1 January 2014

30c3 Aftermath

Jacob Appelbaum's, Julian Assange's and others' emphasis at 30c3 was to pursue technological offenses rather than futile expectation of political, financial and legal controls of spying which inevitably confirm what spies do, for it is in their interest to support spying and secrecy to maintain hegemonic, heirarchial institutions under "the rule of law."

At the origin of cypherpunks there was a crackdown on encryption as a munitions. That skirmish was thought to have been won. Now Snowden has revealed that victory was a delusion, the real one-sided battle was fought surreptiously in secret, not only by contaminating crypto but by development of bypasses, implants, backdoors, booby traps, ruses, scams, bribes, dual-hatted contracts with crypto-hackers.

Can an openly avowed combat on the technologies of political control (1) work or will it be demonized, fought by secret underhanded means? Public debate deployed as a ruse in the 1990s as now.

(1) An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control

This combat is about far more than crypto and coders must be supplemented with all the disciplines of science and technology which are now serving industry and the "lawful" hegemons.

30c3 advocated a direct attack on these means, not wait for the public debate to be rigged in favor of the hegemon with PR, propaganda, lobbying, bribery, contracts, scare stories, terrifying incidents, the customary dirty fighting and tricks of spies and "defense" industry.

Is that technological attack on the political, financial, legal hegemon likely to succeed? Or will the crackdown on armed (technological) dissent become as violent as it has  in the past?

There is a likelihood encryption will be restricted, by fiat, by planting weaknesses, by covert attacks, by technological bypasses, by rigged failures to create doubt of effectiveness.

That was the way CryptoAG operation was run. Now the RSA ploy is operative. Is the effect of Snowden to be a series of ploys and ruses. Worse, hop on board the paranoia train, is Snowden a disinfo op for leaking gobs of ruses?

Musings:

A singular feature of hegemons is that they are dominated by "self-regulating organizations" which set the terms and conditions of the ruling entity, assure enforcement of the rules, and perpetuate themselves under "self-regulation."

These are successors of royalty which, instead of divine right, backed by military power, they invoke the "Constitution," a law which distinctively empowers "lawful" behavior according to the rules of the hegemon.

No wonder the US promotes constitutional government around the planet, backed by military power, most often by denigrating other forms of government.

A striking parallel is the rise of the clerics in Europe as an alternative to religious hegemons. From clerics came lawyerly self-regulating hegemons. A new religion hidden within supremacist judges' black robes.

Enough of lawful self-regulation in secrecy, unpunishable by lawful means. Justice is out of control, prison populations stuffed, bloated law enforcement and spies raiding the public till, private spies, cops and mercenaries worse than the official, or indistinguishable.

Back to the military which backs the hegemons. Technology controls its effectiveness, thus the need for the hegemons to control manufacture, distribution, ownership and application of military means. Concentration of wealth through government regulation, economic and tax policy, and military supremacy reifies special privileges and exculpations for the enforcers of law.

Law->taxation->enforcement->informants->spying->assassination->military action.