Tag: Agora! Anarchy! Action!

The Surveillance State

Via Bruce Schneier’s blog I came across an excellent, and short, essay regarding the surveillance state. Ian Welsh, the essay’s author, sufficiently sums up the tense relationship between the rulers and the enforcers:

This is one of the biggest problems the current elites face: they want the smallest enforcer class possible, so as to spend surplus on other things. The enforcer class is also insular, primarily concerned with itself (see Dorner) and is paid in large part by practical immunity to many laws and a license to abuse ordinary people. Not being driven primarily by justice or a desire to serve the public and with a code of honor which appears to largely center around self-protection and fraternity within the enforcer class, the enforcers’ reliability is in question: they are blunt tools and their fear for themselves makes them remarkably inefficient.

It’s easy to see the state’s motivation for implementing comprehensive automated surveillance. Paying enforcers to perform surveillance manually is expensive. Why would the rulers want to spend large amounts of money on manual surveillance when they can automate a great deal of the work and pocket the saved wealth? This is also the reason why the state tries to involve everybody, whether they’re an enforcer or not, into its surveillance system. How many times have we seen the phrase, “If you see something, say something?” Hell the phrase has its own Department of Motherland Fatherland Homeland Security (DHS) webpage. Every tattling neighbor increases the state’s watchful eye without incurring additional costs. Fortunately surveillance has a weakness:

The reliance on surveillance is however a weakness, one of many. One of the simplest ways to reduce the power and reach of the oligarchy is to destroy surveillance equipment, much of which is very easy to reach. I have frequently said that we will know that people are becoming more serious when they start destroying surveillance equipment, when it becomes an ethical imperative to do so; ideally when people believe that blanket surveillance is an ethical wrong.

I, am, thus interested to see that the Barefoot Bandit Brigade destroying surveillance cameras. In the US, those who oppose current elites directly seem strongest around Oakland and in the Pacific Northwest.

I touched on the strategy of destroying the state’s surveillance system when Minnesota politicians proposed reinstall red light cameras. Welsh puts forth an interesting idea: one can judge how serious people are about avoiding the state’s watchful eye when they begin openly advocating and participating in the destruction of surveillance equipment. It will be interesting to see if organizations like Camover and the Barefoot Bandit Brigade become more prevalent in the United States as the state becomes even more intrusive.

This Week in Gun Control

This has been a pretty busy week for gun control at both a federal and Minnesota level. On the federal level Feinstein’s legislation that would be black rifles and standard capacity magazines was approved by the Senate Committee:

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a measure to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, the first major Congressional vote on the issue since the ban expired in 2004.

The vote to approve the measure — now ostensibly headed for the full Senate — went firmly along party lines; the 10 Democrats on the committee voted aye, and the 8 Republicans of the committee rejected it. The legislation would also limit the size of ammunition magazines to 10 rounds.

Now the legislation will move to a floor vote, which could go either way. You can beg your masters for leniency by calling, e-mailing, and writing them but, frankly, I it’s past time for civil disobedience. Begging hasn’t gotten us very far and it doesn’t look like it will be any more effective in the future.

In Minnesota, surprising nobody, the local Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would ban private sales:

DFLers on a Senate committee gave a go-ahead to universal background checks for gun sales Thursday night.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a wide-ranging gun-violence bill on a 5-3 party-line vote, with DFLers supporting it and Republicans opposing it. It now goes to the Senate floor
It was the first recorded vote on a gun-violence bill of the Legislative session after weeks of discussion in the House and Senate.
The key issue — extending background checks to private sales — remains a political hot potato at the Capitol.

A companion bill is to be heard next week in the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, where its chances are in doubt.

Once again begging didn’t work out in our favor. While gun rights advocates flooded the hearings the Committee decided it had no reason to listen to the majority. There is a little good news, the alternative bill, which would put more information in government databases, create new criminals, and prohibit you from falsely reporting your “assault weapons” as lost in the event of a confiscation, hasn’t moved yet.

Things aren’t looking good from a political side (they never do) but for an agorist looking to make some major money a new business opportunity in the form of “assault weapon” and standard capacity magazine manufacturing appears could arise.

Don’t Fall for the False Dichotomy

It’s inevitable that a person involved in the political realm will eventually be forced to make a decision between standing up for their principles or maintaining their political alliances. Gun owners who also oppose furthering the police state now have to make that decision. Between the two primary factions two options have emerged: HF237, which attempts to prohibit private sales, or HF1323, which will advance the police state.

Both sides in this debate have adopted an “us” versus “them” methodology. In face the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) has the following to say:

Some anti-gun activists have been working to create a split among gun owners, hoping to weaken our position by making us fight among ourselves. They are trying to portray the Criminal Control bill, HF1325, as a gun control bill.

As I mentioned in my coverage of HF1323 (HF1325 is a clone of HF1323 for those who are curious) the bill contains several points that I would qualify as gun control, specifically Section 12, which would make it a felony to falsely report your firearms as lost or stolen. I consider that section a method of gun control because in the event of an “assault weapon” ban it would prohibit you from reporting your “assault weapons” as lost. With the passage of HF1323 the police would have reason to kidnap you if you reported your firearms as lost during an attempted confiscation. This, in addition with the mess of data that the bill would mandate to be entered into state or federally managed databases, makes for a frightening proposition. Things get a bit more ridiculous when the GOCRA page presents only two two options:

Don’t let the gun grabbers divide and conquer us. Call and email your Minnesota senator and representative today:

  • Ask them to support Rep. Hilstrom and Sen. Ortman’s criminal control bill.
  • Ask them to oppose Rep. Paymar’ss [sic] bill.

That’s a false dichotomy because there is a third option, oppose both bills. There is no need to pass more legislation. What’s broken in regards to gun control isn’t the absence of restrictions, it’s the number of restrictions. Gun-free zones have greatly reduced the cost of performing violence. No amount of background checks, data in police databases, or new laws will correct that problem.

What surprises me isn’t GOCRA’s advocacy of HF1323, it’s their tenacity in supporting it. I haven’t seen any suggestion that people oppose both bills. In fact, based on what I’ve seen written on their website, they seem to imply that you’re either with gun owners by supporting HF1323 or you’re against them by opposing it. It’s a ridiculous attitude to hold and it saddens me to see it posted on their website.

As I said at the beginning of this post, eventually politics will lead you to make a decision between your principles or your political alliances. My principles won’t allow me to support any legislation that creates new gun control measures or grants more power to the police state. Fortunately I’ve escaped the political realm and am now working on solutions outside of the state’s ability to control. My solution relies on mutual cooperation instead of “us” versus “them” strategies. It’s also something different, which is desperately needed since the political means has lead to a continuous erosion of gun rights. I urge everybody to oppose both bills being presented and find alternative means of advancing gun rights. The time of passively begging politicians to give us a few scraps from the table is over. We don’t need their blessing, permission, or acknowledgement and it’s time we started realizing that.

3D Printer Firearm Manufacture Moves to Bypass Censorship and Copyright of CAD Models

Last month DEFCAD was launched to host firearm related 3D printer models after Thingverse implemented site-wide censorship. Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, is working on a new endeavor, a commercial version of DefCAD aimed at the free distribution of 3D models and bypassing copyright laws:

Wilson said DefCAD will become a for-profit corporation that will act as a one-stop search engine for “3D printable models” of just about anything. In other words, DefCAD hopes to be an expanded version of the physibles section on the Pirate Bay.

“It maintains all the present features but we step it up a notch,” Wilson told Ars. “The Pirate Bay has the right idea with physibles, but increasingly the fight is going to be about physical copyright—we want to build one of the tools early.”

And like the Pirate Bay, which has thumbed its nose at corporations, copyright, and the legal system for digital goods, Wilson suggests DefCAD would do the same for physical objects as much as possible.

[…]

“Help us turn DefCAD into the world’s first unblockable, open-source search engine for 3D printable parts,” Wilson narrates in the video. “There will be no takedowns. Ever.”

[…]

Wilson acknowledged that like the Pirate Bay, there are “contingency plans” to incorporate or move his operations to other countries not as affected by the DMCA. He specifically mentioned Slovakia, Russia and Singapore as “places we could go.”

The commercial DefCAD site is up and looking for crowd sourced funding. While I admit that this venture may not turn out and there is always the chance that this endeavor is a scam I believe Cody had demonstrated his sincerity by setting up DefCAD.org and developing a 3D printable AR-15 lower. Due to those facts alone dropped them $50.00 because I believe in the cause. I, like Code, am a crypto-anarchist and believe a world where voluntary interactions, not coercive interactions, are the norm:

So what’s Wilson’s endgame? He describes himself as a “crypto-anarchist” who follows the teachings of 19th-century French anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

“I believe in revolution—not the capital-R ‘Revolution,’ but I’m all for the next thing,” Wilson said. “No one can imagine the end of neo-liberal democracy. I don’t believe in socialism from above, but socialism from below. It doesn’t matter what it is, the point is that it’s not imposed. It will be what it needs to look like. [Society will be] based not on coercion but cooperation—I’m a desperate romantic. If any of these things are possible, I don’t want to believe in anything else. I want to see if these are real and can work.”

His viewpoint isn’t that dissimilar from my own:

The revolution won’t be violent, it won’t involve fighting in the streets, it won’t involved people rising up and overthrowing the governments of the world. What the revolution will involve is the continuous decentralization of power. Technology will continue to evolve in a manner that empowers individuals to separate themselves from their rulers. Powerful corporations who have enjoyed protection from competition through the state’s decrees will lose their power as an ever growing number of people are able to replicate their goods from the safety of their own homes. Enforcing patents and regulations will become impossible. As people begin to fabricate needed goods themselves the large corporations and the state will bring in less wealth. People will no longer be forced to buy goods from politically connected corporations or pay sales tax to the state.

3D printers stand to be one of the greatest tools ever devise for stripping power from the handful of centralized entities that currently hold it. The state’s laws become more and more irrelevant as people become less and less reliant on it and its cronies. Gun control laws would be meaningless in a world where any individual can easily fabricate whatever firearm they want. Wealth raked in through sales tax would dwindle as individuals are able to make needed goods themselves. Couple 3D printer technology with anonymizing tools such as Tor and you have a world where information cannot be censored, tied to any specific individuals, and goods can be shipped from designers to customers free of the state’s watchful eye.

We will not achieve liberty, in the firearms community or in general, through political involvement. Begging those in power to cede their power is a foolhardy strategy that is doom from the start. When you involve yourself in politics you involve yourself in a system that was designed and can be redesigned at any time by those currently in power. Playing outside of the political system allows you to play by your own set or rules. Instead of begging those in power for liberty you can develop ways to entirely bypass their tyranny. If you want to ensure the state cannot ban firearms, magazines, or other related accessories it would behoove you to do whatever is in your power to ensure 3D printer technology advances.

When Seconds Count the Police Aren’t Showing Up

With the amount of time police have to dedicate to expropriating wealth from the general populace in the form of traffic citations, civil forfeiture laws, and rounding up slave labor for Federal Prison Industries and Corrections Corporation of America it’s not surprising that the time they have set aside for helping people has dwindled to almost nothing. In fact the police have become so inept at protecting the people of Oakland, California that the people have finally decided to help one another directly:

OAKLAND (KPIX 5) – Oakland’s crime problems have gotten so bad that some people aren’t even bothering to call the cops anymore; instead, they’re trying to solve and prevent crimes themselves.

KPIX 5 cameras caught up with a half dozen neighbors in East Oakland’s Arcadia Park neighborhood Monday as they walked the streets on the lookout for crime. The vigilance has never seemed more necessary than now; 25 homes in the neighborhood have been burglarized over the last two months alone.

In a neighborhood that has started to feel like the wild west, people have even started posting “wanted” signs.

People often get suckered into believing that the state provides protection for those living within its borders. The police aren’t required to provide protection and, in many parts of the world, people have learned that the police are almost useless when it comes to providing protection. In such cases the people end up having to find alternative methods to ensure the safety of their community. I believe we’ll see communities creating their own methods of providing protection as more police departments demonstrate their ineffectiveness.

Crypto-Anarchism Defeated Gun Control

Defense Distributed just released a video demonstrating their 3D printed AR-15 lower surviving 600 founds:

In my opinion this video demonstrates two important things: the utility of 3D prints and the fact that gun control is dead. When I said gun control is dead I don’t mean the state is going to stop passing laws, I mean that gun control laws are no longer relevant. Technology that allows an individual to easily construct a firearm in their home is now growing out of its infancy.Once a technology evolves beyond its infancy it cannot be stopped from continuing to grow. It is only a matter of time before all parts of a firearm can be produced on a 3D printer. In all likelihood it will only be a few years until affordable 3D printers capable of working with metal hit the market and enable the construction of parts such as bolts, barrels, and gas tubes.

Ironically gun control was killed by crypto-anarchism:

While it may be easy to paint Wilson [the developer of the lower] as a 2nd Amendment-touting conservative, the 25-year-old second-year law student at the Univeristy of Texas, Austin told Ars on Thursday that he’s actually a “crypto-anarchist.”

I say it’s ironic because crypto-anarchism has been pooh-poohed by statists and many anarchists alike. Criticisms against crypto-anarchism revolved around the claim that it only dealt with cyberspace and was unable to affect the real world. What its critics failed to predict was the fall of the barriers separating cyberspace from the real world. 3D printers, in my opinion, were the tool that destroyed the last major barrier. With the invention of 3D printing it became possible to create real world objects based on designs created and distributed online. Suddenly the fabrication of goods is no longer relegated to a handful of individuals. Anybody with a 3D printer, material to feed the printer, a computer, and an Internet connection can download and fabricate a mind boggling number of goods. As the technology matures it will likely become common for basic goods to be replicated in homes instead of factories.

Social anarchists believed one day a worker revolution would occur. In their imagination they believed workers around the world, who finally became sick and tired of capitalist conditions, would rise up, seize the means of production, and usher in a world free of oppression. Things haven’t worked out that way and, if current technology trends are any indicator, things will not work out that way. The revolution won’t be violent, it won’t involve fighting in the streets, it won’t involved people rising up and overthrowing the governments of the world. What the revolution will involve is the continuous decentralization of power. Technology will continue to evolve in a manner that empowers individuals to separate themselves from their rulers. Powerful corporations who have enjoyed protection from competition through the state’s decrees will lose their power as an ever growing number of people are able to replicate their goods from the safety of their own homes. Enforcing patents and regulations will become impossible. As people begin to fabricate needed goods themselves the large corporations and the state will bring in less wealth. People will no longer be forced to buy goods from politically connected corporations or pay sales tax to the state.

The world is changing in a way that power is becoming more decentralized. Eventually, if technological trends continue, the concept of centralized power will be all but extinct.

Demonstrating the Importance of Tor

I’ve discussed the importance of Tor in fighting erroneous legislation but haven’t had any excellent demonstrations of Tor’s effectiveness in fighting the state’s continuous Internet power grabs. Russia has given me a perfect demonstration of the importance Tor holds:

A Russian law passed in November 2012 aimed at blacklisting sites promoting drug use has apparently just blocked the popular drug education website Erowid.org for certain users in the country according to a post on Reddit. A Russian government site listing prohibited sites shows that Erowid was added to the register earlier this month and was blocked on February 23. Russian user GreatfulListener says it is only “a matter of time” before the block affects more Russian internet service providers.

Erowid remains available in Russia via the Tor network. In fact, the Russian Tor community has undergone significant growth over the last year. RAMP, the Russian Anonymous MarketPlace, is now providing a leading Russian alternative to the English-speaking Silk Road.

Russia has begun blocking websites related to drug use. If history teaches us anything it’s that Russia will likely increase its censorship powers in the coming years. Fortunately the blocked site, Erowid, can still be accessed by Russians through Tor. Although I primarily discuss hidden services Tor is also very important in bypassing censorship of websites outside of the Tor network. Many countries block access to websites deemed undesirable but Tor works by sending traffic through exit nodes that are located in different countries, countries where the site being access may not be blocked.

The remainder of the article discusses the Russian Anonymous Marketplace (RAMP), a hidden service where Russians can perform anonymous transactions with Bitcoins. It’s akin to Silk Road, which I’ve discussed before. RAMP, like Silk Road, demonstrate that markets cannot be suppressed and that people will always find ways around state prohibitions. Today Tor and Bitcoins are integral tools for individuals wanting to avoid state prohibitions and censorship, which is why I believe it’s important to ensure these technologies become more widespread.

Using a Raspberry Pi as a Tor Relay

I’ve been discussing Tor more frequently because I foresee a day when laws such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) force everybody wanting to communicate online anonymously to seek shelter in fully encrypted and anonymized networks. In addition the that Internet related laws are slowing making it so only people who receive a stamp of approval from state regulators will be allowed to legally post material online. In fact the United States government has already used its influence to take down websites it found undesirable and there is no reason to believe such actions won’t continue.

Many people are turned off by Tor because it is relatively slow. The Tor network’s bandwidth relies on relay nodes, which all traffic is transmitted through. What is needed to speed up the Tor network are more fast relay nodes. To this end I’ve begun investigating the use of Raspberry Pis as Tor relay nodes. For those who are unfamiliar with the Raspberry Pi it is a credit card sized ARM-based Linux computer. Two models are available, a $25.00 model and a $35.00 model. As you can see the device is dirt cheap, based on a processor that Tor has been ported to, and, in the case of the $35.00 model, has a built-in Ethernet port. All of these features make for an ideal platform on which to run a Tor relay.

I ordered a $35.00 model Raspberry Pi (although I paid slightly more since they are in very short supply at the moment) Friday and received it Monday. After installing Rasbian, the Debian-based Linux distribution optimized for the Raspberry Pi, onto an SD card I had lying around I plugged my little device into my television and booted it up. Installing Tor on the device was easy, I just had to enter the command sudo apt-get install tor and wait for a minute or so (since the device uses an SD card for storage write operations can be kind of slow). After the short wait I had Tor up and running and merely had to edit the torrc file to enable it as a relay node, open port 9001 on my firewall, and restart the Tor service. My little relay now appears on the Tor Metrics Portal and has traffic routing through it. For now I’ve throttled the relay to use 1Mbps normally and allow 1.5Mbps burst speeds. I plan to increase the bandwidth bit by bit until the relay begins to interfere with my overall network speeds (I use my network for other services including serving this website and I don’t want the relay to interfere with those).

If this project pans out I believe it will offer an effective way to increase the overall bandwidth of the Tor network. I know several people who would like to run a Tor relay but lack the technical expertise to set one up. Having a cheap Tor relay appliance, which is possible by utilizing embedded platforms likes the Raspberry Pi, would give those people an option to help increase the network’s bandwidth and, by so doing, make the network more appealing. Someday, if the Tor network becomes fast enough, a bulk of Internet traffic could seek refuge from today’s tyrannical states in the encrypted and anonymized heaven it offers. Should that happen there is little states could do to censor people online.

I’ll close by saying that the future we live into today is amazing. You can now pick up a fully capable computer for $35.00. That is something I never expected to say just a few short years ago.

Bypassing Minnesota’s Alcohol Laws

The history of alcohol laws in Minnesota can best be described as asinine. If you look at the Minnesota Department of Health’s website on alcohol laws you’ll find such gems requiring all alcohol advertisements be approved by the Commissioner of Public Safety and requiring all kegs to be registered. One of the other asinine laws is a prohibition against selling alcohol on Sundays (unless you’re a bar or restaurant). Attempts to repeal the prohibition have been tried numerous times but have continued to fail. Four Firkins, a specialty beer store in Minnetonka, is moving ahead with the latest attempt to strike the prohibition from the books:

Jason Alvey, who runs specialty beer and liquor store The Four Firkens, will try to persuade lawmakers to let he and other liquor stores open on Sundays.

Alvey argues the ban on Sunday sales is outdated and should be repealed.

However, not everyone agrees.

The Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association, along with other liquor store owners, say opening on Sundays would simply pull sales from other days and increase operating costs.

Alvey disagrees and says those who oppose Sunday sales don’t have to open seven days a week if a bill, sponsored by Senator Jeremy Miller, becomes law and repeals the ban. Instead, Alvey says liquor store owners could open on Sundays, reap financial rewards, and close on Mondays when he says sales are generally much slower.

The difficulty of getting the prohibition removed has been Minnesota’s own liquor lobby. As it currently stands most liquor store owners enjoy the prohibition against selling their goods on Sunday because it allows them to reduce their operating costs by not being open one day out of the week without having to suffer consequences of their competition being open on that day.

In addition to this constantly repeating battle another political issue involving alcohol has arrive, a bill that would increase the taxes placed on alcohol sales. Reading the bill will bring to light the fact that the tax increases would be tremendous, which is why I doubt the bill will pass in its current form. In all likelihood the bill is meant to be a “worse option” and a “better option” will be presented after some revisions. By doing this the populace of Minnesota are less likely to resist the increase because they will feel as though they got off lucky.

Being a practical man I wish to present a method that can be used to bypass both laws, along with every other Minnesota law regarding the sale of alcohol. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ve likely guessed that the solution I’m going to present is agorist in nature, and you would be correct. The so-called black market can once again provide a solution to tyranny and it only requires producers of desired goods who are willing to ignore the state’s decrees. Are you a person who is willing to brew beer and/or distill liquor illegally? Are you willing to also sell your brewed beer and/or distilled liquor on Sunday? Congratulations, you are the solution! Agorist alcohol stands to be much cheaper since taxes are not applied to the price tag. On top of that agorist brewers and distillers can enjoy the freedom of selling their goods anytime they please. To make things even better no begging the state for permits is required.

Instead of begging the state to allow the sale of alcohol on Sunday or not increase the taxes on alcohol sales as much as they’re currently planning the people of Minnesota can simply start producing alcohol outside of the state’s law. In that way Minnesotans can enjoy cheaper alcohol that is available every day of the week. Furthermore agorist alcohol doesn’t contribute money to the state, which is actively suppressing competition in the alcohol market and making everybody pay a higher price. An added benefit is the fact that alcohol, being a cheap form of entertainment, has traditionally done well during times of economic hardship and therefore stands to make current producers a good amount of profit.

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.