- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

current issues re the potential of Kurdistan
by Zenaan Harkness 16 Jun '16

16 Jun '16

By Retaking Raqqa Syrian Army May Upset 'Federalization' Plan http://sputniknews.com/politics/20160610/1041140173/syria-raqqa-kurds-feder… I don't think Kurdistan in any form will come out from this particular CIA initiated war in Syria - there are too many regional fears of an expanding Kurdistan (into Turkey and Iran for example, not to mention Iraq and Syria of course), and there appears to be some genuine understanding that religious based government becomes quite intolerant of minorities, and therefore a greater desire in the people for a separation of religion and state, if nothing else than for to maximise longer term stability. In all areas of Jihadistan, I can only agree. And it's hard to not oppose Exceptionalistan (USA) on principle these days... And it certainly does not look like Russia will let Syria 'fall', being a long term strategic partner. Doesn't change the fact though of the existence of the YPJ and the potential longer term cultural catalytic effects they may cause - here's hoping. Good luck humans Rojava https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava YPJ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Protection_Units

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one man's freedom - romantic snapshot
by Zenaan Harkness 16 Jun '16

16 Jun '16

>From the American Prairies to the Russian Steppes (Video) An American Sioux flees America to find freedom and a new life in Russia Alexei Ovchinnikov Simon North A Native American from South Dakota, USA, has left the land of the free to find what he considers to be true freedom in Russia’s countryside. The narrator notes the physical resemblance of Justin Irwin, or Big Wolf, to his Sioux warrior ancestors as described by adventure novelists of the time like Thomas Mayne Reid and James Fenimore Cooper:“Quite a hard face with an aquiline nose, strong chin, high cheekbones and dark hair in a plait at the nape of his neck.” As to what removed Big Wolf from his native prairies to place him in the Russian hinterland, Irwin bewails the place of money in American culture and the corporatism it entails, leading to what he describes as a fascist, police state. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kbrvxsOX-8

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Oilprice vs Solar Price
by grarpamp 16 Jun '16

16 Jun '16

On 6/14/16, Zenaan Harkness <zen(a)freedbms.net> wrote: > God I love oilprice dot com! Won't somebody please think of the photons... http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/ https://www.ises.org/ http://www.pv-tech.org/ http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/ http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/ https://www.google.com/search?q=solar+power+price+trends

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#DoxDump: Guccifer2.0 dumps DNC #DonaldTrump dirty dox on Wikileaks
by Rayzer 16 Jun '16

16 Jun '16

"The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon." Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups. I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy. Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers. But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers. Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it? Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC’s network. They mentioned a leaked database on Donald Trump. Did they mean this one? Direct to 6.8mb sampling in .doc format: https://guccifer2.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/1.doc Site with more: https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/

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Hillary Pushes Surveillance and Watchlists Etc, Hates Crypto Guns and Actual Freedom
by grarpamp 16 Jun '16

16 Jun '16

http://bitcoinist.net/clinton-recommends-expanding-state-surveillance/ http://www.npr.org/2016/06/13/481853366/in-wake-of-orlando-shooting-clinton… Hillary Clinton has come out in support of extending the surveillance state. Her Proposals include a dedicated task force applied to preventing “self-radicalization,” more “integrated intelligence use” among the different levels of law enforcement, working with silicon valley to “prevent online radicalization” and broadening the scope of federal watch lists, gun control related databases, and surveillance.

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Club Evidence
by grarpamp 14 Jun '16

14 Jun '16

On 6/14/16, Rayzer <rayzer(a)riseup.net> wrote: > Ps The police had a standoff with him before he was dead. Wonder how > many clubbers the cops killed. Rest assured any evidence the club owner had of that on camera... has been top secreted into the bitbucket. For some reason I see market for write-once time expiring storage into anonymous overlay networks...

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Rebel Cities Rejecting Surveillance
by grarpamp 14 Jun '16

14 Jun '16

https://decentralize.today/rebel-cities-towards-a-global-network-of-neighbo… Renata Avila Guatemalan Human Rights Lawyer, @Couragefound Advisory Board and @CreativeCommons Board The city of the future I see in promotional videos for systems of mass surveillance and mass control seems to be subsumed in a permanent state of normalcy. It is a city with no traffic, no protests, no visible disasters, no spontaneous mobilisations, no surprises. Spontaneous events, as if they were system errors, are suppressed before they occur. Movement analysis and decision-making happens in a control room that looks like a spaceship, where technicians work in real-time, watching all of us, without us being able to see them. There is no citizen access. To the contrary, these are closed systems, difficult to monitor. Where actions are regulated by a system, designed elsewhere, that pretends it is not political. But technology is political. Cities where everything is controlled by invisible technology, almost imperceptible in daily life. Those surveillance cameras now visible on street corners are replaced by systems of constant monitoring integrated in the landscape. Cities of sensors collecting our data all day long, where each movement is registered and stored, where decisions are automated and dehumanised. Monetised to optimise consumption, predict behavior. Control people. And where the benefits of not knowing who decides and why, stand to be gained by the same conglomerate who bets on this vision. A few companies developing software, hardware and capacities in countries that can be counted on one hand. A market of US$8 billion, which is expected to grow tenfold by the year 2020. Fed with meager public funds from countries like ours [in Latin America]. Although discourses keep feeding the imaginary, descriptions of cameras detecting pickpockets, this is something radically different. Matrices that combine lots of data in real-time. This vision for the city of the future, promoted by a small group of technology conglomerates, is one where quality of life is directly proportional to the predictability and homogeneity of its inhabitants, clashing with the struggle for diversity and diverse behaviors. To achieve this vision, much more is sacrificed than privacy. We pawn off our security to those in the sealed-off control room. It is to sacrifice the purest form of democracy we have, our right to protest freely and anonymously in the town square. Local surveillance systems are rapidly expanding across Latin America. Much earlier and faster than the regulatory frameworks for adequate protection of privacy and personal data. Without democratic mechanisms, community or neighbourhood consultations to determine their necessity or appropriateness. They are sophisticated and ephemeral systems that require updates and costly maintenance and show vague results. In Tegucigalpa, Honduras, for example, the city could not maintain the surveillance system due to a lack of budget to maintain the cameras. The contracts that are signed tie the hands of more than one public institution, borrowing from future municipal budgets, with a coordinated marketing and data machinery that does not offer solid evidence to prove effectiveness. Public authorities assure us that cameras, scenario modeling and mass surveillance will eliminate the problem of insecurity, advancing these over other public policies meant to attack extreme poverty and inequality of access to basic services, as well as the recovery of public space. The studies that vouch for the effectiveness of surveillance as a crime reduction measure are incomplete; they do not take local internal and external factors into account, and cannot be applied to different contexts. Cities of the future, promoted by the conglomerates benefitting from them, allow for events to be preempted, for preventive decisions to be made to control the masses, block protests, predict civic mobilisations for more and better rights. To discriminate by algorithm. To exclude by patterns of behavior. Do we want a future without surveillance? A future where diversity, and not uniformity of behavior, is the rule? Let’s start by eradicating (the now invisible) vigilante culture of the neighbourhood and the city. Let’s start by participating in all public spaces and if they do not exist, let’s open them. Before the final bastion of democracy becomes a memory erased by someone behind a screen. Among the steps we can all take, here are three I will elaborate on: Prevent the arrival of surveillance If mass surveillance is still at the exploratory stage as a security measure, it is important to organise neighbours against it, asking if municipal goods or services will be sacrificed in favor of surveillance, and question the impact that prioritising it will have on community and neighbourhood life. Moreover, it is important to ask about the long-term sustainability and viability of such projects, the conditions by which the municipality is acquiring them and the time frames. It is important to quantify what is being sacrificed to invest in surveillance. For example, indicating how many programs for children and youth at risk could be started for the same price, offering more complete and long-term solutions. Once a mass surveillance system is installed, privacy and intimacy are only for those who can afford them. Question mass surveillance already installed and the costs of maintenance and updates Decisions to improve security and quality of life of neighbourhoods and cities should be participatory. The benefits of installing mass and continuous surveillance mechanisms in public space should be weighed against analog, social alternatives. Technological surveillance is expensive because for every camera installed there are not just related fixed costs for maintenance and updates, there is also a sacrifice in terms of public spending on social programs. Moreover, almost all the technology providers are not domestic companies. Mostly closed technology, running on proprietary software, makes effective citizen oversight impossible. Contracts with camera providers and services are generally in the millions of dollars, and are binding long beyond the term of the signing government, without considering the realities of a municipality. Connect with other rebel cities and collectives To free ourselves from surveillance and other repressive and authoritarian forms of power that this opens up, we must immediately activate the mechanisms of law that allow us to oversee the functions of mass surveillance systems in our cities. And do this collectively, in coordination with other cities affected by the problem. Just as there are Smart Cities networks we should form our own Rebel Cities networks where surveillance is rejected and participatory democracy is affirmed, a democracy framed in respect for human rights and diversity, focused on collective solutions, which is the true path to safer cities. Not cameras. We can then simultaneously activate collaborative mechanisms to prevent their expansion. Make freedom of information requests for public information detailing their costs. Demand studies on their results. Take serious legal action in face of possible illegal uses of surveillance for discriminatory policies. Demand from authorities protection of personal data where it exists, and where it does not, demand that human rights authorities undertake feasibility studies, weighing the impact on individual guarantees before installing systems. Democracy begins and ends there. In its exercise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvGuw2zZ3qc http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/fiscal-crisis-honduras-security-cam… http://www.pic-six.com/?module=catalog&item_id=3&c_id=12

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A clever psyop - blame potential leaks on Russia
by Zenaan Harkness 14 Jun '16

14 Jun '16

OK, OK, I admit it's not -that- clever. And it's not exactly that ain't not never seen such tactics before... Alright alright, I guess it's even par for the course for the West and its MSM. Well here's a position I can be bold and not retract from: it seemed quite clever when I first read it. There, colour me naive! There are many adjectives appropriate to what we are seeing these days - barrell scraping, pathetic, limp, reactive, bullying, lacking any depth, lacking any imagination or creativity, farcical, impotent. That's the West... except not yet militarily impotent unfortunately. Russia About to Release Clinton's Emails? "...it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks." http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russia-Is-Reportedly-Set-… http://russia-insider.com/en/russia-about-release-clinton-emails/ri14941 Yep, got it, there's some awareness that it's most likely only a matter of time before some bloody punk (or Trump insider) releases more of those damning Hillary emails, and we are to blame Russia. Got it. Putin in fact - since it would of course be his personal vindictive intention against Hillary. No doubt about it, I now know what to think. God I love oilprice dot com!

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As I was saying, Juan ... (Data Overload Edition)
by Rayzer 14 Jun '16

14 Jun '16

Facing Data Deluge, Secret U.K. Spying Report Warned of Intelligence Failure 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data the program had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities. "The amount of data being collected, however, proved difficult for MI5 to handle. In March 2010, in another secret report, concerns were reiterated about the agency’s difficulties processing the material it was harvesting. “There is an imbalance between collection and exploitation capabilities, resulting in a failure to make effective use of some of the intelligence collected today,” the report noted. “With the exception of the highest priority investigations, a lack of staff and tools means that investigators are presented with raw and unfiltered DIGINT data. Frequently, this material is not fully assessed because of the significant time required to review it.” The problem was not unique to MI5. Many of the agency’s larger-scale surveillance operations were being conducted in coordination with the National Technical Assistance Centre, a unit of the electronic eavesdropping agency Government Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ. The Centre plays a vital but little-known role. One of its main functions is to act as a kind of intermediary, managing the highly sensitive data-sharing relationships that exist among British telecommunications companies and law enforcement and spy agencies. Perhaps the most important program the Centre helps deliver is code-named PRESTON, which covertly intercepts phone calls, text messages, and internet data sent or received by people or organizations in the U.K. who have been named as surveillance targets on warrants signed off by a government minister. A top-secret 2009 study found that, in one six-month period, the PRESTON program had intercepted more than 5 million communications. Remarkably, 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data it had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities. The authors of the study were alarmed because PRESTON was supposedly focused on known suspects, and yet most of the communications it was monitoring appeared to be getting ignored — meaning crucial intelligence could have been missed. “Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they noted. “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.” In full: https://theintercept.com/2016/06/07/mi5-gchq-digint-surveillance-data-delug… Again. IF EVERYONE was using Tor, PGP, etc, NO MATTER HOW FLAWED OR COMPROMISED, it WOULD break them, and their respective country's treasury. Promoting the idea we SHOULDN'T use it and 'spread the risk' is a useful idiot's cowardly POV. Rr

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the challenge of becoming an anarchist - why nearly everyone's a statist
by Zenaan Harkness 13 Jun '16

13 Jun '16

It seems that nearly everyone in this day and age is a statist to some degree, Juan excepted :) Why is this so, I have asked myself. The state is a bully, and no one has escaped the experiences of being bullied by the state - RBTs, license checks, seizing of bank accounts outside of any court hearing nor any chance for the target to be heard in a court of law with a righteous jurisdiction; and anyway, the courts, that last bastion of freedom and justice against the tyranny of the state, is almost completely, systemically, instutitionally corrupt by any common man standard. The state seizes taxes at every corner, violates our constitutions, unilaterally attacks other states, and conspires year after year to increase the burdens and the violations of its own constituents, namely we the people. The state (whether USA, Australia, etc) is nowadays so abhorrent, so in violation of the constitution which created it, so outside of ethics, morals, anything resembling higher causes or principles, it really is a beast of epic proportion which must be slayed or transformed, or the descent to total chaos war and bloodshed will once again happen, just another war to end all wars. Yet nearly everyone still clings to the state. Whether implicitly (it's the best history has given us, other options would of course be so much worse) or explicitly (driver licenses are our only hope to rid the world of evil environment destroying cars). 'We' have lost faith in our fellow humans to a high degree. We don't trust ourselves and so we don't trust our fellow 'citizens'. We put money, creativity, leisure, life, family, mortgage and the rest before any higher principle, in denial of the magnificence of that which we be, that which we are, these incredible universes we stroll around in. We expect "others won't stand behind me if I did take a stand against a bully or a tyranny, because deep down I know I am probably unlikely to get behind someone else taking a stand - especially since I haven't seen myself do so yet, so I have no evidence suggesting I'm that way inclined, so it's most likely true." We hail the heroes "oh I think it's awesome that history proves that someone comes along to fix things up every now and then - at a minimum on average of every 400 years". Yes this and endless more excuses for not supporing your local freedom "fighters" even in a small way, fatalism is just one more excuse. I've heard so many of them. 'We' live in golden cages. By historical standards, almost everyone in the West can eat cheesecake every day, travel to friends and sights and events one way or another, drape ourselves in silk and suede, or lounge on the beach. And the gold cage is never enough, the car or pushbike really needs to be newer, faster, with better suspension, and I want more and my kids need to go to more activities and events and and and... I have my life to live. And the state redistributes the wealth of others to make our golden cages. So we encage one another, binding our fellow man to tyranny, binding ourselves to self serving, self centered, selfish non action. Sleepwalking in comfort whilst the beast prepares its final meal. Gee it's great that heroes come along and solve such problems in history occasionally... now don't interrupt me whilst I shout down your Trump rebellion and screem the benefits of The Democratic Platform notwithstanding the evil that my state has become regardless. Cowards most of us.

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