Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

FBI Having Troubles Seizing Dread Pirate Roberts’ Bitcoin Stash

This story demonstrates one of the features I most like about Bitcoin:

In order to transfer Bitcoins out of a “wallet”, the name for the digital file which contains the encrypted information necessary to spend the currency, users need to know that wallet’s password or “private key”.

According to Forbes’ Kashmir Hill, that hurdle is causing the FBI difficulty.

“The FBI has not been able to get to Ulbricht’s personal Bitcoin yet,” wrote Hill. An FBI spokesperson said to Hill that the “$80m worth” that Ulbricht had “was held separately and is encrypted”. At current exchange rates, that represents slightly more than 5% of all bitcoins in circulation.

It looks like Bitcoin is pretty secure against state seizure. Mind you, that doesn’t do Mr. Ulbricht much good as he’s currently being held in a cage. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) inability to take Ulbricht’s supposed $80 million worth of Bitcoin is good news for other people facing state theft.

Think about countries such as Greece and Spain that are seizing personal fortunes and freezing assets in bank accounts. If you want to conceal your personal wealth from the state money grabbers converting it to Bitcoin seems like a pretty good option. Here in the United States things are worse. Your wealth can be stolen under civil forfeiture laws if a police officer simply suspects that wealth is tied to a drug-related crime. Under civil forfeiture laws the burden of proving any wealth isn’t tied to a drug crime is on the accused. Bitcoin may be an effective defense against civil forfeiture laws and a dying state’s last ditch attempt to raise money by stealing directly from the bank accounts of citizens.

Admittedly, Bitcoin fluctuations can be pretty wild. But everything has its risks. You risk losing wealth if Bitcoin’s exchange rate drops but you risk losing wealth if you keep cash on hand or in a bank account. I recommend divesting wealth. While divestment doesn’t protect all of your wealth it stands a good chance of losing everything if the one protection strategy you’ve chosen fails.

The Beauty of Rebellion

Seeing outright rebellion in the United States is a beautiful thing. The recent government “shutdown” has cause headaches for many vacation goers. The government decided that the best way to punish us for its inability to get along was to shutdown anything that may be used by the average American. As it turns out, the legitimacy of this decision isn’t being recognized by some of those very Americans:

It turns out families on vacation are enjoying America’s national parks even without the government’s blessing. Families are throwing orange cones aside at Mount Rushmore, ignoring barricades at Zion National Park and taking grinning selfies next to signs in the Badlands announcing the National Park Service facility is closed. Twitter and Instagram give testament to determined dads driving straight over traffic cones or throwing them aside to clear the way for the family vacations they’ve been planning long before a government shutdown was announced. Be safe, you pioneers, and give a shout-out to the park rangers, who are one genre of government worker we know must be truly missing their offices this week.

It’s nice to see people giving the state a giant middle finger. There are no legitimate reasons for the state to shutdown these parks. Vacation goers tend to enjoy them without the few services provided by state employees. Looking at Mount Rushmore, for example, requires no work whatsoever on the state’s behalf. Shutting down the monument was nothing more than a spiteful swipe at the American people. I think members of both parties believe that if they beat us long enough we’ll demand the other party cut their shit out and approve a bill.

Government Shutdown Part IX

I have been living in the absence of government for so long that I can barely remember what law and order looks like. Life has been made much easier by the rail gun and killbot I acquired. Having a killbot in my party has worked wonders. The few gang members that have approached have either fled in terror or were gunned down in seconds. I’ve had no more encounters with killbots. Checking the log files on my killbot my suspicious were proven correct: most of the killbots headed west. Only a few stringers were sent in other directions to scout. From my understanding it appears as though several teams of killbots have been unleashed in the Twin Cities area. Teams unleashed on the extremities are most likely herding people into the center, where the killbots will eventually converge to finish their purge. Once the purge is completed the area will be free for corporate takeover.

My journey took me to the Twins Stadium, which is situations on the main bike trail into the Warehouse District. What I saw there made my blood freeze. The stadium has been turned into a real-life Thunderdome. Competitors are thrown into the arena and only the survivor is allowed to leave. Gangs roam Minneapolis looking for people to kidnap and toss into the arena. Thanks to my killbot none of them have tried to make me part of their reindeer games. The only collection van I saw went up in smoke as my killbot sent a rail gun slug through it. Who knew that rail gun slugs came in incendiary form?

The streets in the warehouse district are an orgy of death. Bodies are littered everywhere. The stench is almost unbearable. One of the biggest threats comes not from gangs but from crumbling infrastructures. Everywhere you go there are downed power lines, stop lights, and street lights. Buildings have begun to crumble, making travel in the proximity of the tall warehouses dangerous. The killbot stays close to me, likely attempting to take the brunt of any falling debris. I made my way east, down Washington Avenue. There doesn’t appear to be any safe side streets to travel so I’m keeping with the main arteries to increase my speed, and give my killbot plenty of room to spot and eliminate potential threats. As I made my way to the Hennepin Hilton I could see that the Hennepin Avenue and Central Avenue bridges collapsed. No doubt this occurred after safety inspections were stopped by the shuttered government. We learned our lesson about the need for government oversight of bridges when the 35W bridge did a belly flop into the Mississippi. In the distance I could see that the Stone Arch bridge was still standing, which may be important if I have to make an escape across the river.

As I traveled up 4th Avenue I expected to see less chaos. The police would have barricaded the area and defended everybody who made it to their little island of law and order, right? Not so much. My worst fear was realized as I approached the Hennepin County Government Center. The Hennepin Country Sheriff looked like a bombed out building from World War II. Smoking shells of police cruisers blocked off 4th Avenue at 4th Street. Bodies of police officers and gang members littered the proximity of the barricade. It seemed that the badges had prevented the officers from becoming raging lunatics but the number of civilians was too great for them.

I took fire as I pushed based the barricade. Really bad snipers had taken up roosts in the Government Center Parking Garage. They must have had ammunition to spare because they were trying the strategy of missing fast enough to kill. As bullets ricocheted around me, the killbot identified the really bad snipers’ positions and unleashed a hail of machine gun fire. Shortly afterward the sniper fire ceased. If there were any survivors they decided to run and hide.

No longer distracted by gun fire I took note of the surrounding area. The Government Plaza was riddled with impaled bodies. For a moment I thought Vlad the Impaler had risen from the dead and taken residence in the Government Center. Many of the impaled were members of Minneapolis and Hennepin County’s finest. Signs were strung around the plaza that read “Die pigs!”, “Fuck the police!”, and other derogatory remarks aimed at our public servants. The virtuous were swarmed by the vile. I considered entering the police station but decided the threat of unknown assailants was too great. The Hennepin Hilton, likewise, posed too great a threat to enter. On the outside it appeared to be mostly intact but on the inside things were likely bad. Without the government to keep the prisoners in line they likely revolted, killed all the police, and escaped into Minneapolis. A few probably stayed inside the prison, claiming it as their kingdom in this land of the damned. I could see fire being exchanged from the upper floors of a couple of skyscrapers. Now that the NFA was no longer being enforce the gangs have acquired rocket launchers. Rockets fly between the tower and exploded glass, metal, and bodies outward.

Continuing forward was a bad idea. I doubted the killbot could stand up to rocket fire and without it I would likely perish as well. To the west was the Twins Stadium, a horror I had no interest in seeing again. East would take me to the Metrodome, which was likely running more gladiatorial-style fights. South appeared to be the only direct that wouldn’t bring immediate death. I could cross the Stone Arch bridge and face whatever horrors have befallen Nordeast Minneapolis.

Government Shutdown Part VIII

I apologize for not getting updating my journal earlier. One casualty of the government shutdown I hadn’t expected was the wireless spectrum. Without the FCC to protect our wireless spectrum every jackass with the ability to emit wireless signals has been jamming FCC licensed users. Even HAM radio is unusable without the oversight traditionally offered by the government. I was fortunate to find a place with a physical Ethernet connection so I could update all of you outside of the United States on our current crisis.

My last journal entry ended when I found a place to race in an abandoned home near Cedar Lake. The night passed uneventfully, except for the sounds of screaming that are ever present in this lawless world. It appears that the gangs in this area have been wiped out by the killbots. The killbots seem to work on an exterminate and leave pattern. They enter an area, kill everybody in that area, and move onto the next area. From what I can tell the majority of killbots are moving west. If I had hunkered down instead of escape I would have eventually been killed when the killbots swept my area.

I awakened at sunrise to continue my journey into Minneapolis. Breakfast consisted of a few nonperishable items that I scrounged from the home. It wasn’t delicious but it extended the food supply I was already carrying. Believing the killbots had moved on I decided to return to the derailed train. My goal was to disassemble the two destroyed killbots in the hopes of finding some kind of exploitable weakness. Fortune shined upon me. While both of the killbots were disabled, one still had a functioning computer I was able to jack into (take that “survivalists” who never recommend placing a laptop into a bug out bag). After analyzing the software I was able to determine that the defense contracts wrote the code in a hurry. There were a lot of sloppy mistakes and several unreadable Perl (but I repeat myself) scripts running several important functions. Most importantly I was able to find the code that identified killbots to one another. Inside the killbot was a small transmitter that served as an IFF (identification friendly or foe for those of you who don’t operate in fields of operation). I was able to salvage the IFF and wire it to one of my spare flashlight batteries. With this IFF in pocket I should identify as a friendly to any roaming killbots. Sadly, the IFF in the other killbot was damaged in the exchange of fire so I had no viable backup. However, I did obtain something of greatly value from the second killbot, a portable rail gun. In their hurry to get the killbots online before the government started operating again, the defense contractors mounted weapons made for humans on their killing machines. All one needs to do is hit the release mechanism. The killbot also had a good quantity of ammo for the rail gun so I was in business.

Carrying a .308 and a rail gun would prove impossible so I tied my reliable companion to the rack on my bike. There was no way of knowing how reliable the hastily made rail gun would be so I didn’t want to best my life on it. On the other hand, the .308 was worthless against killbots so I wanted the firepower the rail gun gave me.

Carrying my bike over train wreckage I continued by journey north. After clearing the field of wreckage I was able to continue biking down the trail. As expected, without the government to keep the trail in tiptop condition, the ride was rough. Within minutes I extended to the meadow. The meadow gave me good line of sight of the surrounding area. To the east I could see the Minneapolis skyline. Like everything else the grand skyscrapers of the city were ablaze. I began to doubt that any government survived in the city but had no other plan of action so I continued my journey. Even though the highways were in such disrepair they hadn’t collapsed yet. Not having to traverse collapsed highways sped my journey up considerably.

As I passed under 94 my heart stopped at the sight of another killbot. Unslinging the rail gun as I hit the dirt I was astonished that the thing hadn’t opened fire by the time I was up on my knee and aiming the rail gun at the walking monstrosity. It was looking right at me so I knew I saw me. It appeared as though the IFF I salvaged out of the fallen killbot worked. Getting ballsy, I walked up to the killbot. It made no effort to attack me. Deciding to leave well enough alone I got back on my bike and began heading towards Target Field. That’s when the fucking killbot started following me. When I moved it moved, when I stopped it stopped. Remembering that these things work in teams I assumed that the previously independent killbot was trying to join up with me. The ramifications of this were dire. What if failure to communicate with it lead to it killing my ass? It would almost certainly gun down anybody else who crossed my path. I had to disable it before continuing. It didn’t try to stop me from plugging my laptop into its computer. That’s when the idea dawned on me, why disable the killbot when I could reprogram it? Having a companion would make my life easier. The killbot obviously possessed skills I lacked, which is always important when building a party in an RPG. My intelligence trait was far in excess of its but its strength, perception, and speed were in excess of mine. Together we may be able to survive the lawless United States.

I lead the killbot off of the beaten path. Part of me wanted to disable it while I reprogrammed it to avoid it automatically firing on any person passing through. On the other hand, I wanted the thing online in case any gang members decided to roll through. Too damn bad for anybody else coming down the trail. It took me the rest of the day and most of the night to reprogram the killbot. Inside the code I found a function called escortMode. As it turns out, the killbot could be commanded to protect a designated target. I decided to designate myself as the designated protected person. To complete the designation the killbot needed to scan me. Several minutes passed as it scanned my outline, infrared profile, face, hair color, eye color, skin color, and fingerprints. How far would its protection go? Would it fire on a killbot that was trying to kill me? I had no way of knowing but the IFF in my pocket would almost certainly prevent any killbots from attacking me.

By the time I finished everything up it was pitch black out. All of the smoke from the burning buildings obscured the moon and stars. I imagine it is how the sky always looked before the EPA stepped in and regulated the amount of pollutants that could be emitted into the atmosphere. I found a small cubby-hole to rest in. With the killbot watching over me and the IFF in my pocket I wasn’t too concerned about any roving gang members or other killbots icing me in my sleep.

I awoke again at sunrise. The killbot was still standing there scanning the area for any potential threats. After a breakfast consisting of dehydrated ham I finished up a little programming on the killbot. Killbots have Wi-Fi cards in them. I assume they use them to scan for Wi-Fi signals, which is usually a good indication that humans are around. With a little work I was able to use it to connect to my phone. Even with the unregulated mess that was the wireless spectrum, I was able to get a connection to the killbot’s Wi-Fi interface so long as I was within a few feat. Opening an SSH connection (the default user name and password were both “root”, I changed them quickly) I was able to rely commands to the killbot.

With my new metal companion I continued moving into Minneapolis.

Private Solutions to State Failures

“Without the government who will [fill in the blank]?” It’s a question anti-statists face frequently. People seem to lack the imagination necessary to come up with any ideas of who would build roads, teach children, or protect people in the absence of government (and I want to know who is building roads, teaching children, and protecting people in the presence of government). As we find more governments collapsing we are getting an opportunity to see who can provide the services that were formerly monopolized by the governments. One many has developed a potential alternative to the state’s first responder services:

What if you could report emergencies anywhere, have faster response times, and strengthen local communities, all without spending thousands of dollars or involving bureaucrats?

We are seeing sluggish emergency response times in many big cities around the United States, and in parts of Detroit and Chicago you’d be lucky if someone came at all, even hours later. This is the problem with having a one-size-fits-all monopoly on emergency services. Sure, the system works pretty well, but when it has problems it can be a matter of life and death. And those problems don’t cause any firm to lose profits when they drop the ball. Tax money still fills the agency’s coffers, rewarding incompetence. (In economics we call this a soft budget constraint.)

Cody Drummond at Peacekeeper is rethinking defense and emergency response with a new app he is developing. His focus? Bring it local and use something you already carry to alert those around you to a problem. In those critical first moments during a crisis, you can alert those closest to you and get the help you need faster.

This system has the potential of replacing lengthy police response times (if they respond at all) with quick response from members of your community. It could also save lives if medical emergencies can be attended to quickly by any medical personnel in your community, as opposed to waiting for an ambulance to arrive from a far away hospital. What makes solutions like this even more appealing is that they don’t stop working just because the government has shutdown. One of the biggest problems with allowing governments to monopolize services is that those services cease being available in the event of a budget cut or shutdown.

Will Mr. Drummond’s solution work? Only time will tell. But we know that state controlled police don’t work (unless you want your dog euthanized) so an alternative must be found. Even if Mr. Drummond’s solution doesn’t work out I will tip my hat to him for trying.

The National Debt

During this entire “shutdown” drama one topic continues to be brought up again and again: the national debt. Fiscally conservative circles are giving the Republicans a lot of credit for refusing to pass a budget that funds the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Their reason for this is a belief that funding the ACA will increase the national debt even further, which is true (since the United States is maintaining a deficit any additional spending will increase the national debt). On principle I agree that further increasing the national debt is a bad idea. Practically speak, decreasing the national debt at this point is meaningless.

The national debt is hovering close to $17 trillion. At this point the United States is insolvent. Putting this into perspective, this national has already reach the point many fiscally irresponsible individuals reach when they received a credit card with a high spending limit. The amount of outstanding credit exceeds the debtor’s ability to repay. No matter what the federal government does it will never be able to repay $17 trillion.

One must now ask whether or not attempts to curtail the national debt are meaningful. Honestly, I don’t think they are. At this point the government might as well buy anything and everything it can. Anything of value (that is to say, anything that isn’t perishable) should be transferred to another entity to protect it from seizure when the time comes to declare bankruptcy. If you’ve already overextended your credit limit you might as well go for broke and get everything you can.

I’m of the mindset that there is nothing that can be done to prevent the sinking of the Titanic. Instead, I’m focusing my time on getting to the life boat, loading as many people as I can onto the life boat, and getting the life boat as far away from the sinking ship as possible. Going below deck and trying to weld patches onto the gigantic hole of national debt is futile.

By Shuttering Silk Road the Government Helped Escalate Violent Crime

As mentioned earlier today, the state has finally shuttered the online “black” market hidden service known as Silk Road. In so doing the state has also helped escalate violent crime. How? By shuttering one of the most effective ways of reducing violent crime: a hidden service that allowed individuals to buy illicit substances without physical interaction.

Due to its illegal nature the drug market is ripe with violence. The more virtuous tend to avoid manufacturing, selling, or buy verboten drugs because they would rather not get on the wrong side of the state. This leaves individuals who, for the most part, have few quarrels with using violence. Since the more violent make up a bulk of the manufacturers and sellers of verboten drugs prospective buyers end up having to deal with nefarious individuals.

Silk Road offered protection for manufacturers, buyers, and sellers. By maintaining each person’s anonymity, Silk Road allowed otherwise scared manufacturers and sellers to enter the market. With the veil of anonymity in place the threat of state violence is reduced. Furthermore, since manufacturers and sellers don’t know who each other are they cannot use violence in an attempt to establish a monopoly. Buyers, also enjoying the layer of anonymity between themselves and their suppliers, didn’t have to physically go to pick up the drugs, which reduced their potential exposure to both state and seller violence. By raising a barrier between the identities of manufacturers, buys, sellers, and the state Silk Road stood a good chance of making the illegal drug market a much safer place.

By shutting Silk Road down the state actually helped violence proliferate. This is why I never take the claim that the state is necessary to protect the people. Everything it does seems to revolve around increasing the amount of violence in our society.

More to Come

I had a late night so I didn’t manage to get any new posts up. A lot has happened since I wrote my posts for yesterday though. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) claims to have Dread Pirate Roberts in custody:

The FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht, known as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings. Federal prosecutors charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to a court filing.

As of right now Silk Road remains offline so Mr. Ulbricht may very well be the actual Dread Pirate Roberts. Reading through the complaint [PDF] explains how the FBI was able to nab him. Tor wasn’t exploited as far as we know, Mr. Ulbricht simply fucked up by failing to separate his “legitimate” life and his secure life. I will write about this in more detail later. For now I urge you to read through the complaint because there are many things we, as online denizens, can learn from Dread Pirate Roberts’ mistakes.

The Peer-to-Peer Economy

Technology has allows us, as a society, to move further away from centralization. Now that we are able to communicate with anybody in the world, perform pseudonymous transactions, and ship products we can more easily avoid the crushing state and its regulatory bodies. This is an excellent article that discusses how activists have begun to remove themselves from the system and create their own communities:

The Occupy Movement recently celebrated its second anniversary with very little fanfare leaving many to wonder where all the activists went. It seems they, and many anti-establishment activists, are vacating the system rather than occupying it.

Progressives may call it the “sharing economy” while Libertarians may refer to it as Agorism – a “society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging in a manner with aspects of peaceful revolution.”

Whatever it’s called, together, they’re opting out of the current socioeconomic matrix and creating a new alternative economy where trading occurs peer-to-peer and increasingly without government-issued currency.

It’s a space where mutual trade occurs without burdensome taxes, regulations, or licenses. Simply put, it’s an underground black market enabled by the Internet and regulated by social feedback mechanisms — and it’s growing exponentially.

As I progress down the path of anti-statism it has become more apparent to me that eliminating the state isn’t a winning strategy. Instead we need to create “underground” communities that exist within the state. If we want to win against the state we must make a community that people prefer over the one controlled by the state. When enough people move into the “underground” communities the state with die without the need for civil war.

Government Shutdown Part VII

My trip around Cedar Lake brought me to the neighborhood that borders the west bank. I’m sure it was a nice place to live at one time but now it looks like Berlin at the end of World War II. Bodies were scattered all over streets and lawns. Several of the bodies belonged to gang members, which meant the killbots were likely operating in the area. I hoped that they had swept through the area and continued moving west. If any killbots lingered my survival would be unlikely. My careful movements through the neighborhood came at a cost: it was now night and I was nowhere near Minneapolis.

I came across a home that wasn’t too badly damaged and decided to let myself in. The door was already kicked in so I didn’t need to make use of my lockpicks. As I entered the home I tried to remain silent. My efforts were hampered by the crunch of broken glass that littered the floor. Nobody seemed to take notice though and I continued my sweep of the house. After I was sure nobody else was inside I chose a bedroom in the basement, shut the door, barricaded it with furniture, and fell down on the bed. In the silence I thought I could hear screaming in the distance but I may have been hearing things. Perhaps I would find some government in the morning.