We Can Choose an Internet Without Surveillance

Have you seen the FBI strategic plan for 2018-2020, which was obtained under FOIA and has been published in various places? They really do put an emphasis upon monitoring social media sites, especially the major ones.

Your taxpayer collars at work.

Note: machine learning cannot be expected to catch the substitution of "collars" for "dollars". So how could it possibly cure cancer?

("Collar" just happens to be archaic slang that which causes cops to declare their job is done, but I doubt that "AI" would easily recognize that either.)

The surveillance state is not our ministering angle of health.

The dragnet is the monster which props up our enemies, the autocratic rulers and the financial elites. Remove the dragnet, and they too will topple.

> If we think we are being watched, our behavior changes. Our mental state changes as well.

"The authorities" recognize this, and often deliberately exploit this. Two examples:

o the "Social Anthropoid" briefings by GCHQ (part of the Snowden leaks) and the HB Gary Federal leak show that USIC and FVEY allies routinely employ sophisticated psychological profiling (the type once used by CIA only to profile heads of "hostile" states) to carefully attempt to create paranoia in perceived enemies such as Wikileaks supporters and journalists; leaked FBI documents show FBI does this on an even wider scale, with particular attention to advocates of "justice reform" and pipeline protesters,

o documents leaked from both UK and US "safety net" agencies (including the VA) show that as part of ideologically driven "counter-fraud" programs, agents indiscriminately deploy techniques specifically designed to create fear and paranoia in recipients of public benefits, a cruel and ill-advised tactic which is particularly inappropriate when used against persons who already have a PTSD diagnosis.

This kind of ugly "targeted and tailored FUD" is just one aspect of the untold sequel to the Snowden leaks: the answer to the question of just what our enemies intend to do with all the data they are continually collecting on all of us.

The answer is: they intend to apply machine learning techniques adapted to complex combinations of hundreds of individually vast Big Data repositories to build sophisticated computer models of us, our friends and our families, including both our external actions and our internal mental state, and to use these models to trial alternative courses of their own actions (against us and all our associates), in order to manipulate us all in the ways which their models tell them will best serve their own interests.

They say they are building these models because they want to cure cancer. That's a lie. They are building these models to optimize their own short term socioeconomic utility function. And in the zero-sum world of contemporary geopolitics, that entails minimizing the wealth and welfare of the ordinary citizen. That is a crime against humanity, a crime enabled for corporate profit by the likes of IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and executed by government agencies and their corporate contractors.

I repeat: aided by the largest and ugliest American corporations, right here, right now, the elites of the world are building a post-Orwellian techno-Stasi apparatus of population manipulation and control, designed to further transfer even more wealth to the pockets of the evil uberlords, to intrude even further into the tattered remnants of the personal lives of ourselves and our children, and to direct in detail every aspect of all of the days of all of our lives.

We must never forget that once our enemies have the data, they can store it as long as they like and they can do with it whatever they choose, whenever, wherever, however, and there is damn all any of us can do about it. That's why we need to stop the Alexandrians from collecting it all in the first place. If we wish to live free.

In this situation, to remain passive and compliant is to accept the social status of slavery by another name. And we cannot allow that. Which is why we need to become bold, to speak up, to take to the streets, to do whatever it takes to secure a life worth living for future generations.

In practical terms, I like to say that we ordinary people face the difficult daily challenge of being sufficiently meticulous, untrusting and vigilant to become "hard targets" for the simplest kinds of remote surveillance, "pretext interviews" (in which a government or corporate agent pretends to be a telephone repairman or delivery man), trollery or other manipulations, while somehow retaining our basic sanity and sufficient efficiency to complete daily tasks required in order to continue our existence.

> We can

and should

> ... stand up for encryption

We are experiencing in real time a transition from a world in which only a tiny fraction of people, such as heads of state and generals, were subjected to sophisticated espionage and psychological profiling, to a world where all the worlds governments and all the worlds major corporations are in effect trying to surveil and profile in real time the "pattern of life" of entire large classes of ordinary citizens, including doctors, lawyers, judges, cops, telecom engineers, airport workers, journalists, bloggers, librarians, voters unhappy with the "mainstream" political candidates running for some office, and even citizens who are simply trying to be well-informed voters who read widely.

In other words, we are experiencing a rapid transition from a world where intelligent people can reasonably assume only a tiny few need encryption, Tor, and other privacy/security tools to a world where all intelligent people recognize that pretty much everyone needs these tools, for pretty much everything they do all day (and all night too, if they are wearing a "health monitor" to bed).

I like to say that every citizen should know that

o encryption solves three problems: authentication (so you know who you are communicating with), communications privacy (so no unknown third party can secretly listen in), and message integrity (so no unknown third party can easily alter what the legitimate communicants are saying); these can be lumped together as "communications security",

o encryption alone is useless without cybersecurity; IOW, good communications security practice relies upon cybersecurity practice,

o good cybersecurity is a (challenging and sometimes laborious) process, not a state achievable with the flip of some magic switch,

o convenience unfortunately tends to be the enemy of cybersecurity, but ordinary people using well-designed tools such as Tor Browser or Tails can probably find a balance which (we hope) works for them,

o we are enduring the Golden Age of Surveillance, so there can be no guarantees, but with good practice and determination there can be hope,

o the goal of strong cybersecurity and communications security can be understood as becoming a target hardened against remote attacks and against passive local attacks (e.g. wired or wireless packet sniffing, IMSI catchers),

o illegal physical intrusions into your home or office, which are distinguished by the intruder not breaking locks but picking them or somehow possessing a key, and by ignoring valuables in plain view but taking only a sensitive USB or hard drive, or by using physical access to a computer to backdoor it, can be understood as a sign that you are doing everything right (but sufficiently protecting your family and your home against illegal physical attack),

o such illegal warrant-less intruders might work for your own government, or for another government entirely, possibly even for a government your own government regards as "hostile", or for a well-funded corporation or a rich private individual whom you have somehow offended,

o surveillance cameras, especially WiFi enabled ones, are much more likely to further decrease your physical security than to help you catch a bad guy in the act,

o purchasing a firearm for self defense inside your own home from strangers who can just walk right in at any time may be a terrible idea, because "the authorities" probably want you to do just that, because they can then easily "justify" shooting you dead during some unanticipated "routine" suspicion-less encounter, without any need to deploy their "throw down" firearm (as one US cop was caught doing by his own bodycam; he did not realize that even after he turned it off, it recorded for another thirty seconds, but that little trick only works once for our side),

I think Tor Project, Tails Project, Citizen Lab (and potentially the new kid on the block, EFF Threat Lab), ACLU/EFF/etc FOIAs, etc, are doing a great job in helping at-risk citizens to become hard(er) targets for remote intrusions and for local passive surveillance, but we need much more.

As yet there does not appear to be any practical self-defense against illegal physical entry (or other physical harm) by government agents or corporate contractors.

Still, we can point to several very recent milestones which give US persons reason to hope that the pendulum might finally be swinging our way, at least in the USA (but many other nations are likely to follow the US lead with respect to their attitude toward civil rights and privacy):

o the Zoe Lofgren cosponsored privacy act in the US House, plus (flawed but at least strongly stated) privacy guarantees in the EU,

o former FBI counsel Jim Baker has defected to our side in Crypto Wars II,

o the BBC has created an onion mirror precisely to give its most endangered readers (e.g. Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters) a better chance of keeping up with Mother Beebe,

o a dozen major (if not quite mainstream) US news orgs plus a handful of EU and MENA news orgs are using SecureDrop to garner news tips from endangered readers,

o a major lawsuit targeting the most notorious CAAS (cyberwar-as-a-service) company, NSO Group (which has hired former NSA/TAO cyberwarriors to target political dissidents on behalf of authoritarian governments such as the current regime in UAE) is likely to slow the rapid growth of the CAAS industry, and might even neutralize one of the worse (NGO Group has been implicated in the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Kashoggi),

o the notorious American mercenary "Echo Papa" (Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater/Xe and brother of the US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos), who was cynically plotting to wreak mayhem by selling illegal exported militarized crop duster aircraft, rockets, and armored cars to authoritarian African governments fighting separatist guerrillas, must have been terribly disappointed when the newly elected Ethiopian government recently made peace with a major rebel movement,

o a US federal judge just ruled that suspicion-less searches of devices (within a hundred miles of any US shoreline or land border) by DHS agents is unconstitutional; other recent ruling add up to a "magistrates revolt" against the worst abuses of the ill-advised powers granted to FBI and other agencies by the Patriot Act,

o more and more members of the US Congress are leaning against renewing the business records provision of the Patriot Act, one of the most abused components; Congress may even cancel NSA's authority to maintain some of its vast electronic dragnets (at least when these target US persons).

Further, during the past few months it has become perfectly clear that everywhere in the world, the common citizen is simply fed up with outrageous and ubiquitous government and corporate abuses; this is clear because even as I write, from Hong Kong to Caracas, vast street protests are threatening the disproportionate power of the elites. Everywhere in the world, people are pouring onto the streets to declare in no uncertain terms that they are not going to take it any more. We demand a just society which works for all, not simply for a few privileged billionaires. We are all citizens of our own country, and we all want our country back. And not only do we want it back, we demand it. And this time we will take no for an answer.

To all those who deride us as "sheeple", we say: we are done with all your lies and manipulations. Give us back our sacred rights, our stolen wealth, our self-determination. Or you will surely suffer the customary fate all failed tyrants throughout history.

In an op-ed late last year in Wired, a journalist wrote that there has never been a better time for ordinary citizens to adopt Tor Browser. I'd add that there has never been a better time for ordinary citizens to join me in contributing to Tor Project and other leaders in the cause of citizen-self-defense against amoral corporate snooping/profiling and against dangerous and ultimately self-defeating government intimidation.