State-Smashing

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

Bitcoin: Tax haven of the future

"Tomorrow’s tax havens could be fueled by new technology like Bitcoin and Litecoin — online currencies that can be used to purchase everything from coffee to illegal drugs. The problem for government coffers: There’s no mechanism to ensure that people who make money through such digital currency report the income to the IRS. In its fight against tax evasion, the U.S. is largely focused on shining a light into bank accounts held by Americans in other countries. But experts say the rise of Bitcoin, which doesn’t require a bank account, could force the U.S. to rethink its approach." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBitcoin: Tax haven of the future

Northern Michigan Secession

"For those who have never been to northern Michigan, and the Upper Peninsula in particular, there is a culture here all its own, with no special love for the politics of Lansing and Detroit. As with Vermont, the effort to secede in northern Michigan still has passion and traction. And with American secession efforts receiving more visibility and thus being taken more seriously, we will hear much more about it in the coming years." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNorthern Michigan Secession

NSA ditching 90 percent of its system administrators to avoid leaks

"NSA director Keith Alexander told a conference in New York City that headcount among its system administrators would be severely curtailed in the future. Roughly 1,000 such employees maintain the agency’s networks and equipment. The NSA is dismissing all those people in the name of secrecy. 'What we’ve done,' Alexander added, 'is we’ve put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing.' An automated system operated by a minimum of human beings, on the other hand, will make the NSA’s digital assets more defensible." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA ditching 90 percent of its system administrators to avoid leaks

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?

The Security State’s Reaction to Snowden Shows Why It’s Doomed

"Networks, when attacked, become even more decentralized and resilient. A good example is Napster and its successors, each of which has more closely approached an ideal peer-to-peer model, and further freed itself from reliance on infrastructure that can be shut down by central authority, than its predecessors. Hierarchies, on the other hand, respond to attack by becoming even more ossified, brittle and closed. Hierarchies respond to leaks by becoming internally opaque and closed even to themselves, so that their information is compartmentalized and they are less able to make effective use of the knowledge dispersed among their members." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe Security State’s Reaction to Snowden Shows Why It’s Doomed

A Radical Constitutional Amendment to Protect Whistleblowers

"The Constitution’s failure to protect free speech at a seemingly basic level points to a major defect in its design. While it may be praiseworthy in forcefully demanding that the government it authorizes respect the rights of its citizens, it has not provided the real structural support to ensure that those demands are met. Anyone seriously interested in protecting free speech must push for a very radical 'constitutional amendment.' We should work not just to change the words of the document we call 'the Constitution,' but instead amend our legal system by completely changing the way it’s constituted." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingA Radical Constitutional Amendment to Protect Whistleblowers

1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia – Wikipedia

"The 1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia was a democratic revolution that started with demonstrations and hunger strikes to overthrow the Mongolian People's Republic and eventually moved towards the democratic present day Mongolia and the writing of the new constitution. It was spearheaded by mostly younger people demonstrating on Sükhbaatar Square in the capital Ulaanbaatar. It ended with the authoritarian government resigning without bloodshed. The Democratic Party stemming from the pro-democracy activists has been on the power of Mongolia's presidency, parliament and government since 2012." Continue reading →

Continue Reading1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia – Wikipedia

Michael Scheuer: Obama, Rice, Kerry, McCain, and Graham intervening for more war

"Today there are only two parties in the United States: (a) the bipartisan and interventionist elite and their ideological, fifth-column, and globalist supporters and funders (AKA: The Tyranny), and (b) the rest of us who are taxed to death for the privilege of paying for, and seeing our children die in their unnecessary, intervention-caused wars. How can Americans change this reality? It seems clear that intervention cannot be stopped at the ballot box. On the issue of options, there are many to consider. But one can get off to no better start than to reread the works of John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine written in 1775 and 1776." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMichael Scheuer: Obama, Rice, Kerry, McCain, and Graham intervening for more war