Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Public-Private Partnerships

When I first tell people I’m a libertarian their reaction is often to accuse me of being a corporate shill. Many people believe there is some separate between corporations and governments. Depending on what side of the political spectrum they fall on corporations are entirely good and governments are entirely evil or vice versa. In reality corporations and governments depend on one another, which is why governments created the idea of limited legal liability, what we call incorporation, in the first place.

Today corporations and governments work hand in hand. I like to refer to this relationship as a private-public partnership. They’re extremely common and almost always bad for you and me. Case in point, the private-public partnership that has greatly expanded the surveillance state:

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that U.S. telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed NSA documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the NSA access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to trillions of e-mails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters.

Establishing a massive surveillance state from scratch is expensive so the National Security Agency (NSA) tries to partner with companies that already have access to data. Back in 2006 we learned that AT&T was operating an interception facility for the NSA so it shouldn’t surprise anybody to see that partnership has expanded. The NSA doesn’t want to foot the expense of intercepting traffic and AT&T is more than happy to sell data that crosses its lines to the NSA.

A big issue here is that the government, with its monopoly on justice, can create separate rules for itself and private entities. This is a legal reality few people spend enough time considering. While the state may pass a law that prevents it from collecting data on domestic individuals to make the commoners feel good it won’t write a rule preventing private entities from doing the same. Through these separate rule systems the state can still access data through private corporations and be honest when claiming it isn’t collecting the data. And since the state pays well these corporations are more than happy to collect and sell the data.

You Have Something To Hide Even If you Don’t Do Anything Illegal

The federal government’s non-military networks are a mess, which is why attackers have been focusing their efforts on hacking them. One of the agencies bitten in the ass was the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Personal information for 100,000 people was leaked through one of the IRS’s online services. I’m sorry, did I say 100,000? I meant 334,000:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A computer breach at the IRS in which thieves stole tax information from thousands of taxpayers is much bigger than the agency originally disclosed.

An additional 220,000 potential victims had information stolen from an IRS website as part of a sophisticated scheme to use stolen identities to claim fraudulent tax refunds, the IRS said Monday. The revelation more than doubles the total number of potential victims, to 334,000.

The breach also started earlier than investigators initially thought. The tax agency first disclosed the breach in May.

The thieves accessed a system called “Get Transcript,” where taxpayers can get tax returns and other filings from previous years. In order to access the information, the thieves cleared a security screen that required knowledge about the taxpayer, including Social Security number, date of birth, tax filing status and street address, the IRS said.

We again see why even if you have nothing to hide you have plenty to worry about. You may not have done anything wrong, although that’s highly improbable, but any data collected on you can easily wind up in the wrong hands. In this case Social Security numbers, birth dates, street addresses, and tax filing statuses for 334,000 people ended up in unknown hands. Had that data not been collected in the first place it wouldn’t have been available to steal.

Cat And Mouse Game

Since they want to revolutionize the world you would think libertarians would be hard to beat down. But so many of them, at least in my experience, are willing to roll over if the alternative requires too much work. Computer security is one of those things that tend to require too much work for the average libertarian.

Libertarianism is about wrestling power away from the state. One way of doing this is exploiting economics. The more resources you can make the state misallocate the less it will available for maintaining and expanding its power. That being the case cryptography should be every libertairans best friend. Cryptography, even when it’s not entirely effective, still forces the state to allocate more resources into its surveillance apparatus. Even data secured with weak cryptography requires more effort to snoop than plaintext data. When you start using effective cryptography the amount of resources you force the state to invest increased greatly.

Learning how to use cryptographic tools requires quite a bit of initial effort. Instead of investing their time into learning these tools a lot of libertarians invest their time in creating excuses to justify not learning these tools. One of the excuses I hear frequently is that current cryptographic tools will be broken in a few years anyways.

It’s certainly possible but that’s not an excuse. Cryptography is a cat and mouse game. As cryptographic tools improve the tools used to break them need to improve and as those tools improve cryptographic tools need to improve again. In keeping with the theme I established above the key to this cycle is that the tools to break cryptography need to improve as cryptography improves. In other words adopting better cryptography forces the state to allocate more of its resources into improving its tools to break cryptography. Using effective cryptography today forces the state to invest resources today. If you don’t use it the state doesn’t have to invest resources to break it and therefore has more resources to solidify its power further.

Libertarians have to accept the fact that they’re in a big cat and mouse game anyways. As libertarians work to seize power from the state the state develops new ways to maintain its power. Surveillance is one way it maintains its power and effective cryptography turns it into a cat and mouse game instead of a mouse and mousetrap game. So stop making excuses and start learning about these tools.

The EPA Investigated Itself And Found It Did Nothing Wrong

After dumping millions of gallons of polluted mining water into a clean river the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) performed a quick investigation and decided it won’t suffer any punishment:

DENVER — Unlike BP, which was fined $5.5 billion for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the EPA will pay nothing in fines for unleashing the Animas River spill.

“Sovereign immunity. The government doesn’t fine itself,” said Thomas L. Sansonetti, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s division of environment and natural resources.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and other lawmakers have called on the EPA to hold itself to the same standards as it would a private company in the aftermath of Wednesday’s accident, in which an EPA-led crew uncorked a 3 million-gallon spill of orange wastewater from the abandoned Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.

However, “The EPA does not fine itself the way that you would fine an outside company like BP,” said Mr. Sansonetti, who served from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush.

OK, I was joking about it performing an investigation. But this harkens back to what I said yesterday. Depending on the state to protect the environment is foolhardy because it has no incentive to actually protect the environment. When a company violates its regulations it merely demands a piece of the action in the form of fines. And when it violates its own regulations is declares “sovereign immunity,” just like a “sovereign citizen” would, and says it may pay the cost of cleanup and compensation for damages but only if Congress appropriates money for it:

What the EPA can be expected to cover is the cost of the cleanup and compensation for the damage caused, funding that would have to be appropriated by Congress, meaning that the taxpayers will foot the bill.

“That’s going to have to be appropriated because that sort of thing is not included in the EPA’s budget,” said Mr. Sansonetti, now a Denver attorney.

Not only will the agency go unpunished but it won’t even have to pay the costs out of its budget! Consider this fact what motivation does the EPA have to protect the environment? It seems like the agency wins whenever the environment is polluted. If a private entity pollutes a river the EPA enjoys a cash payment and if it pollutes a river it does nothing unless it receives additional money from Congress to fix its fuck up.

Go ahead statists, explain to me how the state is necessary to protect the environment after this fiasco. I could use a good laugh.

Seattle City Council Used Fear To Enrich Themselves

Gun violence is one of those phrases spoken by politicians who want to drum up fear in the general public. Although it’s no different than any other form of violence the idea of gun violence tends to be scarier to most people than, say, knife violence (which is kind of strange because I’d far prefer to be shot than stabbed) so it lends itself better expanding the surveillance state. The Seattle City Council took things a step further though. Instead of using gun violence as an excuse to expand the surveillance state it used it to directly enrich itself:

The Seattle City Council gave its unanimous approval Monday afternoon to a plan that slaps a $25 tax on each gun sale and 5 cents on each bullet sold in the city limits.

The proposal, introduced last month by Council President Tim Burgess, is billed as the city’s solution to the $17 million in medical costs from 253 gunshot victims at Harborview Medical Center last year, which Seattle underwrites with public funds.

How will this new tax solve the problem of gun violence? It won’t because it doesn’t impact people who are actually committing acts of violence with firearms (you know, the ones who generally acquire their firearms through theft). The only people this tax will impact are non-violent gun owners who aren’t part of the problem. In fact this tax doesn’t even address the root of the city’s $17 million medical bill, which is violence. But this tax will rake in more cash for the city government, which is the point. After all, how else will the City Council vote itself a raise if it’s not finding new revenue sources?

Once again we get to witness the lie of government solutions. Governments have no motivation to fix problems because the existence of problems allows it to further cement its power and enrich its members.

Without Government Who Would Pollute The Rivers

I’ve been told the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the lone barrier that stands between us and the entire country being turned into an uninhabitable wasteland by greedy corporations that want to fill our lakes and rivers with industrial waste. But I’ve also been told that socialism can work so I don’t put a lot of weight into what others have told me. The EPA, as with most government agencies, doesn’t really do what its name implies. It doesn’t protect the environment so much as licenses pollution. When somebody is dumping waste into a body of water the EPA steps in and demands a little piece of the action in exchange for looking the other way. And if nobody is polluting a body of water the EPA steps in and does it:

DURANGO — A spill that sent 1 million gallons of wastewater from an abandoned mine into the Animas River, turning the river orange, set off warnings Thursday that contaminants threaten water quality for those downstream.

The Environmental Protection Agency confirmed it triggered the spill while using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at the Gold King Mine, north of Silverton.

I know somebody reading this will feel the need to point out that the EPA didn’t do this on purpose, which I’m sure is true. That’s not the point. The point is the lack of recourse. When an individual or corporation dumps waste into a body of water people usually sic the EPA on them. But what happens in this case? Who watches the watchmen? Does the EPA sue itself and transfer some of its money to itself? Will another agency, maybe an oversight committee, step in to find the EPA and therefore transfer some of the state’s wealth from itself to itself?

Herein lies the problem. Then government, which is the biggest polluter, is held entirely unaccountable because it has declared a monopoly on environmental protection. As it has declared this monopoly for itself there is no way to hold it accountable because it’s in its best interest to not enforce its own laws against itself. And if anybody else tries to hold it accountable it attacks them for breaking the law.

The biggest failure of environmentalism is its reliance on the state. A state has no interest in protecting the environment, its interests lie in polluting it without consequence and getting a piece of any polluting action.

Remember When Obama Argued Peace Instead Of Bragging About The Number Of Countries He’s Bombed

It’s hard to remember the days of Obama’s first presidential run. Bush was in office, had dragged us into wars throughout the Middle East, and had lead the charge to increase the already pervasive and unaccountable surveillance state. Obama promises to end the wars and dismantle the surveillance state.

Since then Obama has dragged us into more wars and further empowered the surveillance state. His love of war has become so strong that he can’t even pretend to be reluctant about it anymore. Hilariously a lot of Republicans have been accusing him of not being a big enough war monger because of the deal he’s been negotiating with Iran. Not wanting people to question his dedication to bombing children in the Middle East Obama rebutted the Republicans’ accusations by pointing out just how many countries he’s bombed:

Beyond accurately describing Iran Deal opponents, Obama also accurately described himself and his own record of militarism. To defend against charges that he Loves the Terrorists, he boasted:

As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary. I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat. . . .

I’ve ordered military action in seven countries.

By “ordered military actions in seven countries,” what he means is that he has ordered bombs dropped, and he has extinguished the lives of thousands of innocent people, in seven different countries, all of which just so happen to be predominantly Muslim.

It’s amazing how much things have changed since his first presidential run. He’s not even pretending to be anti-war anymore. And why should he? It’s not like he can run for a third term anyways. I think it’s also amusing, and sad, to see how his supporters went from being a huge percentage of the anti-war movement to either entirely silent on the issue of war or proponents of these new wars.

Gun Control Is Still Synonymous With Establishing A Surveillance State

Anti-gunners claim gun control is about reducing gun violence (but only non-state gun violence since they still need armed state goons to enforce gun control). To the state it’s really about, and I honestly think anti-gunners are completely ignorant of this, having another excuse to establish a surveillance state. Background checks, for example, are the currently darling child of the gun control movement but implementing them requires allowing the state to collected and store a ton of personal information on every American. Sometimes the surveillance aspect of gun control isn’t so abstract. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has taken surveillance to a new level by placing cameras around Seattle under the guise of finding violators of gun control laws:

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) confirmed Thursday that they have placed video cameras throughout Seattle to, according to Special Agent Brian Bennett, “support an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” This comes in response to questions regarding a camera installed on 23rd Avenue and S. Jackson St. The location of other cameras is unclear.

ATF is the lead agency of the Puget Sound Regional Crime Gun Task Force – a partnership to reduce gun violence that includes the Seattle Police Department, Washington State Patrol and the Washington State Department of Corrections.

Gun control isn’t unique in this manner. The state preys on the public’s fear of all crimes and uses that fear to justify surveillance. Whether it’s muggers, rapists, gun runners, murders, or terrorists the solution is always the same: more spying on the people.

Another thing worth noting about this story is that the goal of reducing gun violence has no set goal, which means it can be used to justify leaving these cameras in place forever. When it talks of reducing crime the state never gives concrete cutoffs. It’s a nice way to continue justifying surveillance even when crime has dropped in an area. Any time the state expresses a non-specific goal the people should be concerned because that means it’s justifying a permanent power for itself.

The Dangers Of Centralization

Markets tend to have redundancies. We generally refer to this characteristic as “competition.” When there is demand for a good or service everybody wants a piece of the action so monopolies are almost nonexistent in free markets. Statism, on the other hand, tends towards centralization. Where markets have competitors trying to provide you with the best good or service possible states actively try to push out any competition and establish monopolies.

The problem with centralization is that when a system fails any dependent system necessarily fails along with it. The State Department, which has a monopoly on issuing visas, recently experienced, what it referred to as, a computer glitch that effectively stopped the issuance of any visas:

The State Department says it is working around the clock on a computer problem that’s having widespread impact on travel into the U.S. The glitch has practically shut down the visa application process.

Of the 50,000 visa applications received every day, only a handful of emergency visas are getting issued.

I’m sure this news made the neocons and neoliberals giddy because it meant foreign workers couldn’t enter the country. But this news should give everybody cause for concern because it gives us another glimpse into how fragile statism is. In a free market this kind of failure would be a minor annoyance as another provider would need to be sought out.

Centralization is the antithesis of robustness, which is one reason statism is so dangerous. Under statism a single failure can really hurt millions of people whereas failures in a free market environment tend to be limited in scope and only insomuch as forcing customers to seek alternate providers.

Security Is A Growing Threat To Security

Where a person stands on the subject of effective cryptography is a good litmus test for how technically knowledgeable they are. Although any litmus test is limited you can tell immediately that an individual doesn’t understand cryptography if they in any way support state mandated weaknesses. Mike Rogers, a former Michigan politician, expressed his ignorance of cryptography in an editorial that should demonstrate to everybody why his opinion on this matter can be safety discarded:

Back in the 1970s and ’80s, Americans asked private companies to divest from business dealings with the apartheid government of South Africa. In more recent years, federal and state law enforcement officials have asked — and required — Internet service providers to crack down on the production and distribution of child pornography.

You know where it is going when the magical words “child pornography” are being mentioned in the first paragraph.

Take another example: Many communities implement landlord responsibility ordinances to hold them liable for criminal activity on their properties. This means that landlords have certain obligations to protect nearby property owners and renters to ensure there isn’t illicit activity occurring on their property. Property management companies are typically required to screen prospective tenants.

Because of the title of the editorial I know this is supposed to be about encryption. By using the words “child pornography” I know this article is meant to argue against effective cryptography. However, I have no bloody clue how landlords play into this mess.

The point of all these examples?

There’s a point?

That state and federal laws routinely act in the interest of public safety at home and abroad. Yet now, an emerging technology poses a serious threat to Americans — and Congress and our government have failed to address it.

Oh boy, this exercise in mental gymnastics is going to be good. Rogers could be going for the gold!

Technology companies are creating encrypted communication that protects their users’ privacy in a way that prevents law enforcement, or even the companies themselves, from accessing the content. With this technology, a known ISIS bomb maker would be able to send an email from a tracked computer to a suspected radicalized individual under investigation in New York, and U.S. federal law enforcement agencies would not be able to see ISIS’s attack plans.

Child pornography and terrorism in the same editorial? He’s pulling out all the stops! Do note, however, that he was unable to cite a single instance where a terrorist attack would have been thwarted if only effective encryption hadn’t been in the picture. If you’re going to opt for fear mongering it’s best to not create hypothetical scenarios that can be shot down. Just drop the boogeyman’s name and move on otherwise you look like an even bigger fool than you would.

What could a solution look like? The most obvious one is that U.S. tech companies keep a key to that encrypted communication for legitimate law enforcement purposes. In fact, they should feel a responsibility and a moral obligation to do so, or else they risk upending the balance between privacy and safety that we have so carefully cultivated in this country.

Here is where his entire argument falls apart. First he claims “state and federal laws routinely act in the interest of public safety” and now he’s claiming that state and federal laws should work against public safety.

Let’s analyze what a hypothetical golden key would do. According to Rogers it would allow law enforcement agents to gain access to a suspect’s encrypted data. This is true. In fact it would allow anybody with a copy of that key to gain access to the encrypted data of anybody using that company’s products. Remember when Target and Home Depot’s networks were breached and all of their customers’ credit card data was compromised? Or that time Sony’s PlayStation Network was breached and its customers’ credit card data was compromised? How about the recent case of that affair website getting breached and its customers’ personal information ending up in unknown hands? And then there was the breach that exposed all of Hacking Team’s dirty secrets and many of its private keys to the Internet. These are not hypothetical scenarios cooked up by somebody trying to scare you into submission but real world examples of company networks being breached and customer data being compromised.

Imagine the same thing happening to a company that held a golden key that could decrypt any customer’s encrypted data. Suddenly a single breach would not only compromise personal information but also every device every one of the company’s customers possessed. If Apple, for example, were to implement Rogers’ proposed plan and its golden key was compromised every iOS user, which includes government employees I might add, would be vulnerable to having their encrypted data decrypted by anybody who acquired a copy of the key (and let’s not lie to ourselves, in the case of such a compromise the key would be posted publicly on the Internet).

Network breaches aren’t the only risk. Any employee with access to the golden key would be able to decrypt any customer’s device. Even if you trust law enforcement do you trust one or more random employees at a company to protect your data? A key with that sort of power would be worth a lot of money to a foreign government. Do you trust somebody to not hand a copy of the key over to the Chinese government for a few billion dollars?

There is no way a scenario involving a golden key can end well, which brings us to our next point.

Unfortunately, the tech industry argues that Americans have an absolute right to absolute privacy.

How is that unfortunate? More to the point, based on what I wrote above, we can see that the reason companies don’t implement cryptographic backdoors isn’t because they believe in some absolute right to privacy but because the risks of doing so are too great of a liability.

The only thing Rogers argued in his editorial was his complete ignorance on the subject of cryptography. Generally the opinions of people who are entirely ignorant on a topic are discarded and this should be no exception.