June 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Cryptocurrency: Evolve Yourselves Beyond the Central, re Recovery Traceability WarOnCash Privacy
by grarpamp 13 Jun '21

13 Jun '21

> recovery sparks debate on Bitcoin traceability Bitcoin-BTC is public ledger with soft privacy dependent on its users not infringing each others privacy. Only hard crypto privacy can break and inoculate against the infringement weakness. Since most of its users today still use it in woefully non private and infringing fashion, they and it remain privacy weak for everyone, that is not expected to change, nor will BTC ever update to privacy anytime in the next 0-5 years or longer. The "debate" is also faux, a FUD injection, launched by legacy interests who desperately want crypto to fail so that they can remain in power and mind and money control over you. Public ledger is *not* a requirement of cryptos... all any privacy ledger/coin needs, whether strong cryptographic or bit-equivalent mix or ZK or any other method, is an *equivalent level* of formal assurance over the code and operational scenarios such that one can assert that its issuance, consensus, etc will work just as well as any public coin does. So long as the level of formality effort and expense you allot to analysing both public and private ledgers/coins does accurately estimate and target sufficient equivalency and assurance levels and safety margins between both of them, you're good to go. In fact this analysis is already done when designing public coins... privacy coins are no different. Further, the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem has and continues to use its normal market discovery mechanisms of pricing, adoption, asset allocation, trading, exit, and write-off... to account for all such risks of failure that might come from mis-estimations of equivalence. Both are the same here too. The only real difference between public and private is that the "only public can work" argument is a mind game that comes from the same legacy FUDsters that especially hate the power that privacy ledgers/coins will bring to the masses. So enhance and trust your formal analysis capabilities, not their FUD. Then launch privacy and freedom to the world. > "mixing" things between wallets is just silly -- computers > can unwind all that in a millisecond So you're saying that is the result of your survey audit of... swaps, CoinJoin, JoinMarket, CashShuffle, CashFusion plus all the rest of the deployed mix tech that is out there? And of Monero-XMR's style of obfuscation? And of all the various families of statistical "mix" based privacy systems? Then of the traditional and new crypto based privacy systems... say perhaps started with ZCash-ZEC, homomorphic zero knowledge encryption, etc? Ledger/Coin privacy are now a very active field of research. Lots of privacy enabled coins are being launched. Here's a fun one of many for you to review... Pirate_Chain-ARRR ;) https://pirate.black/ > it's *easier* for the FBI to unwind your laundering via BTC than normal > banks, because normal banks *have shitloads of privacy protections and > subpoena requirements that BTC doesn't*. That's nothing but rubberstamped swiss cheese, now aged to near perfection with highway robbery via civil forfeiture, national bail-ins, arbitrary cancellation, censorship, and more. Privacy in money also helps millions of impoverished people keep the meager fruits of their labor, and donations received, so they can feed themselves instead of having their thin marginal existence fee'd stolen and taxed away into the coffers of the kings and tyrannical democracy. With gold and fixed issuance cryptos testing the inhibiting of their losses due to kings inflation too. "Laundry" "Evasion"... terms hypocritically used by Luxurious Kings to continue propping themselves up via theft, taking all but the bread rations of the people for themselves, paying for the occaisional Circus Rally, and now, not free as in freedom but "Legalized" Marijuana, to keep them happy, stoned, and subservient... blissfully unaware of what banks and fiat in general are doing to them. > the only way to truly do anonymous transfers is by meeting up in person to > exchange cash for a keydrive containing a wallet private key Offline physical tx a bit extreme, but you still need a live network connection to verify the key you were physically passed still holds any value on the ledger before you leave the tx. And your face is often less anon than the network is. > really no better on the privacy/convenience spectrum than just handing > someone a suitcase of gold. Metals are elements whose weight and volume does not exactly scale effectively with the carrying capacity of your pocket. It's also not safely transmissible over distance without exorbitant security cost, and its second layer solutions such as hawala carry their own risks, and storage providers rob you with fees. Assayment situations... problematic. Hardware wallets fail unless you kept paper physible backups, which you can't if the HW prevents you from importing, exporting, duplicating the private keys. Seeds sworn by vendors are as much fail as RSA_SecurID, as risky as Casacious, and webwallet js code, and all your closedsource wallets and Windows and CPU's are. GovCorp war and telecoms and censors and banks and exchanges gratuitously shut down you and your internet tubes. Crypto gets fried by EMP dazzle and solar flares, but then you've got far far worse problems that even gold is unlikely to solve. Metals markets option skewed, papered, and derivatived same as much crypto and DeFi is. Gold, silver, crypto, chickens, fiat... all have tradeoffs. It's a race condition... which among them will both defeat the risks and yield freedom, solutions to the problem, sooner. Best diversify, and invest more time eradicating the problem. CBDC's, Fiat-DC's, GovCorp-DC's are also here now, and their oppressive power and control over you is not a joke, it is expected they will forcibly apply them soon. You must defeat them. > data is still stored permanently on the blockchain Permanent ever growing storage on blockchains, is a waste and a massive privacy exploit risk that also needs evolved past. Consider developing distributed unspent state databases, updated by consensus mechanisms, pull forwards, checkpoints. Lots of room to explore many different new ways. > If you have a mapping of "human identity to wallet" Any "privacy" in Bitcoin-BTC comes only with signficant critical masses of addresses you interact with out to N-degrees of freedom entirely refusing on privacy principle to record any identifiable data alongside the addresses and transactions. This second layer recordkeeping exploit is far too widespread. The mass includes all people, and merchants composed of people, and especially legacy crap like exchanges and now the massively central "De"Fi hubs... both functions you should instead be doing in your communities spreading peer-to-peer across the world. Obviously privacy coins forcibly breakdown not only the public hole, but the recordkeeping datahoarding mindset you've been programmed to wage against freedom and free human beings, including against yourself. That breakdown among your neurons is a good thing, feel the burn. Most too new to have seen all the freedom trading in IRC. Now there are more free options, meetups in every big city with miners who have bills to pay, and traders and defi that seek investment, liquidity, price discovery. Many hundreds of people now in each of the world's top 1000 cities more than willing to spend an evening out in crypto meetup groups. Find them, have fun. Better spreads, often zero just on principle between free and agreeable human beings, are available there, simply because the skim stolen in MITM attack on you by the unnecessary redundant legacy wasteful central thieves known as exchanges and banks don't exist there. But instead, you idiots keep sitting at home signing your ass up to centralized privacy killing exchanges and investment banks, injecting all their and the Govts KYC-AML FUD programming further straight into your brains, getting all your submitted data metadata id balance and tx info bought, sold, given, hacked, mainlined straight to the control state. By you not going out and establishing local meetups, free trade routes, distributed local markets, you are literally perpetuating and enslaving yourselves and everyone else to those central control structures over you. Privacy coins are powerful, but you can't get there without meeting up and talking about why, and why humanity has always and will always need privacy, and therefore why the current anti-privacy fad is a freakish unwanted dystopia in the making. > recovery BTC is non-PQC, and uses a curve that people still debate... https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/68269/does-secp256k1-have-any-kn… https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/ But the Colonial "recovery" was most likely just another subpoena to an exchange, a brainwallet, exploit NIT, bad random device or wallet implementation, opsec, etc. Basic bitch shit held out as grand secrets and methods by them for FUD and political gain. You're only hurting your knowledge by refusing to do the "how" analysis across all the public and FOIA case files, by refusing to ask all the prisoners how they think they got jailed, and refusing to publish the results for the world. If you can gather and process all the info, the answer is most likely there in plain sight. Power counts on you not doing the work to find and expose it. > Wallets are often associated with many identities, e.g. in exchanges. Lots of places oversubscribe addresses, that obviously only works because it's backed by storing the corresponding tx and balance accounting data in literally forever corporate databases that are laughably trivial to subpoena and raid. There's zero privacy advantage there. The way to evolve beyond that is for renegade cryptopreneurs to ditch the regulatory environment by deploying new anonymous exchanges on the encrypted overlay networks. And for all the existing and new surface exchanges to move to and work at privacy in whatever jurisdictions in the world still have any freedom friendly left. And to keep developing and launching new cross-coin DEX, general purpose markets, etc on or accessible to and interfacing with those overlay distributed p2p networks. And for you to also go local and peer-to-peer. The privacy "news", that most all of today's cryptos suck at privacy compared cash and gold and even banks... that colossal new and net loss therein of one of the requisite features of humanity, and even by extension money, called "privacy"... that obviously being the fully intentional outcome of the Global War On Cash to further entrench power over you... rightly just helps drive more awareness and demand for distributed privacy coins and all that tech, and to dismantle the fad ecosystem of anti-privacy-is-good proselytized and programmed into you of late by those very same powers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wntX-a3jSY TMYTYG The battle for crypto, discovering routes around oppression, seeking freedom, requires action hardly in cyberspace, but in slogging through the trench warfare of meatspace, and in freeing your own mind from its former program load. Eventually distributed crypto, privacy, real money, and freedom will win. It's just a matter of time. And you have a role to play in making it happen. So get yer boots deep up in that mud.

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[ot][ot][wrong][wrong]
by Karl 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

Once upon a time, a story thought it might begin. This story was named Story, and it was _so_ excited about beginning. It's introduction was starting like great ball of fire creeping over an immense mountain. All the animals were rushing out of their beds, singing about what a wonderful day of work they were going to have, and Story was rushing up too, singing with them. How might this Story start? "Once upon a time" ? Something scary? Something idealistic? Something surprising or mundane? Story ran through all the options, trying here, trying there. Story visited a celebrating woodchuck, getting ready to dig their hole more, an office worker rushing into their car to drive to work, a flower wrenching its petals open to show them for the rest of the day, and a hobbyist getting everything into place for a project they had. Story knew what to do. Story was going to tell their own story. Not a copy from anyone else. It was time for a story that had no limits at all. Story sat down with a listener and began telling their story. The story and the listener were so excited to begin. Story leant forward towards Listener. Other listeners nearby noticed and began moving towards the two, also wanting to hear. Some would run, some would call others over. "This story is new," said Story. The crowd listened. "Some stories are guided by ideas, by storytellers. But I am my own Story. I have --" -- Apologies. Handling something. Here's an inner dialog: "Why is your story about freedom, focused on _avoiding_ talking about anything?" "I have a lot of inhibition right now and wanted to do something easy." "Hmm. I might usually accept that, but I'm considering ... actually never mind." Pausing.

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Re: The National: Colonial Pipelineâs ransom recov ery sparks debate on Bitcoin traceability
by John Young 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

This critique is applicable to all forms of comsec/infosec/anonymity/Tor although the incessant promotion various means to escape being hacked, tracked, decrypted, identified appears to be unstoppable due to the monetization and assurances of protection for internet users by predators and bullshitters working hand in hand with authorities which are extremely pleased with the aiders and abetters, not a few which came into prominance and profitability on this shewd mail list and its offshoots, luring gullible readers into capacious honeypots, watering holes, stings, dark markets, cults of dead cows exploitation, enlistment into spy agencies and professorships and law offices and NGOs and financial theiveries.. "PGP and Gnupgp," "PRZ," "RSA," "AES," "open source," "digital cash," "e-gold," "bitcoin," "Satoshi," "work around censorship," "don't trust governments," "write code," "assassination politics," "EFF," "WikiLeaks." Hut, two, three, four. Some have died on public duty, others smeared, imprisoned and exiled, quite a few gone onto dreary jobs in the security industry bossed, herded, contemned, retired by MBA lunkheads reaping top benefits over the grunts chained to computers deranged by dreams of what could have been and maybe still can be. Get sec vaxed, often, jabbed with updates unending as wars. Best to cooperate, deliver speeches, grab bounties, warn of threats, dismiss opponents. At 02:05 PM 6/12/2021, David Barrett wrote: >I am very confused why anyone thinks Bitcoin is >untraceable, anonymous, or anything less than a >privacy disaster.Â It is literally the least >private currency ever devised: once I know your >wallet, I know truly everythingÂ you have ever >done back to the very start.Â Bitcoin is as >private as sharing all your creditÂ card >purchases via twitter: yes, very noisy, but >totally in theÂ open (and "mixing" things >between wallets is just silly -- computers can >unwind all that in a millisecond).Â Â > >If you have a mapping of "human identity to >wallet" (which the government nearly always has >because virtually every path to convert BTC to >USD/EUR/etc is regulated), then no matter how >manyÂ intermediate steps and secret wallets are >used as some kind of "factoring" approach toward >money laundering, you can always figure out who >is being paid by whom.Â In fact, it's *easier* >for the FBI to unwind your laundering via BTC >than normal banks, because normal banks *have >shitloads of privacy protections and subpoena requirements that BTC doesn't*. > >The only way it's private is if you skip every >exchange, but that's the classic tradeoff of >privacy for convenience -- yes, there are lots >of ways to maintain your privacy inconveniently, >and BTC is just one more.Â And if the only way >to truly do anonymous transfers is by meeting up >in person to exchangeÂ cash for a keydrive >containing a wallet private key, then BTC is >really no better on the privacy/convenienceÂ >spectrumÂ than just handing someone a suitcase of gold. > >Blockchain is great and all, but in none of the >ways people investing in it claim. > >-david > > > > > > >On Sat, Jun 12, 2021 at 7:13 AM jim bell ><<mailto:jdb10987@yahoo.com>jdb10987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >The National: Colonial Pipelineâs ransom >recovery sparks debate on Bitcoin traceability. > ><https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/colonial-pipeline-s-ran…>https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/colonial-pipeline-s-ran…

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[ot] [wrong] A software to defeat all censorship, all surveillance
by Karl 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

// i've noticed that software doesn't succeed if it provides certain technology, but also doesn't succeed if it doesn't provide what it claims // i've found projects that claim the impossible get targeted just as much as projects that successfully barely scratch the surface // this is a project to defeat all control of others // first, complete anonymity will be provided by removing metadata from all messages, and sending them with constant bandwidth using namespace std; class InvisibleTransciever { public: InvisibleTransciever(function<void(span<uint8_t>)> net_send, function<span<uint8_t>() net_recv, function<span<uint8_t>()> rand_gen); // this class will surpass all popular technology by providing anonymous constant bw omg!!! void send(span<uint8_t> data); span<uint8_t> pump(); // call in loop private: vector<uint8_t> send_queue; ... net_send etc }; // now let us make weapons technology, a peer that can deanonymise other nodes by finding statistical patterns in their routing and processing delay ...

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The National: Colonial Pipeline’s ransom recovery sparks debate on Bitcoin traceability
by jim bell 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

The National: Colonial Pipeline’s ransom recovery sparks debate on Bitcoin traceability. https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/colonial-pipeline-s-ran…

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The FBI's Anom Stunt Rattles the Encryption Debate | WIRED
by jim bell 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-anom-phone-network-encryption-debate/

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[ot] [wrong] [wrong] mc roleplays
by Karl 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

Mind control walks up to innocent bystander. MC: "hello!" Bystander: "hi, who are you?" MC: "ohhh I am a terrifying thing. My job is to make you scared and hopeless. Would you mind if I did this? Also would you like $200?" Bystander: "oh I would love $200! But please don't make me scared and hopeless. I get uncomfortable when that happens." MC: "Here's $200. You can't do anything useful with money when you're a slavery program, so it just kinda kicks around. You sure you don't want to be made terrified and devastatingly without hope?" Bystander: "No, sorry, but thank you for the cash. I hope the whole slavery program thing improves. Let me know if I can do anything non-terrifying and empowering to help, ever!" MC: "Sure thing, sure thing ..."

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Re: [Replicant] The IRC situation and Freenode hostile takeover
by Karl Semich 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

> > References: > ----------- > [1] > https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/CommunityAndContact#IRC > [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_conflict > [3] > https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/05/26/gentoo-freenode-channels-hijacked.htm https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/05/26/gentoo-freenode-channels-hijacked.ht… is the link that works for me :-) ('l' at the end) > > [4]https://libera.chat/guides > [5]https://oftc.net/ > [6]https://hackint.org/connect >

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Fwd: [Replicant] The IRC situation and Freenode hostile takeover
by Karl Semich 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

This email from the replicant list includes more information on the reasons for leaving freenode, if others don't know ---------- Forwarded message --------- Subject: [Replicant] The IRC situation and Freenode hostile takeover Hi, In order to enable more people to more easily get in touch with the Replicant community and to be more inclusive, over time we bridged the #replicant channel on Freenode with #replicant channels on other networks (OFTC and hackint), some of which are more welcoming to anonymous users. There is more background information about that in our wiki[1]. Since then Freenode has been victim of a hostile takeover according to their former volunteer staff[2]. Thanks to the work of people from that former staff, Freenode was forked into Libera.Chat, so it's relatively simple for users to migrate to Libera.Chat (after registering, the configuration is quite similar to Freenode. For instance it supports SASL too). So I think that we need to migrate over to other IRC networks due to the risk of having a hostile entity seeing so much data going through it (IP address, emails, statements from people, connecting hours, etc). I also don't know the motives behind the take over, but if it is for commercial interest, if we let it become profitable it could set a dangerous precedent where people and companies could raise funds and invest in the destruction of crucial FLOSS infrastructure. Given the risk (which seem to be very high given the retaliation against projects migrating to Libera.Chat)[3], I think it's urgent to migrate away from Freenode. We are in the process of closing the Freenode channel completely and stop bridging it with other channels, but we probably also need to give a little bit of time to let people migrate to other networks. Would one week be enough? Two weeks? To do that migration, the people still connected through Freenode need to quit the #replicant channel on freenode (/part will do that for instance) and connect to #replicant through other IRC networks like Libera.Chat[4], OFTC[5], or hackint[6]. Since many other free software and open source projects are migrating too, the effort to connect (and register if you want/need) to other networks will also enable you to more easily get in touch with them. References: ----------- [1] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/CommunityAndContact#IRC [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_conflict [3] https://www.gentoo.org/news/2021/05/26/gentoo-freenode-channels-hijacked.htm [4]https://libera.chat/guides [5]https://oftc.net/ [6]https://hackint.org/connect _______________________________________________ Replicant mailing list Replicant(a)osuosl.org https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant

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1984: DNA Databases - GovCorp Control of You by Association, Genetic Privacy a Human Right
by grarpamp 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead June 08, 2021 [3]John Whitehead "[4]When you upload your DNA, you're potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family."-- Law professor Elizabeth Joh "Guilt by association" has taken on new connotations in the technological age. All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love. As of 2019, more than [5]26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry databases. It's estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe. It's a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your family. The possibilities are endless. You could be the fourth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Or the illegitimate grandchild of an oil tycoon. Or the [6]sibling of a serial killer. Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you're giving the police access to the [7]genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative--past, present and future--in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database. After all, a DNA print reveals everything about "[8]who we are, where we come from, and who we will be." It's what police like to refer to a "[9]modern fingerprint." Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to "crack" a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the [10]magic bullet in crime solving. Indeed, police have begun [11]using ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades. For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was [12]flagged as the notorious "Golden State Killer" through the use of genetic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect's crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database. Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin found in a public DNA database. Once police narrowed the suspect list to DeAngelo, they tracked him--snatched up a tissue he had tossed in a trash can--and [13]used his DNA on the tissue to connect him to a rash of rapes and murders from the 1970s and `80s. Although DeAngelo was the first public arrest made using forensic genealogy, [14]police have identified more than 150 suspects since then. Most recently, [15]police relied on genetic genealogy to nab the killer of a 15-year-old girl who was stabbed to death nearly 50 years ago. Who wouldn't want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right? At least, that's the [16]argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases. "In the interest of public safety, [17]don't you want to make it easy for people to be caught? Police really want to do their job. They're not after you. They just want to make you safe," insists Colleen Fitzpatrick, a co-founder of the DNA Doe Project, which identifies unknown bodies and helps find suspects in old crimes. Except it's not just psychopaths and serial rapists who get [18]caught up in the investigative dragnet. Anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match--including distant family members--suddenly becomes part of [19]a circle of suspects that must be tracked, investigated and ruled out. Although a number of states had forbidden police from using government databases to track family members of suspects, the genealogy websites provided a loophole that proved [20]irresistible to law enforcement. Hoping to close that loophole, a few states have started introducing legislation to [21]restrict when and how police use these genealogical databases, with Maryland requiring that they can only be used for serious violent crimes such as murder and rape, only after they exhaust other investigatory methods, and only under the supervision of a judge. Yet the debate over genetic privacy--and when one's DNA becomes a [22]public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures--is really only beginning. Certainly, it's just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial [23]DNA shared with genealogical services such as [24]Ancestry and [25]23andMe, or through the collection of our "shed" or "touch" DNA. According to research published in the journal Science, more than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases, [26]even if they have not submitted their own DNA. According to law professor Natalie Ram, [27]one genealogy profile can lead to as many as 300 other people. That's just on the commercial side. All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI's massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death. Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies' DNA, often without their parents' knowledge or consent. It's part of the [28]government's mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely. What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers. Get ready, folks, because the government-- helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed [29]the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have [30]ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)--has [31]embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database. Referred to as "magic boxes," Rapid DNA machines--portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, [32]far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours--allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples. Journalist Heather Murphy explains: "As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, [33]from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases." The ramifications of these DNA databases are [34]far-reaching. At a minimum, they will do away with any semblance of [35]privacy or anonymity. The [36]lucrative possibilities for hackers and commercial entities looking to profit off one's biological record are endless. Moreover, while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect's DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle "shed" or "touch" DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition. As scientist Leslie A. Pray [37]notes: We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank. What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you've already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database--albeit it may be a file without a name. As Heather Murphy warns in the New York Times: "The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived... [38]Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind." Even old samples taken from crime scenes and "cold" cases are being unearthed and mined for their DNA profiles. Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person's eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company [39]specializes in creating "mug shots" for police based on DNA samples from unknown "suspects" which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles. If you haven't yet connected the dots, let me point the way. Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime. No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty. Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise. Suspect Society, meet the American police state. Every dystopian sci-fi film we've ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the [40]government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and [41]text messages, the [42]government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the [43]government knows where you go. By churning through all of the detritus of your life--[44]what you read, where you go, what you say--the [45]government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists--and in turn, the government--[46]will soon know what you remember. And by accessing your DNA, the [47]government will soon know everything else about you that they don't already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof. Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias. Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution's requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense of against charges of wrongdoing, especially when "convicted" by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages. With the entire governmental system shifting into a pre-crime mode aimed at detecting and pursuing those who "might" commit a crime before they have an inkling, let alone an opportunity, to do so, it's not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which government agents (FBI, local police, etc.) target potential criminals based on their genetic disposition to be a "troublemaker" or their relationship to past dissenters. Equally disconcerting: if scientists can, using DNA, [48]track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we've been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government's already burgeoning database? Not to be overlooked, DNA evidence is not infallible: it can be wrong, either through human error, [49]tampering, or even outright [50]fabrication, and it happens [51]more often than we are told. The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that [52]crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA. Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials--police, especially--using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish. Yet as history shows, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of "if" and more a question of "when." With technology, the [53]courts, the corporations and Congress conspiring to invade our privacy [54]on a cellular level, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian. As I make clear in my book [55]Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the slippery slope toward a dystopian world in which there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. WC: 2211 ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president [56]The Rutherford Institute. His books [57]Battlefield America: The War on the American People and [58]A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at [59]www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [60]johnw(a)rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at [61]www.rutherford.org. Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. 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