A Glimpse of Things to Come in the United States

Some time ago the federal government was trying to legally obtain the power to strip and American citizen of their citizenship. At the time it seemed obvious that the reason the politicians in Washington DC were going for that power was to give Obama a means of getting around his promise not to indefinably detain American citizens under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The United Kingdom may just demonstrated another benefit of stripping citizenship, the government can blow a former citizen up with a drone and claim they haven’t killed any citizens:

The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.

Governmental protections are more mythological than unicorns. Any supposed legal protection put into place is easily bypassed with the stroke of a pen.

Issuing Prison Sentences to Justify Charges

Aaron Swartz was facing 35 years in prison for the “crime” of making copies of academic works. These charges were likely a factor in his decision to end his own life. A life was basically destroyed to uphold intellectual property laws, which are destined to die sooner or later. What makes this case even more absurd is that it appears as though the prosecutors wanted to cage Swartz, not because of his actions but, to justify the charges:

Some congressional staffers left the briefing with the impression that prosecutors believed they needed to convict Swartz of a felony that would put him in jail for a short sentence in order to justify bringing the charges in the first place, according to two aides with knowledge of the briefing.

I think this demonstrates one of the biggest issues with the United States so-called justice system, it’s not based on justice. Justice would have required waiting for Swartz to commit a crime but the prosecutors used previous writings by Swartz to claim he intended to commit a crime:

A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.

Swartz’s 2008 manifesto said sharing information was a “moral imperative” and advocated for “civil disobedience” against copyright laws pushed by corporations “blinded by greed” that led to the “privatization of knowledge.”

“We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive,” Swartz wrote in the manifesto. “We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.”

Effectively the Department of Justice (DoJ) (talk about Orwellian doublespeak) brought their charges against Swartz because of something he wrote in 2008 and insisted on prison time because they felt it was necessary to justify the charges. This admittance by the DoJ also shows that censorship exists in this country, it’s just not overt. If you write something that the state disagrees with you will generally not be shutdown, blacklisted, or otherwise punished. What will happen is the state will bide its time until you do something that it believes is a prosecutable offense or usable to bully you into a plea bargain. At that point the state will use your previous works to generate more severe charges in which to hang you with. By using Swartz’s previous writings as justification for charging him the DoJ has sent a message that political dissidents can and will be punished. It’s an ultimatum. Either keep silent and avoid speaking out against the state or face the state’s wrath when it decides to finally descend upon you. In other words, shut up, slave.

A tip of the hat goes to TarenSK for this information.

Fighting CISPA

Remember the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that was introduced last year? Guess what, it’s back. For those of you who weren’t following CISPA the first time around it is a piece of legislation that would introduce exceptions into current privacy laws if those exceptions fell under the vague category of cyber security. Effectively it would render all privacy laws null and void as anything can be twisted into a cyber security threat. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging people to contact Congress and demand that they vote against CISPA. Unfortunately such a strategy is, at the very best, temporary. The bill was shot down last year only to be reintroduce again this year and if it fails again it will almost certainly be reintroduced at a later date. Until the bill passes there will be a continuous cycle of the legislation getting voted down and reintroduced. This cycle will continue until the bill can be passed, likely as an amendment to a “must pass bill” (think the National Defense Authorization Act) or in a lame duck session on some Christmas Eve.

Fortunately there is good news, the tools to render CISPA entirely irrelevant already exist. Government spying powers become irrelevant if they can’t read acquired data or connect acquired data to real people. Making data unreadable is relatively easy to do using strong encryption tools. All major modern operating systems have built-in full drive encryption capabilities. Microsoft call their drive encryption technology BitLocker, Apple calls theirs FileVault 2, and Ubuntu has the same technology minus a fancy marketing term. When you fully encrypt your drive you make the data inaccessible to anybody who doesn’t have the proper decryption key. What if you don’t have a modern version of Windows, OS X, or Ubuntu? No problem, there’s a wonderful tool called TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt allows you to fully encryption a Microsoft Windows disk or creation encrypted volumes on Windows, OS X, and Linux. You can even use the tool to create a hidden encrypted volume that stores your secure information while keeping junk data in the regular encrypted volume. Doing this allows you to “decrypt” the volume to comply with state demands without having to decrypt your important information.

Encryption shouldn’t stop at your local system though. Every day you probably communicate with other people online and those communications are likely stored on third party servers or can be intercepted en route. There are tools that greatly reduce the risk of both problems. OpenPGP is an e-mail encryption tool that has been around for ages and is still a very effective tool to prevent prying eyes from reading your electronic correspondences. OpenPGP works by using asymmetric encryption. For OpenPGP to work there needs to be two keys, a public certificate and a private certificate. You distribute your public certificate to individuals you want to securely communicate with and, as the name implies, keep your private certificate private. E-mails encrypted with your private certificate can only be decrypted with your public certificate and vise versa. For instant messaging there is a tool called Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR). OTR works on top of currently existing instant messenger services so you can use it to communicate without having to convince all of your friends to switch services (I still have friends who refuse to move away from AOL Instant Messenger).

What about the second problem? How does one stop the state from connecting data to you? Simple, by anonymizing your data. The most popular tool for anonymizing data is Tor. Tor is an onion router, which is a not-so-fancy term for software that encrypts data at an entry point (in the case of Tor, your computer), bounces that encrypted data between multiple nodes on the network, and decrypts the data and sends it to its destination at an exit point. Unless you provide identifying information the exit node is unable to link the data it decrypts to its originator and none of the middle nodes are able to read the data or link it to its originator. Likewise, neither the exit point or intermittent nodes are able to link data that is returned from the receiver. In addition to anonymizing regular Internet traffic Tor allows an individual to run a hidden service. Hidden services only exist on the Tor network and all information communicated between a client and a hidden service is encrypted and bounced between multiple nodes in the network. This means communications between a hidden service and a client are hidden from outside sources and neither the hidden service or the client can identify one another (unless one submits identifying information to the other). If you need a demonstration of the effectiveness of hidden services take a look at Silk Road, a hidden service that allows individuals to sell illegal drugs. Silk Road is so effective that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been unable to take it down.

Speaking of buying goods anonymously, let’s discuss payment systems. Silk Road and other “black” market hidden services generally rely on Bitcoin for transactions. Bitcoin is an electronic peer-to-peer currency that is both secure and relatively anonymous. Transactions are performed by sending Bitcoins to published public keys asymmetric encryption at your service, again). The public keys are anonymous unless the holder choose to reveal his identify or his identify is somehow compromised. Information between a sender and receiver of Bitcoins need only know the other person’s public key. Once again the effectiveness of Bitcoin can be demonstrated by the fact that the DEA has been unable to use Bitcoin transaction information to identify sellers on Silk Road.

There are many other tools out there, including I2P and Freenet, that can help denizens of the Internet render CISPA irrelevant. The state can’t do anything with information it can’t read or tie to a real person, which is why the United States has long held a policy prohibiting the export of strong cryptographic technology.

The More the State Pushes the More People Will Slip Away

The state continues to push but they fail to see that the more they push the more people will slip away. A bill has been introduced in the Illinois Senate that would require administrators of websites to remove anonymous comments upon demand:

A recently introduced bill in the Illinois state Senate would require anonymous website comment posters to reveal their identities if they want to keep their comments online.

The bill, called the Internet Posting Removal Act, is sponsored by Illinois state Sen. Ira Silverstein. It states that a “web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.”

Legislation like this will force more and more of the Internet to seek shelter in the unregulated safety of Tor hidden services. Personally I look forward to the day when a majority of websites are safety hidden inside of the Tor network as it will make censorship practically impossible.

Smashing the Surveillance State

Here in Minnesota the goons commonly referred to as politicians are looking to increase their rate of expropriation by reintroducing red light cameras:

A group of lawmakers is proposing a bill that would allow cities to use cameras to catch drivers who run red lights. The bill, which was introduced yesterday in the House and Senate, would also allow law enforcement personnel to use cameras to catch people who are speeding.

In 2007 the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that red light cameras are unconstitutional because the tickets were linked to a driver’s license, not to the motorist who committed the violation. Minneapolis city officials were forced to refund millions of dollars after the court ruled the law unconstitutional.

Supporters of the new bill say they think technology will address those concerns because the cameras will capture pictures of both the license plate and the motorist.

Were this to pass the constitutionality of the law would likely come into question again. Unfortunately challenging the constitutionality of a law takes a great deal of time and money and there are no guarantees that the results will be favorable. On the other hand there are extralegal options available. With the rampant use of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in the United Kingdom (UK) a new movement has sprung up called Camover:

It started in Berlin: Anarchists, donning black bloc attire, hit the streets at night in pairs, small groups or alone to smash and dismantle the CCTV surveillance cameras adorning the city streets.

Since the use of surveillance technology is becoming widespread throughout the world it’s not surprising that the movement has spread beyond the UK:

The anti-surveillance project quickly spread throughout Germany, to Finland, Greece and hit the U.S. West Coast this month. A group identifying itself as “the Barefoot Bandit Brigade” released a statement claiming to have “removed and destroyed 17 security cameras throughout the Puget Sound region,” with ostensible photo evidence published alongside. “This act is concrete sabotage against the system of surveillance and control,” wrote the group’s statement, adding that the Camover contribution was also intended in solidarity with anarchists in the Pacific Northwest currently in federal custody without charges for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury.

While I shun the destruction of property I also don’t believe the state can legitimately acquire property. The state acquires property through taxation and taxation is nothing more than theft. If you don’t pay your taxes you’ll likely be kidnapped and put into a cage or have a portion of your paycheck stolen each pay period. Because of this I believe it’s the right of the state’s victims (tax payers) to do as they please with the state’s property. My feelings regarding this are even stronger when the state’s property is used to further expropriate wealth from the populace, which is what red light cameras do. Were this law to pass I suspect, and hope, Camover would become prevalent in Minnesota. Minnesota, and the United States in general, needs more actively civil disobedience. We’re living with the results of using the political process to preserve liberties and, as you can see, no meaningful increase of liberties has occurred since the founding of this country.

In Lieu of Due Process LADP Burns Down A Cabin

The Christopher Dorner chase has apparently come to an end with Dorner burned alive inside of the cabin he barricading himself in. At least that’s what the media seems to be implying. As it turns out the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) may have purposely burned the person they believed to be Dorner alive:

Scanner audio apparently broadcast by the Los Angeles CBS affiliate KCAL on Tuesday captured angry officers yelling to “burn this motherfucker” prior to a cabin fire that is thought to have burned the body of fugitive ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner.

In a video recording posted to YouTube on Tuesday, the anchor pauses to let the viewer hear the mostly-inaudible scanner traffic.

“Do it right now,” one voice says. “Fucking burn this motherfucker!”

“Police officers, understandably upset,” the anchor explains.

A separate recording of scanner traffic — which has not been verified — features officers talking about going forward “with the burn.”

“All right, Steve, we’re gonna go — we’re gonna go forward with the plan, with — with the burn,” a male voice on the recording instructs. “We want it like we talked about.”

“Seven burners deployed and we have a fire,” the voice later adds.

“Copy,” a female voice replies. “Seven burners deployed and we have a fire.”

I think everybody knew the LAPD never intended to bring Dorner in alive. Still, burning a man alive seems quite drastic, especially when we’re continuously told that the United States is a land of laws and everybody is innocent until proven guilty in court.

I’m Sure it’s a Coincidence

The New York Police Department (NYPD) release some information regarding their “stop and frisk” strategy. The data speaks volumes:

The NYPD last night released a report on its controversial stop-and-frisk procedure that breaks down by precinct — and by race — those who’ve been targeted.

The figures, all from 2011, show the precinct with the most stops by sheer numbers was Brooklyn’s 75th, which includes East New York and Cypress Hills.

More than 31,000 people were stopped, 97 percent of them either black or Hispanic.

Brooklyn’s 73rd Precinct, covering Brownsville, was the next highest, with 25,167 stops. About 98 percent involved minorities.

The 115th Precinct — which includes East Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights in Queens — ranked third, with 18,156 stops. Nearly 93 percent of those involved minorities, the figures show.

The 40th Precinct in The Bronx, which covers Mott Haven and Melrose, racked up the next highest number — 17,690 — with 98.5 percent involving minorities.

And at No. 5 was the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where there were 17,566 stops, with 88.6 percent involving minorities.

Many people who live in the Northern United States have a holier than thou attitude when it comes to racism. They believe that the South has a monopoly on racism and that those of us who live north of the Mason-Dixon Line are far more enlightened. Obviously this isn’t the case. Racism is plenty rampent in the North, in fact it’s plenty rampent throughout the United States so-called justice system.

Comments Regarding Obama’s Visit to Minneapolis

Mr. Obama visited Minneapolis on Monday to promote his scheme to disarm us serfs. The event was predictable as the video shows Obama standing at the podium giving his speech while members of Minnesota’s largest gang stand behind him in solidarity. Several highlights form the story merit some mention:

“You’ve shown that progress is possible,” Obama told an invited, sympathetic crowd at the Minneapolis Police Department’s Special Operations Center in north Minneapolis, where he highlighted the city’s success in reducing youth gun violence. In his first visit outside Washington, D.C., to promote his own anti-violence and gun-control agenda, Obama said the nation can make similar progress — if the public demands it.

By progress Obama means disarming the serfs. I would say that a majority of non-state gun control advocates truly believe they are working to prevent violence but the state supports gun control for an entirely different reason. The state, which can be considered the nobility, wants the serfs disarmed because disarmed individuals are easier to expropriate from. You can only take so much from the serfs until they have to make a decision between dying of starvation or disobeying the law. Once the serfs get to that point they inevitably decide to disobey the law and that usually leads to the nobility being booted out of power (sadly they are usually replaced with a new nobility). If the serfs are disarmed the time it takes them to reach the point of disobeying the law is increased as the cost of booting the current nobility out of power is greatly increased. This delay allows the nobility to kick the can down the street and, they hope, enrich themselves by expropriating fromt he serfs while making their successors deal with the consequences.

Obama was correct, Minneapolis has made progress. Unfortunately for us serfs that progress his detrimental to our health.

“The only way we can reduce gun violence in this country is if the American people decide it’s important,” Obama said. “We’re not going to wait until the next Newtown, or the next Aurora,” he added, referring to the massacre of schoolchildren in Connecticut and the gunman who shot up a theater full of moviegoers in Colorado.

Actually there is another, far more effective, way to reduce gun violence in the United States; end the war on drugs. The state’s war on drugs that haven’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration has caused a major increase in violent crime (just as Prohibition did in the 1920s). Organized crime syndicates such as the Mexican drug cartels and the United States federal government have been using violence to eliminate their competition since the war on drugs was first declared. Ending the war on drugs would reduce gun violence, likely more than any other action. Once again we return to the fact that the state doesn’t care about violence, it only wants a disarmed populace to expropriate wealth from.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak expressed outrage at politicians who already were talking down the proposal’s chances. “Well, guess what?” Rybak said. “People are dying out there. I am not satisfied with the main sort of front from the people in Washington, that this is sort of a game. Where are the other people on this issue? Get a spine, get a backbone. People are losing their lives.”

Rybak was correct, people are dying out there, and his thugs in the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) are killing them. We return again to the increase in violence crime caused by the war on drugs. The MPD has a rather colorful history of using its capacity for violence to steal from the serfs. In neighboring St. Paul the city’s police went so far as to kill a family’s dog, handcuff the present children and throw them down next to the dead dog, and interrogate the parents in the hopes of finding some justification for raiding the wrong address. Obviously Rybak isn’t serious about reducing gun violence in Minneapolis, he just wants the MPD to have a monopoly on it.

Since Obama was present a pro-Obama shill was brought in to argue in his favor:

John Souter, the sole survivor of Minneapolis’ Accent Signage shootings last September, said of Obama: “If we don’t have the moral courage to support the president of the United States, shame on us.” Souter, an Accent employee, was in the private session with Obama.

If we don’t have the moral courage to oppose a man who orders the execute of children, shame on us.

One of the most interesting aspects of Obama’s visit is that he supposedly came to Minneapolis because of the MPD’s progress in reducing gun violence. Yet the reduction in gun violence wasn’t credited to passing draconian gun control laws, it was credited to police directly interacting with youth:

Obama’s speech, before risers filled with Twin Cities police officers and sheriff’s deputies, focused on a city effort sparked by a spike in juvenile crime a decade ago. Known as the Blueprint for Action, it involved connecting young people with mentors, intervening in kids’ lives when necessary and getting students to “unlearn the culture of violence.” A progress report showed firearms-related assault injuries among youth had fallen from 159 in 2005 to 94 in 2011.

In other words Obama wants you to support gun control because the MPD’s programs of directly intervening with Minneapolis youth has correlated with a reduction in youth gun violence. How supporting gun control and the MPD’s program of directly intervening with Minneapolis youth are connection is beyond me.

In conclusion Obama’s visit went exactly as expected. The visit served no real purpose other than demonstrating that gun control isn’t about violence, it’s about control.

Herein Lies the Reasons You can be Murder By The United States Without Due Process

The criteria Obama uses to determine who he will personally order to be assassinated has remained a mystery, until now. A memo [PDF] describing the criteria used to determine whether or not somebody will be the target of a drone launched missile has been leaked. Needless to say the justification is fairly loose:

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

[…]

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.
Read the entire ‘white paper’ on drone strikes on Americans

Instead, it says, an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

In other words due process gets thrown out the window if an some state agent believes you’re somehow involved with al-Qaeda. The best part about this is that it’s legal. Think about that.

FBI Captures Another One of Their Own Terrorists

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is celebrating the capture of another terrorist that they created:

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 21, was given a fake bomb by undercover agents posing as Islamist militants, lawyers said.

Mohamud was arrested after he tried to use his phone to detonate the fake car bomb near a crowded square in Portland.

This is just another in the long line of so-called terrorists that were recruited and armed by the FBI. Needless to say the FBI gets credit for creating bad situations and stopping them. My job would be much easier if I received credit for making shit up as well.