When evidence isn't presented, instead "authority" is presented as the next best thing. It isn't. If every "authority" on every news program was instead presented as "The sometimes lying Aragorn" (for instance) you would pay a lot closer attention and try to sort my lies from my truths (or at least figure out what spin I was putting on things).
Indeed, the news media would consider me an "authority" in hacking. This shows how truly clueless they are.
Okay, so "authority" isn't the truth... That still doesn't define what the TRUTH is, or how we can get access to it?
Maybe what "truth" is is irrelivant. Thousands of years of philosophy still have people disagreeing on the subect. Lets leave that alone for now.
Frankly, what interests me most is what people don't want me to know. This is the hacker mentality. I've known great hackers who've never touched a computer, however their social engineering skills leave me in awe.
Ideas don't get into the "marketplace of ideas" for several reasons:
Taboos
They aren't commercially viable
They violate general assumptions, "necessary illusions" that many things are based upon.
They contradict our current political system
The government intervenes
These ideas are generally communicated in the underground. Many different undegrounds. The net can allow these messages which have previously hard to find free to all.
The threats to the net's safty are also present.
All the power structures (church, state, corporation) have power in deciding "public mood", this is the art of their propaganda.
Unfortunately privacy is not explicitately protected in the constitution. Our consitution is dated in that respect, there weren't the threats to privacy then as there are now. Technology is truly a double-edged sword.
The abscense of privacy provisions in the constitution does not make it any less important. Indeed, the lack of constitutional protections have allowed our privacy to be gravely threatened.
Other countries, especially european countries have explicit laws to dictate what information may be compiled about an individual. This solution is not nearly ideal as anonymous transactions, which is taking the solution into our own hands.
In this country there are no regulations regarding the transfer of your data. Someone using personal data maliciously (as we know) can indeed destroy a life. Your information is a commodity.
What information can be pulled from databases? A national information service can reveal the following information: The profile that a person can build given access to enough databases is staggering. This information is being sold to direct marketers to better target their sales audience.
The key to your personal life is your social security number. With this, credit databases can be accessed. With this information databases become easily cross-referenced - it is the single unifying key. There were concerns that the social security number would be used as a general identifier. These fears have been relized to the utmost degree. The CPSR has detailed information concerning social security numbers.
The government doesn't have a good track record when it comes to privacy. The NSA, who denied its own existance, is in the business of listening. Their job involves monitoring all types of foreign communications. Illegal wiretaps by police occur more often than legal ones (White Knight's DefCon II speech).
The government was pushing it's clipper chip which would only be effecive if it were the only encryption being used. They claimed that they would never outlaw other encryption, and yet continue to harrass Phil Zimmerman - Author of a freeware encryption program (PGP). Recently FBI documents obtained by a EPIC FOIA request reveal that it was the government's original intention to outlaw other encryption techniques.
The government's denied policy towards encryption is that the government must have access to all data. They have furthered these goals with legislation that would funnel billions to the phone companies to install FBI taps. The telephone companies were against the proposed legislation, making them pay for the taps. Their opposition to a nation-wide digital tapping capability quietly faded once they got handed the pile of money.
The protection from eavesdropping is encryption. The government's approach the the "threat" of encryption is to lie, and pass progressively anti-encrypt legislation.
Their first approach was the clipper chip. There was supposed to be a "key escrow" system, in which seperate government agencies would the keys.
They dropped the clipper chip. No one would buy it. The industry knew that foreign governments weren't about to buy this.
The current system they propose will allow the 'backdoor' keys to kept by seperate private parties. It is my bet that they will do this as a stop-gap measure. I suspect that the government can already real-time decrypt (and therefore potentially real-time analyse) the level it will allow under this system.
I interviewed people for technical support at a large software company. I evaluated hundreds of people. I never hired a person who did not own a computer, who did not have one at home. A person without a computer doesn't get the skills that we needed. It wasn't intentional. The people without the computers didn't have the knowledge - regardless of their schooling.
I don't see a simple solution to this, access to technology. But I do know that it's crucial, without it the skills of the new world will not be learned.
Knowing, being friends, and associating with certain people can cause investigations upon yourself. This is guilt by association.
In the new "anti-terrorism" bill there was a provision for supporting groups the government had titled terrorist in nature. Greenpeace could meet this definition in some political circles.
The right to associate was routinely ignored in the 1970's under the FBI's "Cointelpro" program. This program eavesdropped, sabatoged, infiltrated, and libled groups the government didn't like ("left wing" activist groups and "left wing" media).
This is our strongest right, and our most crucial.
The mere fact that this page is allowed to exist is proof that our 1st amendment has not crumbled completely.
"The first amendment is the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire" - Uknown
Despite the governmental protection, there are threats to our freedom to communicate.
The Church of Scientology is currently waging a great (and continual) war against our first amendment rights. Corporations have attempted in various forms to attack our first amendment rights.
The law can be used, via frivelous lawsuits, to attack this right. Government employees do not have the right to publish books without prior approval ('national security' is a buzzword that allows many illegal activities to take place).
The NSA, law enforcement agencies, and various spook agencies have denied access to private communications.
This is the right to live without being in physical fear.
Without physical security, all other rights become academic.
Don't we all have this right? Not exactly. Abused children do not have physical security, nor do abused wives. While society is starting to treat women as people and not as property, this view has not yet evolved to our children.
Violence is a learned behavior.
Doctors who perform abortions also are in fear for their lives.
Poor people living in unsafe neighboorhoods do not have physical security.
Rodney King, and every other L.A. police victom who was not televized do not have physical saftey.Your right to Privacy
Privacy is a right we believe we have.
Your name (if given only an address, or phone number)
Your address
Your phone number
Civil or criminal records concerning you
The value of your home/your status as renter/mortages
The names and similar information about the people you live with
Your neighbor's names and similar information
The Right of Access
We live a world where the technology has the possibility to transform our lives. The access to information, the tools for a person to become a business, these are becoming realities. Our educations could be technically assisted to help a child follow wherever it's curiosity lead it.
We indeed live in changing times. It is uncertain who will be full citizens of this world. Who will have the education that affects future opportunities and possibilities.
The Right to Association
Do you know what happens when a hacker (or other suspected criminal, I would imagine) is investigated? Phone records are used to find associates, and those records are branched out.
The Right to communicate
Communicate!
The right to saftey
Physical saftey!
