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Little Brother: Civil Disobedience in the Information Age
By:
Ira Miller
Information
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” - Harry S. Truman
Information moves men and markets, and the balance of information power has always been with the state. Where people are uneducated and unable to communicate beyond the border of their village, it is easy for states to maintain the advantage. Today, widely available technology threatens to upset the state monopoly on information, and governments all over the world are fighting back.
The USA kicked off the new millennium by passing the infamous Patriot Act. Since then, both parties passed numerous bills further gutting the 1st, 4th and 6th Amendments to the U.S Constitution under the false justification of a War on Terror. It is more of a war on civil liberties as it has cost the American people more loss of liberty than the entire cold war. You know, the OTHER long drawn out excuse for militarization. The one where the enemy was a real threat.
Perhaps the most wide spread breach has been a new electronic spying program which would make a Stasi officer blush. Under the new Bill of Rights, nothing you read, say or type is private. With no evidence, or even reasonable suspicion, various agencies can monitor your phone, internet use, financial transactions and even reading list.(1) Both the Bush and Obama administrations have claimed the use of these powers was limited and responsible. At the same time, the NSA is building massive data centers hooked into all domestic communication lines.(2)
You may occasionally get arrested for filming a police officer, but the U.S. is a veritable paragon of privacy by global standards. In North Korea, cell phones are illegal,(3) and the Great Firewall of China blocks everything from Twitter to Google news. Russia, India, and virtually every other country in Asia and the Middle East practice some level of internet censorship. Even Australia is considering active censorship.(4)
The 21st century hasn't all been doom and gloom, though. Those same new technologies that Big Brother hopes to use against us have taken prominent roles in the overthrow of more than one oppressive government.(5) In Egypt, on Jan. 25th 2011, tweets spurred tens of thousands to protests all over the country. The next day, Mubarak's government instituted largely unsuccessful firewall measures. Photographic evidence of innumerable atrocities taken with cell phones and cheap camcorders continued to stream out of the country. Media outlets picked up videos of police shooting protesters and violators of curfew. Just 17 days later, Mubarak resigned.
Egypt is not alone. Wordwide, there are now 87 cell phone and 35 internet subscriptions per 100 people.(6) This means that for every crowd of 100 people gathered to protest, there are dozens of potential records of the event. Take any objectionable action in public, and the world will know within hours.
While western newpapers may pick up a popular story like revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, they may also censor a story. Proxy servers and encrypted messages may get around your local government firewall, but what if the fat, comfortable newspaper editor on the end of the line doesn't want to upset his congressman? No matter. If a state tries to restrict the press, people will simply communicate their problems to each other directly or self-publish.
Through anonymous, encrypted communication channels, whistle blowers no longer need fear reprisals. Sure, there have been prominent exposures, but most of these were due to user error. For instance, Bradley Manning, of Wikileaks fame, emailed his friends about the documents he allegedly leaked. With proper precautions, truly anonymous communication is possible for anyone. The age of the voiceless is rapidly disappearing.
Finance
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini
Despite expanded financial police power offered by the aforementioned Patriot Act(7), the federal government was unable to justify cutting off financial support for Wikileaks.
This didn't stop the censors. Their cronies in the banking industry were more than happy to do the dirty deed. Visa, Bank of America, PayPal, Western Union and others jumped on the censorship bandwagon by freezing all Wikileaks accounts and transactions.(8) Sometimes, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Corporations may buy politicians on the open market. Politicians may bail out any company big enough to afford the campaign contributions, and the Federal Reserve may print trillions of dollars to give right back to those banks at 0% interest loans. It is still important to maintain the facade that the government respects a free press.
Enter Bitcoin.(9) Wikileaks has received about $15,000 in Bitcoin donations since the banking blockade began.(10) Some have criticized Bitcoin for not offering the average user perfect anonymity. This is fair, though it can be secured like any other information channel. The important point is that Bitcoin is completely outside of the traditional banking system. No combination of state and oligarchy can freeze your Bitcoin wallet, nor devalue the contents.
An older form of state control is that of trade and capital restriction. The state says you can buy this, but only in this quantity and from these sources. Export precious metal? That takes form 1A22. Just register for an import/export license, give us your Social Security number and run all transactions by your local bureaucrat. Want to send your impoverished relatives overseas more than $500 a quarter? No. Just no.
Anyone who believes such laws are unjust has alternatives. Gold and silver have always worked for in person transactions and nothing beats Bitcoin for long distance. Free commerce can't be stopped any more than free speech.
Home
“When the people fear the government, that's tyranny; when the government fears the people, that's freedom.” - Thomas Jefferson
A quick look around the world shows us the true meaning of the War on Terror. It isn't the people that are in terror. Your government is afraid of you. It is afraid to let you speak your mind on the internet. It is afraid of your reading list. It is afraid you'll document the next act of police brutality you witness. It is terrified you will trade freely and without their consent.
Between cheap, widely available electronics, encrypted, global communication, and Bitcoin, you can ignore the state entirely. Exercise your right to film and discuss the actions of public employees, wherever you deem that they are in the wrong. Speak privately with your friends, family and business partners, wherever they are. Send them money without forms, fees, restrictions, or political risk.
Use these tools and remember: you are not alone.
1 http://www.aclu.org/national-security/surveillance-under-usa-patriot-act
2 Bamford, James. “The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center.” Wired Magazine. March 15 2012
3 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/mobile-technology/north-koreas-small-pool-of-mobile-phones-pose-a-big-political-threat/article2419296/
4 http://en.rsf.org/australia-australia-12-03-2012,42080.html
5 Project on Information Technology & Political Islam, “Opening Closed Regimes”. May 29 2012. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12947477/publications/2011_Howard-Duffy-Freelon-Hussain-Mari-Mazaid_pITPI.pdf
6 http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/KeyTelecom.html
7 http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/index.html
8 http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
9 http://bitcoin.org/
10 http://blockchain.info/address/1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v
Visit Ira Miller's webpage at FeedZeBirds.Com, an open market for advertising by tweet and being paid for tweeting.
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