The Right to Keep and Bear Recording Devices

Throughout history, there have been technologies that are so fundamental to power relationships within a society that their possession and use has been an inevitable bone of contention. The most well-known example of that is firearms. Being in many ways the ultimate personal weapon, a great equalizer that nullifies any advantages of physical size or strength, gun rights are argued endlessly. Some feel that the possession of guns by private individuals is too dangerous, as it raises the lethality of interpersonal conflict, and thus argue for gun use to be restricted to the police and the military; others argue that widespread firearms ownership is the best protection against criminal behaviour and state oppression. In some countries, with weak central governments (or none, as in Somalia), everyone is allowed to possess a weapon more or less by default. In contrast, some countries with strong central governments (Japan, England), have banned them outright. The US has a right to keep and bear arms written into it's constitution (though that right has been steadily eroded, as the central government became more powerful.)

This is not a new battle; pre-gunpowder societies saw similar argument and diversity regarding the use and ownership of all manner of weapons. In some places, everyone was allowed to walk about openly armed; in others, the possession of a weapon was strictly limited to professional warrior castes and nobility. And once again, in general, the strength of central government was a good predictor of the degree to which weapons were restricted.

In terms of the effects of personal combat systems on society, firearms have likely come about as far as they ever will. Great improvements in accuracy might well be made (smart rounds, for instance); completely different propulsion systems used which increase muzzle velocity (say, electromagnetically instead of chemically); but the overall principle of a handheld weapon that makes one human more or less equal to another in combat potential, regardless of physical size or strength, is unlikely to change.

Personal recording devices, on the other hand, are just beginning to make their presence really felt. From their first appearance in the 20th century - expensive, delicate, their use restricted more or less to professionals and hobbyists - they have no proliferated to the point where practically everyone has a digital camera, often built into their phone. Technologies such as the eyeFi are allowing pictures to be instantly uploaded to the web, viewable by anyone. We are entering the age of the participatory panopticon, where everyone is watched by everyone.

Some see this as a dangerous attack on liberty, as they believe the constant surveillance will be exploited by states and corporations in order to build a perfect tyranny where everything - and everybody - is watched, tracked, tagged and thus controlled. They are not wrong to fear this; it is almost a certainty that such surveillance systems are being prepared right now. In some parts of the world, tyranny will be a very real possibility ... especially if the citizenry are not in possession of their own recording devices.

The reasoning is simple. If the people are watching, recording, and sharing information as much or more than the government, it becomes very difficult for the government to engage in criminal behaviour (which surely any attempt to tyrannize, anywhere, should rightly be considered.) Just as a citizen breaking a law will be instantly caught, so an official violating someone's human rights will be instantly known. Tyrannies can't survive such openness, relying as they do on the complicit ignorance of their victim populations.

The conflict over use of personal recording devices has already began. If you doubt this, just try walking around and airport taking lots of pictures. I have no doubt that it will intensify greatly, as more and larger areas become designated 'no-photography' zones. Watch for the signs to proliferate over the next few years, like no-smoking signs did through the 80s and 90s.

(You know, sometimes I wonder if an empty no sign might not be the most apt symbol for the corporate fascism that seems to be the prevailing form of governance at the outset of the 21st century. Someone should make an internet map of number of no-X signs per city block. I'll bet you could correlate that to fascism pretty nicely.)

Conversely, areas where freedom prevails will be those in which sousevailling citizens vigilantly watch their masters from below, immediately punishing even the slightest infraction against human rights, and thus maintaining a healthy balance between rule of law and protection of rights and freedoms. Just as America preserved its famous freedom through two hundred years by enshrining the right to keep and bear arms in its constitution, an inalienable right to record and disseminate whatever one pleases will be an invaluable protection in the future. Freedom of speech, yes, but also freedom of sight.

The dichotomy between freedom and tyranny is closely bound to secrecy and transparency, which are respectively anathema to the one and a necessity to the other. If you want to keep freedom alive in the twentieth century, you're going to have to fight for your right to point a camera at the ones who want to take it away.

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Endgame

Last week Alex Jones' new movie Endgame came out. I suggest you go watch it right now. It may be the most important movie you ever see.

What's it about? Look at the tags attached to this post. Need to know more? Well, here's some reviews: one at the the Daily Llama, one at Smoker's Corner (that's one snazzy background he's got, gotta get me one of those....), and a final pair of reviews by a pair of (formerly) 'good' Bush-voting Republicans. Read those first if you want. Then watch the goddamn movie.

If you don't walk away from this movie without at the very least a cold, paralyzing dread clenching in the pit of your stomach, well, there's probably no hope for you. Preferably, you should finish it filled with a deep and abiding anger, an outrage that burns like an emotional Chernobyl, and a righteous passion to do everything you can to stop the crime against all of humanity whose final stages are being laid right fucking now. You need to see this movie because you need to wake the fuck up, because this really is one of the last warning's you'll get.

Why the hell are you still reading this? Whatever you're doing, or whatever you think you should be doing, it is almost impossible that it is more important than seeing this movie. I don't care if you're getting ready for a job interview or sitting in your cubicle, if you're studying for an exam or about to leave for one, whatever it is, drop it, and go watch the movie.

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Countermeasures: RFID

RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags are certain to be a central component of the security state apparatus. If you haven't heard of this technology yet, they are, briefly, very small chips consisting of a capacitor, an antennae, and an integrated circuit. They can be embedded more or less invisibly in almost anything, and once there provide the ability to track the location of the object more or less at will. While this could be incredibly useful (you'll never lose anything ever again), it can also be quite dangerous (everything you have becomes a tracking device.)

Googling 'disabling RFID tags' found me this page, the results of a German Chaos Computer Club workshop, where a bunch of techies got together and figured out how to turn a single-use camera into an RFID zapper. Here's another tutorial page from the same project, this one with pictures. Basically, the device acts as a miniature EMP, frying the RFID's capacitor but without damaging the article the object is embedded in (you can get a similar effect by nuking it in the microwave, but this is likely to start a fire which will damage the tagged object.)

Of course, the RFID zapper can't be used on electronics without frying them, which actually renders it pretty much useless for surveillance countermeasures, unless you're willing to leave home without your cellphone, PDA, laptop, camera, iPod, and other sundry electronic accompaniments of modern life. And you can be damn sure that electronics will be tagged with RFIDs along with everything else.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of three ways around the system, but none of them are perfect. One is to simply take the device apart, extract the RFID tag, and dispose of it. The main drawback is that unless you have an exhaustive knowledge of electronics and maybe access to the device's blueprints, identifying which chip is the RFID is likely to be quite difficult. Maybe even impossible, if the tag is built directly into the device's integrated circuitry. Another possibility is to ignore the RFID tag and hack into the tracking network's database, deleting the relevant serial numbers, switching the objects they refer to, or otherwise rendering the database unreliable. This is probably even more difficult than taking apart the device and looking for the RFID tag. The last solution is to keep your electronics inside a faraday cage (basically, a metal box), which will block the radio signals that trigger the RFID tag, thus hiding it from the surveillance network. This has the great virtue of being the easiest of the three, but it has the serious drawbacks that a) it stops working as soon as you want to actually use the tagged object, and b) it makes a cellphone pretty much useless as in addition to blocking the radio waves that trigger the RFID tag, it blocks the cell's reception (of course, cell phones are a tracking device - and a listening device - unto themselves, but that's an entirely separate problem.)

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Today in the News

Well, it looks like the iFly is moving along just about right on schedule, albeit in a somewhat creepier way than expected: Robobugs spotted at anti-war protests in Washington. Personally I can think of much better ways to use this technology, but then again, I'm not a modern-day stasi.

The Turks are claiming NATO's been helping the PKK launch terror attacks. Anything to keep people afraid. The Turks aren't taking it lying down though: Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has announced plans to launch raids into Iraqi Kurdistan. That's bound to piss of the Americans.

Vicente Fox openly claims that the long-range plan is for the creation of an 'Amero', an Americas-wide currency union. This is pretty obvious when you think about it; after all, the EU evolved from the European Coal and Steel Community to an entity one step short of an actual nation in just under fifty years. Still, there's a big difference between integrating European countries which, however different the cultures might be, at least share common values on human rights and such ... and jamming together the US and Canada (open societies that place a high value on the rule of law and individual freedom) with Mexico (one of the world's worst slave states.)

On the political front, Ron Paul - the only non-plastic candidate in the current presidential race - is warning that the US dollar could well collapse essentially to zero, a scenario that's hold-your-forehead-and-groan it's so bloody obvious to anyone with a modicum of knowledge of economics (which is almost no one.)

This could well be nothing but signaling (as Tom Barnett would no doubt argue), or it could be very ominous (which is what the Taiwanese would say): China promotes military officers experienced in Taiwan affairs. By affairs, of course, the headline means "planning for war with Taiwan."

Vaccine-linked polio hits Nigeria. That's happening a lot these days. The natives are learning to run when white men show up with the meds. Think maybe they know something we don't?

Rice to meet Russian human rights activists. Helps to get to know the enemy, no?

Private security convoys strike fear in Baghdad. You know it's bad when they're more scared of Blackwater than they are of either al Qaeda or the marines.

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Today in the News

Thought I'd try something a bit different today and round up some headlines that caught me eye. In no particular order, here they are:

Anti-war protesters entered in criminal database, prevented from crossing the US/Canada border. Because dissent is treason, and treason is a crime.

Britain 'on-board' for US strikes on Iran. Gordon Brown shows he really is no different from Tony Blair (as though there were any doubt. Democracy has been very effectively short-circuited.) They're not even bothering to keep up the pretense of taking out the nuclear facilities anymore - Iran being ten years away from a nuke - so the justification now is (what else?) terrorism.

Supporters fear Ed Brown is being tortured. In case you don't know (I'm guessing you don't) Ed Brown is a guy who refused to pay income tax, fortified himself in his house, and spent six months taunting the Feds and sounding off about how the income tax is an unconstitutional tool of oppression. Which it is. So the Feds lied their way into his house, pretending to be supporters (there were a lot of supporters), arrested him and his wife, and they haven't been heard from since. That was a few days ago. They should be in the hands of prison authorities by now, but for some reason, they're not. There's precedent for this, by the way. Ever heard of Congressman Hansen? Nasty buggers, those IRS guys.

In related news, a blogger who'd been covering the Ed Brown case had the Feds pay him a visit, on the pretense that he'd been advocating violence against a judge involved in the case. Only problem? He never did. Which they could have told by reading his blog. Unless of course dealing with threats was just a pretext to make a few of their own....

Keeping on the theme of torture, a freelance reporter in Afghanistan claims to have been tortured by US forces. That's the danger of criticizing while Muslim, I suppose....

It looks like the Democrats are - and here's a surprise - going to roll over on wiretapping like they have on everything else. Not that the Bush regime gives a flying fuck about congressional approval of it's unconstitutional actions, but still, this should serve as a reminder that both parties are corrupt to the very core. There is no succor to be found in Washington.

Not that the Russians have it much better. Gary Kasparov has decided that as computers have caught up with and surpassed human abilities in chess, he'll compete in politics instead. He was on 60 minutes recently, talking about his plans to take on ex-KGB overlord Vladimir Putin.

A Sheriff's Deputy in Milwaukee goes off the deep end when his girlfriend, and others, call him a 'worthless pig'. Since he had an assault rifle, six people died in the resulting argument (the seventh and final person at the ill-fated party is still in the hospital.)

A German citizen gets a CIA sponsored tour of black interrogation sites, and now that he wants some of his own back the Supreme Court is telling him to take a hike. Guess they figure he should be grateful they didn't accidentally kill him, and just leave it at that.

The Iraqi government wants US$136 million in blood money from Blackwater, US$8 million for each Iraqi citizen shot by its thugs, er, security guards. That's a lot of money for an Iraqi life, but hey, we're talking a company with hundreds of billions in no-bid contracts.

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The Red Pill's Bitter Aftertaste

Back in June, I flew for the first time, back to Canada. Made a transfer in Atlanta, where I was greeted, as soon as I got off the plane, with a giant banner saying 'Welcome to America, Land of Freedom!' or some shit like that, all in gold letters with a photo-quality American flag fluttering in the background. Later, while I was waiting to take off my shoes and have my bag pawed through by a surly, ill-educated trailer-park spawn, I couldn't help but think of this website (while, admittedly, listening to the album it's associated with, but then again, Year Zero was appropriate. Regarding the website, you might have to wait a bit for it to load. Once it does, just click and move your mouse around. You'll see.) At one point I made eye contact with a random traveller from the Middle East, inevitably getting far more thorough treatment than the petty humiliations of security theatre I and every other traveller was forced to endure. Nevertheless I felt an instant empathy with the plight of this man; a part of my brain that hadn't really sparked in years sputtered for life, however pathetically and briefly.

I think that was the moment, for me, when the shell that had been built up around my brain finally began to crack. It didn't spread very quickly, not at first. This was back in June, after all, and I can't honestly claim to have woken up any earlier than, well, last week. But then that is the way of crumbling dams: at first a small crack, which spreads, slowly ... until all at once, the flood.

Watch this. Over a million other people have. It was the cold shower that woke my ass up, and maybe it'll do the same for you.

Waking up is a funny thing. I was walking through Shinjuku station on my way to work, and all at once I felt tears in my eyes, because for the first time in years it really hit me that this time it was my people - the Anglo culture of which I am deeply proud, the culture that has given so much of freedom and science and technology and wealth to the world, that has taken civilization to the greatest heights it has yet achieved - this time, it was my people who housed the evil. That we were the bad guys, and that the Muslims, bless their bewildered, confused, hateful little hearts, were right to fight against us with every ounce of their strength.

I remember when 9/11 first happened (well, yeah, we all do.) At the time I'd never really considered that the government could be behind it, but still, a few days later, after the networks had been full of nothing but collapsing towers and broken five-sided geometry, I had enough savvy to tell my girlfriend at the time "Whatever happens, don't let me fall for the propaganda. Don't let me do anything stupid." Well, I didn't join the army or become a weapons scientist, so I have my ex to thank for that much at least (hell, if I hadn't dated her I'd've still been in the militia when the towers went down), but I still bought the propaganda, drinking deep of the kool-aid, letting the fever take over my brain. Then again, we broke up a couple of years after that, and it wasn't until later that I really started to buy into it, to really believe the lies and the halftruths and the misdirections and the perverted logic that's been shoveled so liberally into our mouths over the past several years. Hell, I remember getting into an argument with David Brin on his blog, where the guy tried his best to convince me with logical argument that the current pack of criminals was far worse than the muslims or the crazier elements of the left ... I couldn't defeat the logic, so I just left. Still, the propaganda kept it's hold on my brain.

It's not that I'm stupid. I am, if not a genius, certainly well above the herd. But intelligence can be as great a curse as stupidity when it comes to well-crafted webs of lies, because once the lies start to settle in and make themselves at home as part of one's self-image, an intelligent mind is much more adept at the doublethink required to keep it all in place.

I'll give this to the evil shits responsible for this nightmare: they are masters of memetic engineering, on a par with Mohammed and Marx. They know just how to get past all the mental defenses, how to manipulate human psychology with inter-related (and contradictory) complexes of memes. Hell, they've been setting memeplexes up against each other. 'Left' and 'Right' are just arbitrary camps full of manufactured ideas designed to be mutually antagonistic (thus keeping the politically motivated parts of the population at daggers drawn) while being supportive of the overall engenda (tax, control, and eventually, enslave.)

Basically, it works like this. The Left believes Bush and his court of grand viziers and sycophants are a bunch of evil fucks, and their war a complete sham. They think the real threat is environmental degradation generally, and global warming specifically. The Right, on the other hand, thinks global warming is a crock of steaming bullshit, and that terrorism generally, and the rise of an Islamic caliphate specifically, is the most dire threat facing Western civilization. Thus the Left is led to believe that those on the Right are criminals against the environment and duped supporters of an evil war, while those on the Right see the Left as either blind or traitorous when it comes to the war, along with being brainwashed victims of the new Gaianist religion with it's apocalyptic fairy tales of climate change.

Let me set you straight, in case you hadn't already figured it out. Terrorism is bullshit. So is global warming. Both are there to keep you scared (The terrorists might nuke us! The ice caps might melt!). Not only does this make it easier to control you - hysterical people instinctively look to authority figures - it also makes it easier to bleed you dry of resources. Carbon taxes limiting how big your house can be, how much electricity you can use, how big and fast a car you can have and how far you can go in it, how much you're allowed to fly ... all of these come directly out of global warming. It keeps you immobile, keeps you poor, and lets the government soak you like never before (income tax might be a tax on your label, but carbon tax? That's a tax on your existence. Because your very existence is a threat to the entire biosphere, awful, filthy human creature that you are.)

Terrorism keeps you scared of other people around the world, and keeps those people scared of you, which if you're trying to build a global empire is a very useful trick as it acts as a firewall against the formation of a global resistance. It justifies wars, and - more to the point - serves as an excuse for a steady ratcheting increase in 'security' regulations at home (security, not to protect us from terrorists, but to protect our would-be masters from us.)

For the last several years I came down on the right: global warming bullshit, Islamic terrorism dangerous! That's embarrassing, a little. But no more shameful than falling for the global warming line. Left and Right are more psychological predispositions than well-thought-out political positions, and the twin lies that have been endlessly repeated by the media are designed to appeal to one or the other (environmental catastrophe for the caring nurturer type, shadowy foreign threat for the watchful protector type.) Damn near everyone fell for one or the other and sometimes even both; few have been those who fell for neither, but then wisdom is precious because it is rare.

The wannabe emperors that are settling into power now, in this the time when the culmination of their scheme approaches, forgot to take one thing into account. Fear can be used to control us, yes, but only for a while. At first we look to our leaders; that is our instinct, as social animals evolved for life in a complex hierarchy. But alone among the social mammals, we have the ability to think; we look for leadership not just to our governments but to our thinkers, not just to the powerful but to the wise. And as time goes on, it is the wise that have the greatest influence, for even the most foolish of men - so long as he retains a soul - knows the truth when it is properly explained to him, and the finding and teaching of truth are the great strengths of the wise.

The nearer their plan comes to fruition, the more obvious it will be, and the more the truth will start to take hold. Those on the Right will realize that terrorism is a sick practical joke of awesome proportions, perpetrated by their own government against them; those on the Left will come to see that global warming is nothing more than a willful misrepresentation of science. They'll get to talking together, and together, they'll tear down the edifice of lies like the Berlin Wall.

Make no mistake, we are not out of the woods yet. Things are going to get much, much worse before they get better. I'm talking biowarfare (my guess: smallpox, say in Oregon.) Martial law. Maybe a nuclear exchange or two (not a planet-buster, just turning a country or two into wasteland.) Disappearances, concentration camps, secret police, conscription, the whole nine yards of the classic militarized fascist police state, updated for the 21st century, scarier than anything that's come before, like something out of the Book of Revelations. This particular generation of homo demonicus is playing for all the marbles this time, and as always they mean to win.

Hell, I'm not sure if I'm going to survive this. I'm not sure if you will. I'm deeply frightened for the future of my family, and my friends. I look at the faces of the children in my kids' classes, and I wonder.

One thing I am sure about. The people will wake up, and when they do there will be a revolution. Much blood will be spilled leading up to it, and rivers will flow by the end. But when the dust settles, it will be the heads of the would-be neo-aristocracy that are impaled on pikes and set on display as an eternal monument to the greatest depths of evil yet plumbed by the human soul, as an eternal reminder to any who might plot to follow their path into darkness, and seduce others into following them down it.

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Progress towards the iFly continues apace. Meet the German microdrone.

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The iFly: You Will Be Assimilated

Imagine a future where the air is thick with robotic insects, gathering not food, but information. They're everywhere, following patterns of human interest: sparse where there's nothing to be seen, but swarming like locusts where there is.

I'm going to call them iFlies, for no other reason than I think it sounds catchy (though I refuse to copyright or trademark the term, because I think it would be very cool if Apple picked it up....) They're working on the prototypes now. Not too long before they're out of the labs and into the hands of the military, the police, emergency services ... put a camera and a mic on them, and you've got a swarm of little flying cameras, great for gathering intelligence for assault, arrest, or search-and-rescue. Journalists would love the things, too, for obvious reasons.

It won't be long between being issued to the military and being available to private citizens, probably a handful of years, and when they come out I predict massive popularity. Who wouldn't want a little flying camera (at this point in its history becoming the iFly, perhaps rolled out as a peripheral for your third generation iPhone, which, face it, you're going to have in a couple of years anyway) that could dart up much closer to something than you can get yourself, either practically or safely? Combine it with wearable displays, and it would be like having a roving eye. Great for spectating at sports events, live music, or for any of a hundred other uses where it might be nice to get a direct look at something 200 meters away.

Of course, these things would require pretty ubiquitous wireless in order to really shine. Instead of just buying one of these little iFlies, you could rent time on them from a company owning iFlies all over the world. You'd have your own, of course, that you carry with you (for those times when you want to see something close by), but you could also access units anywhere else. I'd imagine this would be the killer ap. You could be present at breaking news as soon as it breaks, typing the location into your phone and grabbing an available iFly (or piggybacking on someone else's, if all the local units are already taken.) Newsgathering would be changed almost beyond recognition; journalism would cease to be a profession so much as just something people do.

The iFly would lend itself to social viewing quite readily. Just as people now share music, they would be able to share video feeds, not just sequentially but simultaneously. This would be pointless right now: watching multiple screens at once is too taxing. But with a multitude of viewpoints all focused on essentially the same thing, it could work. The interface is simple to envision: in the center of your screen, you see the view from the iFly you're operating; surrounding it like a halo are shrunken views from others, the nearer the larger, fading off into a haze as they get farther away. A really seemless interface would simply track the direction of a persons attention, so that one could seemlessly slide one's viewpoint from one iFly to another. In effect, it would be as though humans have taken not just one idea from the insect kingdom (the mechanics of flight at their size scale), but through it another: viewing the world through compound eyes. Although this update of the compound eye is distributed across a vast area, in effect the entire surface of the earth; characteristically, technology has imitated nature, and improved on it.

Whoever gets the iFly out there, not necessarily first or best, but right, will change the world (and make an absolute killing, to boot.)

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