy online need more advocates of cryptographic tools such as OpenPGP, Off-the-Record Messaging, and encrypted voice communications. Young computer savvy individuals should work on becoming experts in such technology, encourage their friends to use such technology, and work on the next generation of such technology.

Fortunately, for those of us that work against the United States government’s continuous attempts to censor the Internet, most people described by the state as computer hackers are not fond of authority and are therefore more likely to pursue non-state employment instead of working for the monster that labels them criminals.