Technology And Anarchism

This article is inspired by the Geek Mafia series, thanks for giving us hope. It is dedicated to the anarchist hackers who have faced or will face the cold steel bars.

A few years ago a simple book came out by the name of "Recipes for Disaster" came out. It had everything in it from how to paint billboards to sexual consent and more. By the end you felt you had a new tool belt to combat the forces of capitalism and the state.

But not once in the hundreds of pages did it seriously consider technology and its impacts on the anarchist movement. and how could they? no good anarchist tactics text has. it seems that anarchists as a whole have a great grasp of how to riot but when it comes to technology and electronics we are as silly as a baby with a fork near a socket.

This is more than security culture

The modern anarchist movement has highly benefited from technology and the Internet, being able to disseminate information and has also the privileged of not facing strong oppression from the state in the medium, but i fear that this time is coming to an end. For too long the anarchist movement and related movements have enjoyed a freedom normally reserved for mainstream computer users, especially in western nations. Freedom of Speech as the states call it, but we see a common thread from the state following from more repressive nations of confiscation of technological devices such as cell phones, laptops and storage media. Once this information is in the eyes of the state, it is copied and used against us.

what this means for modern anarchists

If anarchists are to stay a fighting force within the political spectrum a serious consideration of technology and it's impacts on our movement. This writing hopes to start the conversation.

A serious Security Audit: Defensive Technology

Businesses do this all the time, they hire outside firms to analyze their networks for weak spots. As an observer and a participant i have taken it upon myself to preform this audit on the anarchist movement. You can boil down technological faults to 3 things. we will call them the 3Es:

Email: The most commonly used form of communication on the Internet, including anarchists. Email lists predate many of the "social networking" we know now and is still a main use of organizing. Yet email is weak because of it's nature. Email is a postcard, not secure in anyway from prying eyes.

Encryption: Encryption is the only way of safety when using technology, although not an end all be all (it takes the National Security Agency 2 weeks to crack strong encryption), it can help us. Everything of importance should be encrypted from emails and chat logs to full hard drive encryption. If we encrypt everything, even the stuff that doesn't matter we make it that much harder for them to access any of our information.

Erasure: It is very important to know how to get rid of information. Many people think that dragging a file to your trash bin means bye bye, but this is simply not true. The only true way of getting information off of a media is destroying it. This also should be considered when posting things online, as logs are kept for a really long time. Are you sure you want to post about that action on facebook? once you delete it you can be guaranteed that someone will have a copy of it.

By using these 3 faults, you can analyze how your organization is (or is not) using them. By making your communications secure, you can put up a more defensive wall against the state. But what if we want to go further.

Getting Serious: Considering Offensive Technology

For what is out there, Defense is the card most anarchists play when considering technology. When you have a good grasp of defensive technology, it's time to play offense. What does this mean? it means a lot more than reading 2600 and watching "Live Free or Die Hard" and masturbating about how "cool" it would be to bring down the system through hacking. Offensive technology is not only about hacking the gibson, it's about skills building and practice. Do you know how to build a transmitter? Can you write code? Do you know which wire to clip, the red or white? Do you know the concepts behind EMP? what's a diode? what is "rooting a box"? packet injection? cold boot attacks? logic gates?

If most of that you could understand, great! if not, then why not? The state is doing it's part in learning and building all kinds of new technologies, why aren't you? The government has teams of the best hackers on earth to protect itself, when there is a insurrection, it will be important to find their weak spots and use them. We can't expect underground hackers to help us when the time is right. We need to learn these skills now, before the robot armies takes over. I challenge you this weekend to learn a technological skill that you always wanted to.

What this means for us

It means we have a lot of work to do. Education is the first step, those among us must throw energy to get less techie anarchists on the same page about the importance of technology in the anarchist movement. It also requires a great deal of time to skills sharing and building. A technology conference that involves questioning the state is long over due. The feds have Defcon, we need Anarchycon!

An increase in the use and utilization of technology does not come without it's faults. In 2009 Elliot Madison, who used twitter during the g20, was arrested and his house raided for reporting police movements. In 2006 Jeremy Hammond was charged with hacking the conservative site "Protest Warrior" and served a little under 2 years in jail. We will see these raids and arrests becoming more common in the years to come. It's important to learn from the mistakes of others and realize their contributions.

To a Technological Conscious Insurrection!

Cyberpunks Rise Against Civilization!

"steampunk tech":

"steampunk tech": http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Spark-gap_transmitter

Spark gap transmitters generate fairly broad signals. As the more efficient transmission mode of continuous waves (CW) became easier to produce and band crowding and interference worsened, spark-gap transmitters and damped waves were legislated off the new shorter wavelengths by international treaty, and replaced by Poulsen arc converters and high frequency alternators which developed a sharply defined transmitter frequency. These approaches later yielded to vacuum tube technology and the 'electric age' of radio would end. Long after they stopped being used for communications, spark gap transmitters were employed for radio jamming. Spark gap oscillators are still used to generate high frequency high voltage to initiate welding arcs in gas tungsten arc welding[1]. Powerful spark gap pulse generators are still used to simulate EMP. Most high power gas-discharge street lamps (mercury and sodium vapor) still use modified spark transmitters as switch-on ignitors.

The spark transmitter is very simple in operation, but it presented significant technical problems mostly due to very large induced EMF when the spark struck, which caused breakdown of the insulation in the primary transformer. To overcome this the construction of even low-power sets was very solid. The damped wave output was very wasteful of bandwidth, and this limited the number of stations that could communicate effectively without interfering with each other.

In its simplest form, a spark-gap transmitter consists of a spark gap connected across an oscillatory circuit consisting of a capacitor and an inductor in series or parallel. In a typical transmitter circuit, a high voltage source (shown in the schematic as a battery, but usually a high voltage transformer) charges a capacitor (C1 in figure) through a resistor until the spark gap discharges, then a pulse of current passes through the capacitor (C2 in figure). The inductor and capacitor after the gap form a resonant circuit. After being excited by the current pulse, the oscillation rapidly decays because energy is radiated from the antenna. Because of the rapid onset and decay of the oscillation, the RF pulse occupies a large band of frequencies.

The function of the spark gap is to present initially a high resistance to the circuit to allow the capacitor to charge. When the breakdown voltage of the gap is reached, it then presents a low resistance to the circuit causing the capacitor to discharge. The discharge through the conducting spark takes the form of a damped oscillation, at a frequency determined by the resonant frequency of the LC circuit.

Spark gaps

A simple spark gap consists of two conducting electrodes separated by a gap immersed within a gas (typically air). When a sufficiently high voltage is applied, a spark will bridge the gap, ionizing the gas and drastically reducing its electrical resistance. An electric current then flows until the path of ionized gas is broken or the current is reduced below a minimum value called the 'holding current'. This usually occurs when the voltage across the gap drops sufficiently, but the process may also be assisted by cooling the spark channel or by physically separating the electrodes. This breaks the conductive filament of ionized gas, allowing the capacitor to recharge, and permitting the recharging/discharging cycle to repeat. The action of ionizing the gas is quite sudden and violent (disruptive), and it creates a sharp sound (ranging from a snap for a spark plug, a loud bang for a wider gap. The spark gap also liberates light and heat.

upvoted +10

upvoted +10

can anyone post any good

can anyone post any good links to info about email encryption, and maybe some of the other technological wizardry mentioned here that we "ought" to know about?

ssd.eff.org has some

ssd.eff.org has some background info.

Google GPG or Gnu Privacy Guard.

Actually, fuck google, use scroogle.org (NOT .com, it will trick you).

i suggest you also check out

i suggest you also check out wh4f.org, torproject.org and zinelibrary.org in their technology section. all of these web sites are relevant. oh, and look at "Hack This Zine" at hackbloc.org.
-3L

Security Tactics from

Security Tactics from http://www.digiactive.org/2009/06/26/secure-comm/

* Mobile Phones
o Purchase your mobile phone far from where you live. Buy lower-end, simple phones that do not allow third-party applications to be installed. Higher-end ones with more functionalities carry more risk. Use cash to purchase your phone and SIM card. Avoid town centers and find small or second-hand shops as these are unlikely to have security cameras. Do not give your real details if asked; many shops do not ask for proof of ID.
o Use multiple SIM cards and multiple phones and only use pay-as-you go options; they are more expensive but required for anonymity.
o Remove the batteries from your phone if you do not want to be geo-located and keep the SIM card out of the phone when not in use and store in separate places.Use your phone while in a moving vehicle to reduces probability of geo-location.
o Never say anything that may incriminate you in any way.
o Use code.
o Use Beeping instead of SMS whenever possible. Standard text messages are visible to the network operator, including location, phone and SIM card identifiers. According to this recent paper, the Chinese government has established 2,800 SMS surveillance centers around the country to monitor and censor text messages. The Chinese firm Venus Info Tech Ltd sells real-time content monitoring and filtering for SMS.
o Use fake names for your address book and memorize the more important numbers. Frequently delete your text messages and call history and replace them with random text messages and calls. The data on your phone is only deleted if it is written over with new data. This means that deleted SMS and contact numbers can sometimes be retrieved (with a free tool like unDeleteSMS. Check your phone’s settings to see whether it can be set to not store sent texts messages and calls.
o Eavesdropping in mobile phone conversations is technically complicated although entirely possible using commercially available technology. Do not take mobile phones with you to meetings as they can be turned into potential listening/tracking devices. Network operators can remotely activate a phone as a recording device regardless of whether someone is using the phone or whether the phen is even switched on. This functionality is available on US networks.
o Network operators can also access messages or contact information stored on the SIM card. If surveillance takes place with the co-operation of the operator, little can be done to prevent the spying.
o Mobile viruses tend to spread easily via Bluetooth so the latter should be turned off when not in use.
o Using open Bluetooth on phones in group situations, e.g., to share pictures, etc., can be dangerous. At the same time, it is difficult to incriminate any one person and a good way to share information when the cell phone network and Internet are down.
o Discard phones that have been tracked and burn them; it is not sufficient to simply destroy the SIM card and re-use the phone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Digital Cameras
o Keep the number of sensitive pictures on your camera to a minimum.
o Add plenty of random non-threatening pictures (not of individuals) and have these safe pictures locked so when you do a “delete all” these pictures stay on the card.
o Keep the battery out of the camera when not in use so it can’t be turned on by others.
o Practice taking pictures without having to look at the view screen.

* Computers/Laptops
o Use passphrases for all your sensitive data.
o Keep your most sensitive files on flash disks and find safe places to hide them.
o Have a contingency plan to physically destroy or get rid of your computer at short notice.

* Flash disks
o Purchase flash disks that don’t look like flash disks.
o Keep flash disks hidden.

* Email communication
o Use code.
o Use passphrases instead of passwords and change them regularly. Use letters, numbers and other characters to make them “c0mpLeX!”. Do not use personal information and changer your passphrases each month. Do not use the same password for multiple sites.
o Never use real names for email addresses and use multiple addresses.
o Discard older email accounts on a regular basis and create new ones.
o Know the security, safety and privacy policies of providers and monitor any chances (see terms of service tracker).

* Browsers and websites
o Turn off java and other potentially malicious add-ons.
o Learn IP addresses of visited websites so that history shows only numbers and not names.
o When browsing on a public computer, delete your private data (search history, passwords, etc.) before you leave.
o When signing up for an account where you will be publishing sensitive media, do not use your personal email address and don’t give personal information.
o Don’t download any software from pop-ups, they may be malicious and attack your computer or record your actions online.
o Do not be logged in to any sensitive site while having another site open.

* VoIP
o Just because your talking online doesn’t mean you are not under surveillance.
o As with a cell or landline, use code do not give salient details about your activities, and do not make incriminating statements.
o Remember that your online activities can be surveilled using offline techniques. It doesn’t matter if you are using encrypted VOIP at a cyber cafe if the person next to you is an under-cover police officer.
o When possible, do not make sensitive VOIP calls in a cyber cafe. It is simply too easy for someone to overhear you. If you must, use code that doesn’t stand out.

* Blogs and social networking sites
o Know the laws in your country pertaining to liability, libel, etc.
o When signing up for a blog account where you will be publishing sensitive content, do not use you personal email address or information.
o In your blog posts and profile page, do not post pictures of yourself or your friends, do not use your real name, and do not give personal details that could help identify you (town, school, employer, etc.).
o Blog platforms like wordpress allow uses to automatically publish a post on a designated date and time. Use this functionality to auto-publish on a different day when you are away from the computer.
o On social networks, create one account for activism under a false but real-sounding name (so your account won’t be deleted) but don’t tell your friends about it. The last thing you want is a friend writing on your wall or tagging you in a photo and giving away your identity.
o Even if you delete your account on a social networking site, your data will remain, so be very careful about taking part in political actions (i.e., joining sensitive groups) online.
o Never join a sensitive group with your real account. Use your fake account to join activism groups. (The fake account should not be linked to your fake email).
o Don’t use paid services. Your credit card can be linked back to you.

* File sharing
o Use a shared Gmail account with a common passphrase and simply save emails instead of sending. Change passphrase monthly.
o For sharing offline, do not label storage devices (CDs, flash drives) with the true content. If you burn a CD with an illegal video or piece of software on it, write an album label on it.
o Don’t leave storage devices in places where they would be easily found if your office or home were searched (i.e., on a table, in a desk drawer).
o Keep copies of your data on two flash drives and keep them hidden in separate locations.
o When thinking of safe locations, consider who else has access. Heavily-traveled locations are less safe.
o Don’t travel with sensitive data on you unless absolutely necessary. If you need to, make sure to hide it on your person or “camouflage” it (label a data CD as a pop music CD). See Sneakernet.

* Internet Cafes
o Assume you are being watched.
o Assume computers at cyber cafes are tracking key strokes and capturing screenshots.
o Avoid cyber cafes without an easy exit and have a contingency plan if you need to leave rapidly.

Is it just a mid-west thing,

Is it just a mid-west thing, or is anyone else aware that if you do sketchy shit, don't use any kind of technology?

Also, haven't any of you heard of disposable cameras?
Cell-phones with no contract (your name not attached)?
Using others computers without their knowledge?
Having a lot of people's houses to stay at that aren't radicals?
Credit cards? WTF PEOPLE?
Just basically staying off the grid for the most part?

Geez, all you hi-tech people need to take a break from your technology for a while...

here's some

here's some links:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/_draft_open_source_hardwa.html

http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKAD10

http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/

This website details the design and construction Wave Bubble: a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer. The device is lightweight and small for easy camouflaging: it is the size of a pack of cigarettes.

An internal lithium-ion battery provides up to 2 hours of jamming (two bands, such as cell) or 4 hours (single band, such as cordless phone, GPS, WiFi, bluetooth, etc). The battery is rechargeable via a mini-USB connector or 4mm DC jack (a common size). Alternately, 3 AAA batteries may also be used.

Output power is .1W (high bands) and .3W (low bands). Effective range is approximately 20' radius with well-tuned antennas. Less so with the internal antennas or poorly matched antennas.

Self-tuning is provided via dual PLL, therefore, no spectrum analyzer is necessary to build this jammer and a single Wave Bubble can jam many different frequency bands - unlike any other design currently available! To reconfigure the RF bands, simply plug it into the USB port of your PC and type in the new frequencies when prompted. Multiple frequency ranges can be programmed in, each time the device is power cycled it will advance to the next program in memory.

While the documentation here is both accurate and complete (as much as possible), the construction of such a device is still an advanced project. I would not suggest this as even an 'intermediate' skill project, considering the large amount of difficult SMT soldering (multiple TSSOP and SOT chips, 0603 RC's), obscure parts, and equiptment necessary to properly construct and debug.

This design is not for sale or available as a kit and never will be due to FCC regulations.

Try for email

Try for email http://tinyurl.com/yky7ksr crypto how-to.

Dirty dirty civilization!

Dirty dirty civilization! How dare you increase life expectancies from the mid thirties to the high seventies!

I know! This society is

I know! This society is boring!

Thank you for letting me

Thank you for letting me know that not all anarchists have lost their minds. Something has seriously gone wrong in the last ten years or so.

^Word yo

^Word yo

nevermind that the reason

nevermind that the reason life expectancies were in the 30s was because of cramped living conditions, poor sanitation, and close proximity to livestock.

I'm an anarchoprimitivist and I enjoyed this article, because it's totally true.

And you're a fucking moron.

Thanks for that thorough

Thanks for that thorough refutation. I'm in awe of your intelligence. It totally blew me away! Wow! Once again, "anarcho-primitivists" show their grasp of reality!

You're fucking kidding me, right? "Cramped" living conditions? Exactly what time period are you talking about? We currently have about 6 billion people living on Earth. How many people were around at this glorious time period you're thinking of?

"poor sanitation" - yes.

"close proximity to livestock" - um, sure. That's what the problem was. Had nothing to do with the total lack of knowledge about basically everything we currently have knowledge of. (I.e. bacteria, diseases, you name it)

What the fuck is wrong with you anti-civ people? Have you not read a single book in your life? Oh, that's right, books are made out of paper, which you aren't used to.

Please, if you really want to be "anti-civilization", stop taking advantage of everything that it provides you.

You'd be a drooling infant that never made it past the age of three.

And you'd never be able to manage a keyboard.

So shut the fuck up.

I'm tired of it.

It's entirely too fucking old.

See how awesome registering

See how awesome registering an account is? It takes all the acid out of a person... because a username is -so- much more accountable than anon.

"Thanks for that thorough

"Thanks for that thorough refutation. I'm in awe of your intelligence. It totally blew me away! Wow! Once again, "anarcho-primitivists" show their grasp of reality!"

cute.

"You're fucking kidding me, right? "Cramped" living conditions? Exactly what time period are you talking about? We currently have about 6 billion people living on Earth. How many people were around at this glorious time period you're thinking of?"

Moving from bands of around 150 into tight city centers would absolutely do that. It's called anthropology, maybe you should learn something about it.

""poor sanitation" - yes."

Right, which was never a problem until there was a large cluster of sedentary people.

""close proximity to livestock" - um, sure. That's what the problem was. Had nothing to do with the total lack of knowledge about basically everything we currently have knowledge of. (I.e. bacteria, diseases, you name it)"

Many common human diseases originated in non-human animals. Typhoid, Polio, many strains of the Flu and the common cold are all examples of this.

"What the fuck is wrong with you anti-civ people? Have you not read a single book in your life? Oh, that's right, books are made out of paper, which you aren't used to."

cool strawman. Clearly you don't know what you're talking about. Read a history book. These are pretty commonly accepted points in mainstream anthropology and archaeology.

"Please, if you really want to be "anti-civilization", stop taking advantage of everything that it provides you."

These ad hominem attacks are adorable.Would that I could darling. Stop taking advantage of all the things capital and capitalism provide for you. Oh wait, you can't, these things are totalities that have eclipsed all human interaction.

"You'd be a drooling infant that never made it past the age of three.

And you'd never be able to manage a keyboard."

Without civilization I doubt i'd have much need for a keyboard. I'd actually like to suggest that it's more likely you'd die as a small child since you probably possess zero survival skills.

"So shut the fuck up.

I'm tired of it.

It's entirely too fucking old."

WAH!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

And my new mantra: register

And my new mantra: register a fucking account. Stop hiding behind "anon".

rba: i'm not the a-p poster

rba: i'm not the a-p poster from before, nor do i call myself an anarcho-primitivist (though i do identify as anti-civ). i did register though, quite some time ago. sometimes i log in, sometimes i don't, though i nearly always sign posts.

frankly, anon above is correct so far as all those dead trees i've read and according to the stuff i've found over that series of tubes and wires we call teh internetz. the boring pro-civ arguments around lifespan are really pretty unconvincing, as are attempts to argue that those of us opposed to civilization and technology should just drop out. drop out to where? would running off to the rainforest actually stop the onslaught of civilization? no. would individuals choosing to remove themselves from the cesspool to preserve their perceived purity somehow tip the world back towards sustainability and balance? not much more likely than the idea that workers councils, communes or political platfors will somehow magically maintain the level of technologic complixity we currently live with while doing so.

--ingrate

A useful link:

A useful link: http://wiki.stealthiswiki.org/wiki/Table_of_Contents

Who are we?
From Steal This Wiki
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"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul..." - Thomas Paine

We're libertarians, anarchists, socialists, communists, pacifists, vegans, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American.

To get to the basics of it, however:

We are the vocal minority of the silent majority.

As of this writing, there is an enormous part of our population greatly dissatisfied with not only the mistakes of current administration, but also with the direction the world is heading -- governments are being lead by lobbyists, corporations and otherwise immoral, greedy and deceptive parties. Many see nations going down the path of a Big Brother state: where the government keeps tabs on you and determines what you can and cannot see/do.

We're looking to change that.

No matter what, however, the important thing is this: whatever revolution or lifestyle you hope to be a part of has to be started by you. When you know in your heart what you're doing is right and true, not even the most brutal opposition or secure jail cell can stop you.
[edit] About the Site

This site is intended to support and distribute information that is relevant to this day and age, which can be reasonably defined as one in which people are forced to deal with difficult issues (such as a military led by an unwise and unreasonable group of people) as well as with real and dangerous threats.

Hopefully as the content on this site evolves, it will become a new and useful work, holding true to the spirit of the original, and providing useful information to those who value freedom, peace, and justice.

This site contains the how-to information on everything from how to grow a garden to how to teach a college level class. How many revolutions were about putting the existing means of production into the hands of the people. We have seen that these revolutions, given enough time, always ended with a new power caste abusing the under class. We want to give the means of production for basic needs back into the hands of every person so they can choose to ignore the heavy hand of a government which has melded itself with the mega-businesses in a way that leaves ordinary humans with a voice or a choice.

i didn't read this whole

i didn't read this whole thing, but RAND just came out with some reports on cyber-terrorism that may be interesting to anyone who cares about that stuff...

www.rand.org its on there somewhere

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