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Digital Freedom

Enabling digital freedom in an unfree world
Created by System Administrator on Sat 14 of Nov., 2009 14:35 UTC
Last post Sat 30 of Jan., 2010 15:01 UTC
(4 Posts | 843 Visits | Activity=2.00)

Find:
Today (30 Jan 2010) we decided to remove the 100% SSL protection on this site since most newbies are scared to death by the idiotic warnings that Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft engineer into their browsers.



You can choose to visit and use SSL 100% of the time, but we let you come in naked and unprotected because Mozilla and Microsoft prefer to scare you with Fear Uncertainity and Doubt, not to forget fraudulent inducement to trust "authorities" that encourage you to trust your purchasing power to officially sanctioned scams/frauds.

Learning to trust


The time has come to fork a browser that come with NO CERTIFICATE AUTHORITIES!

She who uses a computer will have to decide who to trust for herself. Is she suppose to lay down and get raped because someone came along with a certificate from some moron? No, she will have to be courted by suitors who wish to show that they are responsible men.



The inescapable route to becoming a responsible, grown adult


In thinking of this problem, we always think back to OpenPGP and SSH security protocols and how wonderful it would be if these were combined. In fact, this has been done by the clever monkeys at Monkeysphere.

We propose that this be immediately adopted by the forked browser codebase which will continue to follow the Firefox source tree except for:

  1. Completely removing any CAs from the codebase, and replacement with a simple SSH style accept this certificate and authority, with a warning about blind trust in authorities - have you met the guy? would you trust him with a 100 bucks? How much?.

  2. Implementing a Monkeysphere style ssh for the web protocol: pgp://


If you are interested in working on this, please contact blog@rayservers.com



Using SSL on this site


Recently the root certificate of our SSL provider IPS CA expired. This causes problems with all browsers and e-mail clients as the renewed signers certificate is not, obviously, in your browser's certificate store.

The Rayservers CA now signs the SSL certificate on this site - you get the same brain dead warning as you would when we use the renewed commercial cert. You do not have to trust some idiots at some authority. If you are here, you have to make up your mind to trust us. If you do, then do the following on Mozilla Firefox:

  1. Click on http://image.rayservers.com/rayservers-ca.crt

  2. Check the three trust boxes and accept.


Detailed screenshots and steps are here.


On 12/10/09 18:53, Europus wrote:


> John Young wrote:


>> Thirded.


>
> Not to be another "me too" but, me too.
>
> It should be safe to say, we all feel that way - those of us who
> really care. But "me too-ism" is addressed elsewhere.
>
> So, *group hug* *fist punch* *high five* (select as appropriate)
> and let's keep our guards up. They are not relenting.
>
> Ulex


Dear Friends,

Here is another me too, with a request (at the bottom).

I have had quite the adventure over the last few years, enough I believe to
annoy the rascals. I practice what most only preach, and am determined to not
make the mistakes such as those by e-gold et all.

It seems that the most occult of contemporary knowledge is money, economics and
law, and the from extensive conversations I know how rare a combination of true
comprehension in such is.

>From my experience it seems that even with just a few readers I have managed to
annoy some of "them"... because some of the analysis has hit close to home.

The time has come to go forward with the next generation of software and the
next generation of lawful money. I have set up TikiWiki? 4.0 on an SSL only site,
feel free to use and create with it.

https://freedom.rayservers.com/Web+4.0

This below is the stub for a distributed agent platform for Global Settlement:

https://freedom.rayservers.com/Globalisles.net

This covers the stub for the GSF system:
https://freedom.rayservers.com/The+Global+Settlement+Foundation+System

A stub for economics & how we will have to proceed:

https://freedom.rayservers.com/Weave+your+Independence

Some articles I believe have made an impact in certain circles:
http://www.rayservers.com/blog/inflation-and-deflation-all-at-the-same-time

http://www.rayservers.com/blog/generating-power-from-stupidity-the-harsh-truths-of-the-world-financial-system

http://www.rayservers.com/blog/fraudulent-finance-for-dummies
https://freedom.rayservers.com/Fraud

And in nice color PDF that will land on the desk of every bureaucrat at the UN
some day soon that explains what your "cash in the bank" is:
http://www.rayservers.com/images/AUric.pdf

An abbreviated GSF overview:
http://www.global-settlement.org/GSF-web.pdf

None of this is going to be subsidized by any of the gentlemen who would rather
wish it weren't. So this information needs to get in front of those who matter -
those who control assets of production - who stand to lose control in the
greatest swindle of all time that is ongoing.

That swindle, is staggering. Dubai is visible evidence of it. Too many people
who once had an incredible number of zeros in their "asset portfolios" are
waking up to a nightmare they do not comprehend. The reason is so staggeringly
simple that they refuse to believe it: Bank-liabilities to pay legal tender are
vanishing into the thin air from which they appeared.

So here is the request:

I wrote a Christmas 2009 message that is here:
http://www.rayservers.com/xmas09

It touches on much of this, in an simpler fashion. It needs to go out far and
wide without spamming. An economy has to be build from scratch. Those that try
to restore the Common Law such as Rod Class and Dave Buess, need to be widely
known.

The scandals of our time need coherent coverage. It is not going to happen
within the old dying structures.

http://www.rayservers.com/blog/rodney-class-vs-us

So, please see this message: http://www.rayservers.com/xmas09 and send it out to
your friends. If you have a high traffic web site, use the affiliate system to
put the word out and make money while you are at it. If Rayservers is successful
commercially (way beyond what it is today), it will be good news for the poor
coders who are coding tor for an occasional T-shirt.

https://freedom.rayservers.com/blogpost3-Tor-and-Bandwidth-Settlement

Become an issuer, vault, dealer, producer, investor, trader, coder, miner,
doctor etc., and to be innovative. There is a whole world economy waiting to be
taken over. Weave your independence:

https://freedom.rayservers.com/Weave+your+Independence

Privacy has one very important feature - keeping the profits of your
productivity from being stolen by the parasites in power. This is why "they"
hate it, and this is why Google's new attitude is now Evil.

Cheers,


hr


On Thu, 10 Dec 2009, StealthMonger? wrote:



> Eugen, thank you generally for your postings to this forum.
>
> But thank you especially for bringing these vital words from Schneier
> to our attention at this time.  For example:
>
> Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> writes:
>


> > http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to.html


>


> > December 9, 2009


>


> > Schmidt said:


>


> >     I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want
> > anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.


>


> > My Schneier Reaction to Eric Schmidt


>


> >     ...


>


> >     For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of
> > correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness.


>


> >     ...



Allow me to second that Eugen.

//Alif
The Other Mongermeat

"Never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public
plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to
the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always
be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."

Joseph Pulitzer, 1907 Speech


hr
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to.html

December 9, 2009

My Reaction to Eric Schmidt

Schmidt said:

    I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want
anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you
really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines --
including Google — do retain this information for some time and it's
important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the
Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made
available to the authorities.

This, from 2006, is my response:

    Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing
nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

    We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not
deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection
or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower,
and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic
human need.

    ...

    For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of
correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We
become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that --
either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be
brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused
upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because
everything we do is observable and recordable.

    ...

    This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us.
This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And
it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private
lives.

    Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy."
The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under
threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative
scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion,
security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition
of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we
have nothing to hide.



There was an interesting discussion on Cypherpunks that is recorded here (reverse chronological):


On 11/24/09 00:25, coderman wrote:


> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Rayservers  wrote:


>> ...
>> I said price and I also said tokens on another node. It could be peanuts or oil
>> or music or whatever - perhaps donuts. Exchange value for value. At the end of
>> that chain... I go buy a donut.
>>
>> Sure, you can trade points, hashcash, torrentpoints... how do I, who run an ISP,
>> go buy a donut? tit-for-that. lol.


>
> my apologies for focusing solely on the price/money angle. there is a
> good post about incentives on the Tor blog that covers similar ideas
> and discusses the complexities and pit falls associated:
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/two-incentive-designs-tor
>
> using loom for settlement is probably too much overhead for Tor but is
> aiming closer to what is needed.
>
> my issue with money payment in particular is described in this paragraph:
> "On top of that are the social implications of adding money into the
> system. Nick keeps reminding me of sociological studies saying that
> rewarding volunteers with t-shirts makes them feel good about their
> contribution, whereas rewarding them with a small amount of cash makes
> them subconsciously start to value their contribution based on the
> cash you give them. So they're more likely to stop volunteering, as
> they don't feel their effort is properly appreciated. More details
> here0, here1, and here2. It's hard to say how right this
> research is, but it seems a rough set of variables to add in if we can
> avoid it."
>
> 1. http://www.congo-education.net/wealth-of-networks/ch-04.htm
> 2. http://fiveandone.wikispaces.com/file/view/Why+Incentive+Plans+Cannot+Work.pdf
> 3. http://www.google.com/search?q=Effects+of+externally+mediated+rewards+on+intrinsic+motivation
>
> sorry for the rash response. i too am anxious for the day when robust
> incentives in Tor provide a much larger, much more capable network!
>
> best regards,


No, not rash at all. Its just the way things are today. Very few people can even
explain what a dollar is. The subconscious disillusionment with what passes for
"money" today results in the aversion towards anything to do with it.

One rightly feels that it should be possible to get by without this crap and the
attendant parasites and official scammers and terrorists. This is a true
statement - the worst crime against humanity is the "money| system as has been
practised in a few generations, the attendant theft of all the people's gold by
fraud and war and the virtual enslavement by the Identity State build on
monetized birth certificates.

Re: using loom for settlement is probably too much overhead...

One does not do a loom payment per byte. Once a day, say, one buys so many
gigabytes of transfer at a particular node which issues and settles its own
tokens all by itself. One does the same at a bunch of other nodes.

When one initiates an onion routed circuit or mixmaster message, one passes
tokens onion encrypted back to the node paying it in its own "bandwidth"
currency. That node does not have to talk to anyone else to settle it.

Think of loom as a two dimensional sparse array, 2128 x 2128. Its a DB with
2128 "types" with 2128 "locations". The node issues from a random location for
a random type it claims for its own bandwidth. That location goes negative. It
hands a random location with a certain number of tokens to a particular
customer... the sum of those 2128 locations is zero. When a node "pays" by
revealing its location, the appropriate number of tokens is "moved" back to the
issuer location and "extinguished".

Paying that node for its tokens is revealing so many tokens of a particular type
on another node, that issues, say oil contracts in millilitres. A particular
mix/tor node may accept oil contracts from nodes O, I and L and Donut tokens
from D, O and N. Note a node could issue Oil, Donut and bandwidth tokens. No
shortage of types here.

The robotic market will soon vote the most preferred tokens by merely using
them. "Ithaca Hours" for street bums could be a currency. I just don't think it
would be very popular.

A node may be specific enough - "Dollar liabilities of BigBank?, Littletown
Branch, Somewhere"; "Gold coins in ATM on 51st and 5th, NYC". People will soon
catch on that all "Dollars" are not equal. What if BigBank? is rumoured to go
bust?...

Why not digital cash? Every digital cash issuer would need to maintain a spend
book DB... why bother. For high value issuance, perhaps we would use that. A
loom node may store a cert at a particular issue location and issue tokens
against that. This way many nodes could issue oil contracts without being an oil
company. Oil company may only issue large contracts in DBCs.

Why should tor engineers work for only T-shirts? In the future, there is no
reason why they could not be as rich as any Microsoft employee... just better -
self made men whose gross income no one knows.

An integration application that can talk tor, Mixmaster, SMTP, tahoe, loom,
trubanc etc... is needed. I'm planning one:

https://freedom.rayservers.com/Globalisles.net

Other neat stuff that should go viral and which inspired the name:
https://freedom.rayservers.com/Claim+of+Right

It is similar, no doubt, to the GSF project which I have had a lot to do with:
http://www.global-settlement.org/

Perhaps the word Global can be saved from the Globalists who have butchered many
fine words... such as "money", "profit", etc. What happens to a cow who does not
produce more than she consumes? DEAD BEEF.

Cheers,






Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:25:49 -0800
Subject: Re: Incentives in Networking
From: coderman 

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:59:15 +0000
From: Rayservers 


On 11/23/09 15:08, Eugen Leitl wrote:


> --- Forwarded message from Paul Syverson  ---
>
> From: Paul Syverson 
> Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:05:49 -0500
> To: or-talk@freehaven.net
> Subject: Re: The Case for Banning Reduced Hop Count Implementations
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17 (2007-11-01)
> Reply-To: or-talk@freehaven.net
>
> Thank you Lucky. I had been meaning to write something like your
> post.
>
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 02:43:47AM -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:


>> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Lucky Green  wrote:
>> snip


>>> seeking higher anonymity. The end state, if lower than three hop
>>> implementations are permitted to use the Tor network, is that Tor's
>>> network performance will acceptable only to users of lower hop clients.


>> I presume you can back this assertion up with simulation results, at a minimum?
>>
>> I look forward to reading your paper.


>
> Even if Lucky's basic points are eventually born out, you are right
> that more analysis of latency and incentives would be valuable.  To


Incentives in Networking

Too long has the community of anonymity software writers ignored the tragedy of
the commons. If each tor router could advertise a price for amount of megabytes
transferred, it would be a self healing system.

Nodes that are overloaded would raise their price. Nodes that had spare capacity
would lower theirs. Intelligent clients would be able to pick a route that best
suits their latency needs.

This quickly becomes a complex scenario like the travelling salesman problem
that Web 1.0 and 2.0 technology will not solve. The "semantic web" of Web 3.0
only makes sense in an environment where information is not centralized on an
RDBMS with a PHP front end.

The RDBMS has been a crutch for programmers who cannot search data in memory. It
is also a crutch of those who fail to dig deep into persistence. In an online
world, persistence to disk is a crutch and a danger to those that seek
anonymity. Better that your data is out there - like on Tahoe - encrypted to
your key, but in memory like Scalaris with intelligent spooling to encrypted
disks on nodes so equipped. Boot from CDROM. Look mama, no data on disk.

SMTP was the high point of Web 1.0 protocols. Why? Because it implements queues
and asynchronous messaging. It can be near instant, not much slower than a http
POST. It can be secure - and the anonymity high as in mixmaster.

What describe I call Web 4.0. It will enable Economically Viable Self Extending
Wireless Networks. https://freedom.rayservers.com/Web+4.0

Incentive Settlement

The other requirement of Web 4.0 is settlement. Since credit cards, there has
been a refusal to look at the problems of settlement. There was little
incentive. Digital cash did not make it not because the technology sucked, it
was because they did not look into settlement. Credit cards succeeded not
because they were wonderful, but because they caused promissory liabilities to
be created by both the buyer AND the seller. It was a God send for the official
scammer = the bankers. Settlement quietly centralized at the DTCC
[www.dtcc.com], where the Quadrillion Dollar figure is quietly touted on their site.

Ignorant of what settlement is, or how *they* caused the flood of promissory
checking account liabilities, the common people today are destroying the
promissory liabilities they created. "Crisis" by design. They have been entrapped:

http://www.rayservers.com/blog/generating-power-from-stupidity-the-harsh-truths-of-the-world-financial-system

You can only settle what you issue. This, put tersely is the problem. Each tor
node can issue tokens of megabytes of encrypted data transferred. Each can
settle its own tokens. It will have to accept tokens of other value issued by
other nodes in payment. No need for digital cash. Postage meters are enough. See
https://loom.cc/

Its cheaper than "free"

The cost of accessing the internet is not zero. A monthly charge is paid to the
ISP - either dial-up or broadband. People with a server on the web pay a monthly
hosting fee. If you are google, your monthly bill is not trivial. The sum of
these payment streams is what pays for the "free" services in some fashion.

Starving Web 1.0

The gang of 535 and their minders are busy creating "laws" that ISPs must
enforce rights in imaginary property so that no one focuses on the fact that
*they* stole all the real property in cohorts with the financial fraudsters.

Be that as it may, it will become cheaper for ISPs to offer "so many bytes" of
encrypted data transferred than to continue to amortize their running costs via
inefficient allocation of revenue streams from retail accounts.

It will become cheaper for those who adopt Web 4.0 DSL routers to access the web
as the ISP is freed of his obligations to monitor the content. This will take a
court case or two, but it will happen.

Tor will have to grow up. Web 4.0 will have to support asynchronous messaging.
Why? Because your PC is nothing more than a glorified dumb terminal - enabling
the centralized control of society. The pendulum will inevitably swing the other
way out of necessity. Low latency does not get better than your own PC for
"streaming media" such as videos.

SMTP Email has become a centralized database on a handful of NSA sites with
popular brand names. This will have to move back to a mixmaster style pay per
message system. No spam, or at least, they will have to pay your *ask price* to
accept an email.

The semantic web of 3.0 will have to become a reality as searching for
information will not be searching a centralized database like Google. Searches
will cost some money... again your total bill will be *less* than your monthly
broadband bill unless you are consuming HDTV movies. In which case, you can pay.
Suddenly RIAA is our friend. They can *sell* content, reverse auction style,
which is how it is anyway in the content industry. See RAH's rants somewhere.

Is the current code base of Tor going to evolve to achieve all this? I think
not. Code will have to be written with higher levels of abstraction.
Transactions will have to queue. MVC will yield to continuations.

The geopolitical outlook

It is not pretty. A bunch of scammers stole all the people's gold by fraud and
war. They have all the guns... Every "citizen" the world over is their
registered slave. Fathers and mothers gave their children up as chattel property
of the State Register = give to the State. It is fraud on a scale you cannot
imagine, yet it pervades the air so you do not see it.

An anonymous life.

A pseudonymous life for a writer may be attractive. Better yet, to construct
engines of wealth that run on their own. The old fashioned tools are
corporations. In the future they will be private express trusts. The only
difference is that the latter won't be "registered" with the official scammers.

People have begun to notice these scams. Some brave Americans are in court.
http://www.rayservers.com/blog/rodney-class-vs-us

This is the stuff of world change. Web 4.0 will be a part of it. You can sneer
from the sidelines or take part.

Cypherpunks write code... I hope to be one (of many in the future) who can pay
such people by creating an ecosystem for such code and bring about what is
needed. In the mean time, see you on https://freedom.rayservers.com/

Cheers,




 

From http://www.kozubik.com/published/fsosa.txt(external link) Related: Web 4.0


John Kozubik -  - http://www.kozubik.com(external link)


In the very recent past, the world has crossed a threshold, beyond which
anonymous free speech can only be limited by completely removing the basic
infrastructure of commerce.

The union of cryptography, ubiquitous portable computers and low-cost-
standards-based wireless networking does not guarantee free speech, but it
does guarantee that such restrictions imply an inability to conduct modern
business and a dramatically lowered standard of living.

In this environment freedom of speech is atomic - it cannot be partially
limited.  It can be both global and instantaneous.  Most importantly, it
is not dependent on centralized public networks like the Internet.

It will be shown that tools available to anyone in a society that takes
part in modern commerce are all that is required for anonymous free
speech.  It will further be shown that such tools must be available for
such a society to continue participating in modern commerce, and that
their availability is an all or nothing proposition.  Finally, it will be
shown that a high value should be placed on open standards and
interoperability as well as peer-centric attitudes towards communication
and networks.

Taken as a whole, the FSOSA concept should be used to encourage free
speech and to discourage policymakers from pursuing policies that are
destined either to fail, or to relegate them to the "stone age".


Free Speech Or Stone Age


All digital information can be encrypted, and a rich set of tools exists
to hide the use of encryption.  These tools are widely used for all
manner of commerce such as online banking and corporate intranets.  Even
the most mundane protection of a cafe or hotel wireless network implies
encryption tools sufficient to protect any piece of data1.  Even if
these tools were not already universally adopted, they can themselves be
hidden, as can their use.  Therefore, the only way to keep a piece of data
from a person or group is to deny posession of general purpose computers
and to deny all international travelers from importing their own.

Portable computers are now largely ubiquitous2 and the price of older
models approaches zero3.  Their mass adoption and the reliance on them
by every economic sector makes them synonymous with modern commerce.  As
with the software that hides information, the device it runs on cannot
be proscribed without breaking a society away from modern commerce.

Finally, standardized wireless protocols have been established worldwide.
These protocols, like the familiar "Wi-Fi" family or the CDMA and GSM
mobile telephone protocols, as well as the more specialized bluetooth and
wireless USB, make it possible to negotiate communications between
disparate hardware and computing platforms.  While participation on a
particular network may imply costs, direct point to point connections, or
ad-hoc internets have no cost other than hardware and electricity4.
Significantly, repeating, reflecting, amplifying or otherwise obfuscating
the signal can make it difficult to quickly locate the source of these
wireless communications, while merely receiving them remains simple.
This is especially true in densely populated urban environments.

Once again, the standardization and interoperability of these protocols
that so readily enables anonymous free speech are the same qualities that
make them so valuable to commerce.  You cannot restrict access to this
functionality and continue to take part in modern commerce.


A Thought Experiment


Oceania is a statist, authoritarian society transitioning from a planned
economy to some semblance of a free market.  They participate in all
manner of modern commerce and allow relatively free internal movement as
well as (most importantly) foreign visitors.

Various cultural mores, combined with a reactionary government, have
established certain documents, and even certain topics as forbidden.
Materials in physical form are confiscated and destroyed, and electronic
documents accessible through the Internet are either removed from national
providers, or blocked from international links.  Violation of these
proscriptions incurs criminal charges and often harsh prison
sentences.

In this scenario partaking of, or distributing the proscribed speech in a
personally identifiable manner (while avoiding repurcussion) is
impossible.  The legal and technical controls erected by the state are
sufficient to restrict conventional free speech, such as physical paper
media, large public gatherings and fixed broadcast infrastructure.  No
matter how selective you are in your distribution, or how modest your
distribution network is, eventually an agent of the state can witness you
passing out a leaflet, or can trace a television signal back to a source
antenna.

However, personally identifiable speech is not our goal, nor are
conventional delivery mechanisms.  The phrase "free speech or stone age"
does not imply those abilities.  What it does imply is that all of these
communications can still occur, with relative ease, in any state such as
Oceania.

If general purpose computers are allowed to be imported by travelers and
possessed by nationals, then any piece of data can be possessed and
perfectly hidden.  If standards-based wireless communication is available,
then this hidden data can be transferred arbitrarily between users,
perfectly disguised as legal traffic.  Using those basic building blocks,
all manner of anonymous publication, distribution and consumption can
occur, and there is nothing Oceania can do to stop it.


Stone Age Societies


There is nothing the state can do to stop this, that is, other than
choosing to live in the "stone age".  It is worth noting that some states
in the 21st century have, in fact, made this choice.  The "free speech or
stone age" concept does, unfortunately, imply the ability of a state to
divorce itself from modern commerce and accept the drastically limited
possibilities and reduced standard of living that this implies.  North
Korea circa 2008 is a good example of this.  This government has
successfully curtailed free speech, even in anonymous form, by restricting
international travel, by the probable de jure (and certainly de facto)
proscription of computing devices, and lack of access to standards-based
wireless communication. 5

Whether they realize it or not, it is impossible for them to become a part
of modern commerce without, by definition, losing this ability to
curtailing speech.  Attempts to enter modern commerce in a piecemeal
fashion will also fail - probably very quickly.  Once general purpose
computing devices are introduced, and standards based wireless protocols
are available, only a single international traveler or cross border signal
is necessary to introduce any form of information.

Looking beyond North Korea, it's not impossible for a state to move
backwards, dropping out of modern commerce to pursue total control over
information (which implies, essentially, an absence of information).
This is very unlikely, however, and the steps that some states have taken
towards this 6, however chilling, will surely fail.  If there is any
doubt as to how important it is to remain connected to modern commerce,
consider the severe economic impact of the 2002/2003 SARS epidemic and how
desperate the countries involved were to normalize ties of commerce and
tourism.  Consider further the infrastructure providers in the developed
world whose profits depend on continued adoption and proliferation of the
very technologies that make curtailing speech impossible.


A Call to Action


Many people alive today greatly overestimate the ability of the state they
live in to curtail their anonymous free speech.  It is my hope that
demonstrating the access to that speech which modern commerce implies will
encourage these people to begin speaking.

It is my further hope that as our technical sophistication grows, it is
accompanied by an increasing value placed on open, extensible standards
and general purpose computing devices.  If we are optimizing simply to
communicate, it is not processor speed or OS version or disk size that
matter as much as simple things like Ethernet, TCP/IP, USB, (S)ATA and the
like.  A relatively higher value should be placed on devices that contain
widely adopted, standard interfaces such as this.  Devices or
implementations that alter these specifications, or contain proprietary
protocols should be highly suspect if not avoided altogether. 7

Further, while "appliances" with simplified feature sets are convenient,
it is general purpose computing devices that enable the ability to
obfuscate information arbitrarily.  Appliances are quite useful, and will
therefore proliferate, but we must retain access to general purpose
computing devices.  Content protection, digital rights management (DRM)
and other seemingly reasonable schemes for information usage are not
merely relevant to consumption of mass media - they are steps away from
the toolset required for free speech and should be viewed with suspicion.

Finally, I would like greater understanding of the fact that the Internet,
and the client role that users assume on that fixed infrastructure, is not
a given.  Ad-hoc networks can be brought into existence easily, and
usually without any additional cost, promoting the user from a client to a
peer.  The same is true for mobile devices and entrenched wireless
carriers.  If you don't like the network you're communicating on, start a
new one.  The basic tools of modern commerce give you everything you need
to do so.


A Call to Caution


Speakers should be ever vigilant and exercise great care.  Just because
tools exist to enable your speech does not mean you will use them
properly, nor does it mean that low technology methods of survelliance and
coercion cannot be used on you.  Educate yourself, be as conservative as
possible in what you say and how much you say of it, and live free to
speak another day.


1 These tools are almost universally broken in their implementation and
    nearly worthless in providing security to the wireless networks that use
    them.  They are ubiquitous, however, and their legal use implies the
    ability to use similar tools which would not, presumably, be as poorly
    implemented.

2 Notebooks Pass Desktops In US Retail
	http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-146603.html
    PC Milestone - Notebooks Outsell Desktops
	http://news.cnet.com/PC-milestone--notebooks-outsell-desktops/2100-1047_3-5731417.html

3 Brand new general purpose PC laptops can be purchased in Vietnam for
    less than $100 in 2009.  Used laptops can be found for much, much less.

4 It should be understood that electricity is not always a trivial
    resource to obtain, but inasmuch as we are discussing the freedom
    to communicate on computer networks, it is safe to assume that it
    can be obtained.

5 North Korea has, in the past, deployed cellular telephone networks,
    and appears to be doing so again with a CDMA network provided by Orascom.
    Presumably the Democratic People's Republic of Korea believes that such
    technology can be controlled in ways so as not to eventually allow
    arbitrary communications, but they are wrong.  Only by so severely
    limiting such a network so as to make it incompatible with modern commerce
    will they continue to curtail free speech.

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project(external link)

7 Avoiding non-standard and proprietary hardware and software has long
    been considered good practice, but strictly for the sake of technical
    concerns.  Now we may add human values to the list of reasons that open
    standards are important.


John Kozubik -  - http://www.kozubik.com(external link)