Crypto-Anarchism

On 10th anniversary, Pirate Bay launches PirateBrowser to evade filesharing blocks

"The PirateBrowser website explains that the application combines Tor client Vidalia – which anonymises data connections – with the FireFox Portable Edition browser, the FoxyProxy add-on and 'some custom configs'. The site also claims that the browser is an anti-censorship tool rather than purely for piracy, citing countries including Iran and North Korea alongside the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland as places it expects PirateBrowser to be particularly useful." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingOn 10th anniversary, Pirate Bay launches PirateBrowser to evade filesharing blocks

Treating Surveillance as Damage and Routing Around It

"Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after Napster was shut down — Kazaa, Kazaa lite, eDonkey, eMule, The Pirate Bay — was less dependent on central servers and other vulnerable nodes than the one before it. Wikileaks responded the same way to U.S. government attempts to shut it down." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingTreating Surveillance as Damage and Routing Around It

Mega to run ‘cutting-edge’ encrypted email after Lavabit’s ‘privacy seppuku’

"Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz is working on a highly-secure email service to run on a non-US-based server. It comes as the US squeezes email providers that offer encryption and Mega’s CEO calls Lavabit’s shutdown an 'honorable act of Privacy Seppuku.' The concept he was referring to was developed by secure service providers such as Cryptocloud, which made a ‘corporate seppuku’ pledge to oppose the mass surveillance and shield the privacy of their users’ data. The name for the move apparently derives from a Japanese ritual suicide, which was originally practiced by samurai to preserve honor." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMega to run ‘cutting-edge’ encrypted email after Lavabit’s ‘privacy seppuku’

Bitmessage: Choice Of A Rightly Paranoid Generation

"Bitmessage is an open-source communications protocol for keeping your email private. Unlike PGP and similar programs that hide just the content of messages, Bitmessage also hides metadata like the sender and receiver of messages. And unlike PGP, Bitmessage doesn't require that users manage public or private keys to use the system; Bitmessage uses strong authentication so that the sender of a message cannot be spoofed. Bitmessage is also decentralized and trustless, which means that you don't need to trust root certificate authorities or any third parties who, under legal duress from a government, might give up your data." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBitmessage: Choice Of A Rightly Paranoid Generation

Jeffrey Tucker: Is Bitcoin Real or Not?

"Certainly government can regulate exchange between government currencies and Bitcoin. It can also regulate income in Bitcoin the same as with other currency. This is not some tax-free nirvana in the making. The government can also oversee contractual regulations and securities activities in Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin itself is a peer-to-peer system of cryptographically guarded exchange, and it lives on a distributed server model. It is not a company. It is not a stock. It is not a product. It is a ledger that no one in particular runs or owns. It is not possible for Bitcoin as such to be destroyed any more than government can destroy algebra." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingJeffrey Tucker: Is Bitcoin Real or Not?

Another US encrypted email service, founded by PGP inventor, also shuts down

"Later on Thursday, an executive with a better-known provider of secure email said his company had also shut down that service. Jon Callas, co-founder of Silent Circle Inc, said on Twitter and in a blog post that Silent Circle had ended Silent Mail. 'We see the writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now,' Mr Callas wrote. Silent Circle, co-founded by the PGP cryptography inventor Phil Zimmermann, will continue to offer secure texting and secure phone calls." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAnother US encrypted email service, founded by PGP inventor, also shuts down

Facing pressure from U.S., encrypted email service Lavabit shuts down

"An encrypted email service believed to have been used by US leaker Edward Snowden shut down on Thursday apparently as a result of pressure from US authorities. Lavabit owner Ladar Levison posted a message at the website telling users that the he was pulling the plug on the secure email service launched in Texas nearly a decade ago. Levison lamented that he was barred from sharing details of what prompted Lavabit’s demise. US law allows national security officials to make requests to companies that come with the caveat they must be kept secret." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFacing pressure from U.S., encrypted email service Lavabit shuts down

Meshnet activists rebuilding the internet from scratch

"Across the US, from Maryland to Seattle, work is underway to construct user-owned wireless networks that will permit secure communication without surveillance or any centralised organisation. They are known as meshnets and ultimately, if their designers get their way, they will span the country. The Seattle Meshnet has just completed a successful crowdfunding campaign for meshboxes – routers that come preloaded with the cjdns software needed to join Hyperboria. Users will just plug the routers into their existing internet connection and be ready to go on the virtual meshnet – or a local physical meshnet when one becomes available." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMeshnet activists rebuilding the internet from scratch

Tor Urges Users To Leave Insecure Windows Operating System

"In a critical security advisory issued over the weekend, the Tor Project told its users that they should seriously consider migrating away from Microsoft’s Windows operating system and disabling JavaScript. The Tor Project security advisory was a response to revelations on Sunday that an attack had targeted users of the Tor Browser. According to the advisory, the attack exploited a Firefox JavaScript vulnerability that has already been resolved. The vulnerability is a cross-platform threat, but the exploit in this case was Windows-specific. Tor Browser Bundle users on Linux, OS X, and LiveCD systems like Tails were never at risk of exploit." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingTor Urges Users To Leave Insecure Windows Operating System

Interview with Slashdot founder Rob Malda

"The stuff that’s interesting has as much to do with the technology as the information. I’m interested in the technology the government uses to spy on me. I’m interested in the fact of the anonymous file-sharing network that made the Manning stuff possible. That’s the stuff that gets to my soft, gooey center. The policy parts, I don’t feel like I have a say in that. I don’t have a voice there. I know what I want to see happen. But I don’t feel like I have a say or a voice so I choose to be interested in the technology and think about where that’s going to take us next. All that stuff never would have existed 20 years ago." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingInterview with Slashdot founder Rob Malda