Becoming a Digital Ghost

In a recent online Q&A, Edward Snowden has this to say:

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.

So what does he mean?  Many people who are less than tech savvy may not understand what he is talking about.  As someone who works as a software developer, I can answer this, to a degree.  Basically, you can use services that encrypt your data as it travels across the Internet.  Dropbox, for example, stores all the files you place there in an encrypted section of the Internet.  What this means is that accessing the data directly only leads to a garbled mess.

What he is saying is that if you use a good service that encrypts, which is a fancy term for mixing up your data in a manner that requires some kind of key to unlock it, you can usually beat the NSA or any other government service when they intercept it in transit.  Such an operation is not hard, as any Internet Service Provider, such as Comcast, is more than happy to comply with government demands.  However, Snowden does leave one final caution: endpoint security.

In a nutshell, endpoint security is where you actually access the data.  When you log in to your e-mail account, for example, your password is endpoint security.  Remember when there was a Firefox plugin released that could hack another machine on a public wireless network and store the login credentials you would use?  Well, that’s the kind of thing that Snowden is talking about.

Getting around this is not too hard, although it is still no guarantee.  First of all, make sure your passwords are secure with combinations of letters, numbers, and some other character.  I’ve found Keypass to be useful in storing passwords and logins if you can’t remember them all.  Secondly, never access private data on public networks.  Lastly, check over what OpenID services, such as Facebook or Twitter, allow external application access and disable or remove any you don’t recognize periodically.

As for the Internet itself, get Firefox with Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, and Adblock Plus.  If you want to get a little extreme, use NoScript and Self-Destructing Cookie.  And if you’re feeling really edgy, try loading the Tor network on your machine.

I caution, however, that once you start ghosting yourself on the Internet, you are more likely to be tagged by the Feds as a suspicious person.  Still, it may be worth doing if it means a little privacy.

The National Security Agency: Evil or Incompetent?

Forget about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden for a few minutes.  Well, forget about questioning their loyalty or patriotism.  To me, the question is probably just misdirection because it helps to distract us from the real question everyone should be asking: is the National Security Agency evil or just plain incompetent?

Let’s start with incompetent.  The argument for this is simple: do you really expect us to believe that they have to collect all of that data for the simple purpose of identifying terrorists?  Let’s be honest about Islamic terrorism: it barely ever happens in the United States.  Yes, there have been some serious incidents.  Yes lots of people have been killed by Islamic terrorism.  But let’s be honest about it: you are more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than a Islamic terrorist.

The sheer volume of data that the NSA is collecting in order to combat terrorism really just highlights how clueless they really are.  If they have trouble identifying the bad guys without clogging up Internet bandwidth, then they must completely lost as to who and where the enemy is, right?  There are simpler ways to go about identifying people with ties to terrorism.  Hell, even the supposed perpetrators of the recent Boston bombing were on watch lists long before they allegedly carried pressure cooker bombs there (I say allegedly because the official story has so many holes, it makes their documentation look like Swiss cheese.  And I hate Swiss cheese).

In fact, I would argue that because just about every American terrorist attack has been perpetrated by people that the Federal government has been watching at some point before the act, it seems like this whole argument of safety and protecting us is nothing but bunk.  It’s like if you were a child who was attacked by a dog and then in the hospital as you lay there gasping for air through your crushed ribs, your mommy or daddy told you that he or she knew the dog had rabies but decided to go get coffee instead of warning you.  That is how incompetent the NSA is if they are going to claim that they need this level of surveillance.

On the other hand, they could just be run by a bunch of evil bastards.  The kind who like to look through your XBox Kinect cameras and jack off to you jacking off to that porn game you got (yes, they do exist).  Or maybe the like watching your children dance.  Your underage children.  Or maybe they just want to know where you are so they can kill you.

Maybe I’m just exaggerating a bit, but in all seriousness, there has to be a larger use for this level of data gathering.  Considering that the warrants obtained under the USA PATRIOT Act are more likely to be used in Federal drug investigations than in actual terrorism cases, it is not a far-fetched assumption.

Why did Chief Justice John Roberts suddenly change his mind about Obamacare?  How did David Pretraeus’s private emails get leaked so easily?  With the NSA rooting through all of our online garbage, it looks like a no-brainer to me.

Usually in fiction, when you encounter a total surveillance state, it is usually some dystopic society.  Most of the time, the ideas of Big Brother watching you are portrayed as evil.  And yet here it is really happening and the prospect of the United States government being filled with evil assholes doesn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind.

So which is it really?  Are they evil or incompetent.  Either way, the U.S. Federal government is well beyond its Constitutional limitations and should be completely abolished, its assets seized by the American people, and its leaders exiled to Nigeria.

Or Siberia.  Or the upper atmosphere.  Whichever is easier.

The American Citizen is the Enemy

Right now Bradley Manning is on trial for aiding the enemy.  He has already plead guilty to charges that will put him away for 20 years.  The Federal government, under orders from the President, is trying to put him away for another 37, effectively meaning they want him to die in prison.  For dumping a bunch of mostly innocuous data into the hands of Julian Assauge, himself hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy to avoid ridiculous rape charges (news flash: it’s not rape if she regretted having sex with Julian Assauge after having sex with him, even if she had to fake her orgasm).

Recently, NSA surveillance details were leaked by one Edward Snowden, a former government contractor.   This was more or less an open secret as most people know that we should be getting much faster Internet bandwidth were it not for the NSA’s own illegal intercepting of all popular forms of communicating over the web.  Fearing for his life, he has fled to Hong Kong and now flat out disappeared.  I personally would have fled to Uganda in order to commit to building some kind of infrastructure there, but that’s me.

In both cases, these men did what so many other people inside government should be doing.  They are ensuring that the so-called Republic we live under is a Republic.  You cannot properly vote for any candidate in any Federal election if you do not know what the government is doing.  It is that simple.  In order for representative democracy to have meaningful elections of any kind, you must have access to the full scope of what that government is doing.

These days, nearly every form of business the government engages in is classified.  You cannot contract with the Post Office without at least Secret level clearance.  I know as I have worked for companies that have tried to obtain them for me, although I think my application fell through the cracks.  Not that I’m sad about it, as I view government contracting work as nothing more than worthless, unfulfilling, and tyrannical.

The fact is, pretty much all of what is currently classified by the Federal government should not be.  All emails from just about every department and agency should be readily available to the public.  Unfortunately, instead of allowing people to see what goes on in government, the current system would rather punish or murder those who expose it.

Right now, Senators and Congressmen are calling Snowden and Manning traitors.  I can only conclude that they do so because they believe that both men are aiding and abetting the enemy.  But in this case, the enemy is the American Citizen, or rather, an informed American Citizen.

That is how the Federal government views all of us.  What other logical reason could there be for them to collecting all that private information on all of us while demanding privacy in what they do?

Besides the fact that they are all a bunch of assholes I mean.

The United States Is Not a Free Market Country; It Is Fascist

The United States is not a capitalist country.  At least not in the free market sense, but more in the Marxist sense, which can better be described as a Fascist economic system.  Case in point, note this appointment to Sprint’s board of directors:

Sprint Nextel Corp. says retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will join the company’s board of directors and serve as its security director.

Sprint said Friday that Mullen will take on the new positions after SoftBank’s proposed $20.1 billion takeover of the company is complete. The deal faced government scrutiny over concerns that SoftBank, a Japanese company, uses Chinese networking equipment that could leave U.S. networks vulnerable to snooping and hacking.

Mullen, 66, will be the company’s contact with the government for all security measures.

The Softbank takeover of Sprint still needs FCC and shareholder approval but is expected to be complete in July.

Note a few points about this article:

• The appointment of a retired admiral to Sprint has nothing to do with national security.  Any national security concerns could be met without some old guy who probably knows less about cell phones than you do.  The reason for this appointment is clearly done as a means to strong-arm a private company into hiring a retired, top-ranked military head.  It happens all the time where former Congress-people are given cushy jobs somewhere solely because they can lobby for the company.
• In a free market system, the government has no business approving anything.  The FCC is not regulating “public” airwaves here, but private ones owned by Sprint.  So for them to intervene demonstrates that they are not following their original protocol, but an expanded one.

The fact remains that our nation has not been running a free market economic system for a long time now.  Hell, I don’t know if our nation has ever been free market.  But I do know that most people (idiots) will read this and assume that this is all part of the free market system we live under.  Because I have choices between McDonalds and Wendy’s and Burger King.

Fools.