We should remember that at the very core of the SlutWalk is the struggle against slutshaming, the practice of control of behavior based on systematic humiliation and intimidation of women that deviate from some standards of proper sexual conduct. The effect of that is a regulation of female sexuality even more rigorous than the male conduct, which normalizes gender inequality.

Coupled with that, there’s “rape culture:” cultural elements that, even from the point of view of “respectable” (non-criminal) society, normalize or relativize certain forms of rape and abuse of the (generally female) body. The result is that rape and abuse (physical and emotional) become tools of intimidation, punishment and, ultimately, correction of the female sexuality.

When we look at the whole picture, we can see the link between phenomena: slutshaming can and does serve as a springboard to the justification of abuse and rape. An example would be the labeling of certain women as “sluts” to then excuse or play down the violation of their intimacy and sexual dignity. After all, they had it coming because they were “asking for it,” and thus they are to blame. (See also this article, in which I criticize the conflation of statistical probability with female moralizing.)

The profoundly anti-libertarian character of that practice is obvious: it’s an attack against the sexual freedom and consenting arrangements between independent adults. Ultimately, it can end up denying women their right to consent to male advances if they in any way deviate from certain rules of behavior.

Brazilian culture has historically been marked by sexism. In 1927, individualist anarchist amd labor organizer Maria Lacerda de Moura, one of the feminist pioneers in Brazil, wrote the article “Seduzidas e desonradas” (“Seduced and Dishonored”) for O Combate newspaper, where she denounced the double standard for morality and slutshaming. She focused on the value attributed to virginity and marriage, and the harsh penalties incurred by the deviants:

“And poor that woman who forgets protocol.”

“If now she is not lapidated, if now she is not buried alive like vestals, if now she is not stoned to death, if now she is not subjected to the tortures of the fanatic mobs of yesteryear, she is now treated to suicide: she is compelled to abandon independent life, because literature, press, and everyone else point their fingers to her, calling her ‘bastard,’ ‘shameful,’ ‘dishonored,’ ‘dishonest,’ opening up to her the doors of cheap prostitution in the streets. The victim is surrounded by the trail of misery, syphilis, brothels, humiliations, hospitals, and the common gutter.”

“Wretched moral of colonels,* cowards, and cretins.”

In Maria Lacerda de Moura’s Brazil, pre-marriage virginity taboos still catalyzed sexist attitudes. In SlutWalk 2014’s Brazil, we have the spread of private pictures and videos, naked or having sex, via WhatsApp, quickly viralized and publicly exposed. It’s revenge porn, the “vengeance” of a former sex partner, that leaks private pictures and videos as if they were porn, often with explicit purpose of shaming the victim.

As in Maria Lacerda de Moura’s days, girls who were victim of this immoral and criminal dissemination are humilliated, intimidated, persecuted, and abused, unfolding a cycle of slutshaming. They are victims, but they are blamed and abuse is excused in their real life relationships or on the internet, something that can lead and has led to suicide. Times have changed, but that “wretched moral of colonels, cowards, and cretins” persists.

How can we change it? In the feminist tradition, direct action is extremely important in promoting bottom up social change, without resorting to the coercive state. Charles Johnson refers to solidarity and resistance forms employed by feminists historically to change social attitudes and promote help for women in need, such as “groups, speak-outs, culture-jamming, building grassroots networks of battered women’s shelters, rape crisis centers, and other feminist spaces” that originally had no connection to the government.

In this proud tradition of feminist direct action, updated to fight against the 21st century forms of slutshaming, we have six feminist 16-year old girls who created a prototype of application for smartphones named For You.

The idea is to support teenage girls who have had their pictures leaked on the internet. The app creates a safe haven where they can meet other victims and debate themes related to revenge porn (complete with educational tabs on legislation, manifestos on how it isn’t their fault, victims’ testimonies, etc.), and have ambassadors set up local support groups that fight the intimidation the victims might suffer. In a video, they explain how they want to use technology to raise awareness about online abuse and empower women.

“If they use apps to humilliate us, we fight back using apps to empower and organize ourselves,” says the motto of the group formed by Camila Ziron, Estela Machado, Hadassa Mussi, Larissa Rodrigues, and Letícia Santos. They are taking part in Technovation Challenge, a competition in which the winner group will take home $10,000 in financing and support for development.

Female liberation is being and will be achieved through education and the broadening of social cooperation networks. This brings us to a view of social feminist change focused on sociology, evolution, and micro-actions. That is also how freedom from the state will be reached. Is that a coincidence? Not at all, for female emancipation is but a part of the progress toward a free society.

* “Colonels” are typical figures of local power in Brazil, the title having little to do with the military rank of the same name. Their system of rule has been called “colonelism” (“coronelismo”).

Translated from Portuguese into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Kids are being locked in cages by the government all across the country. The consequences are devastating. According to a report from the Justice Policy Institute:

A recent literature review of youth corrections shows that detention has a profoundly negative impact on young people’s mental and physical well-being, their education, and their employment. One psychologist found that for one-third of incarcerated youth diagnosed with depression, the onset of the depression occurred after they began their incarceration, and another suggests that poor mental health, and the conditions of confinement together conspire to make it more likely that incarcerated teens will engage in suicide and self-harm. Economists have shown that the process of incarcerating youth will reduce their future earnings and their ability to remain in the workforce, and could change formerly detained youth into less stable employees. Educational researchers have found that upwards of 40 percent of incarcerated youth have a learning disability, and they will face significant challenges returning to school after they leave detention. Most importantly, for a variety of reasons to be explored, there is credible and significant research that suggests that the experience of detention may make it more likely that youth will continue to engage in delinquent behavior, and that the detention experience may increase the odds that youth will recidivate, further compromising public safety.

So the state is engaging in violence that scars young people physically and mentally, and hurts their economic prospects; and this practice may even increase rather than decrease the chance of future crime. Moreover, according to the same report, most of these youth are not even a threat to others, as “about 70 percent are detained for nonviolent offenses.”

Once incarcerated, youth are subjected to severe abuses. For example, many youth are isolated in solitary confinement, which is widely recognized as a form of psychological torture. According to the American Civil Liberties Union:

Solitary confinement can cause extreme psychological, physical, and developmental harm. For children, who are still developing and more vulnerable to irreparable harm, the risks are magnified – particularly for kids with disabilities or histories of trauma and abuse. While confined, children are regularly deprived of the services, programming, and other tools that they need for healthy growth, education, and development.

The impacts of solitary on adults are harmful enough. “It’s an awful thing, solitary,” wrote John McCain, “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” Subjecting youth to this kind of torture is monstrous.

Incarcerated youth are also all too often raped and sexually assaulted by guards. According to David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, “4.5 percent of juveniles in prison and 4.7 percent of those in jail reported such [sexual] victimization—rates that ought to be considered disastrously high.” Their risk was higher in youth detention centers, “minors held in juvenile detention suffered sexual abuse at twice the rate of their peers in adult facilities.” Most of this abuse is committed by guards employed and paid with tax dollars:

Some 2.5 percent of all boys and girls in juvenile detention reported having been the victims of inmate-on-inmate abuse. This is not dramatically higher than the corresponding combined male and female rates reported by adults or juveniles in either prison or jail. The reason why the overall rate of sexual abuse (9.5 percent) was so much higher in juvenile detention than in other facilities is the frequency of sexual misconduct by staff. About 7.7 percent of those in juvenile detention reported sexual contact with staff during the preceding year. Over 90 percent of these cases involved female staff and teenage boys in custody.

Government employees are committing child sexual abuse against caged victims. These guards are often repeat offenders. “In juvenile facilities, victims of sexual misconduct by staff members were more likely to report eleven or more instances of abuse than a single, isolated occurrence.” All of this data comes from research conducted by the government’s own Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The impacts of the state’s systematic caging and abuse of children are not equally distributed across the population. The Center for Children’s Law and Policy documents many studies showing the racially disparate impacts of youth incarceration and juvenile justice policies. LGBTQ youth also face disproportionate impacts from the juvenile justice system. According to an article in The Nation:

The road to incarceration begins in pretrial detention, before the youth even meets a judge. Laws and professional standards state that it’s appropriate to detain a child before trial only if she might run away or harm someone. Yet for queer youth, these standards are frequently ignored. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Dr. Angela Irvine, LGBT youth are two times more likely than straight youth to land in a prison cell before adjudication for nonviolent offenses like truancy, running away and prostitution. According to Ilona Picou, executive director of Juvenile Regional Services, Inc., in Louisiana, 50 percent of the gay youth picked up for nonviolent offenses in Louisiana in 2009 were sent to jail to await trial, while less than 10 percent of straight kids were. “Once a child is detained, the judge assumes there’s a reason you can’t go home,” says Dr. Marty Beyer, a juvenile justice specialist. “A kid coming into court wearing handcuffs and shackles versus a kid coming in with his parents—it makes a very different impression.”

Queer and transgender youth are treated differently by the justice system before they are even tried and convicted. Once incarcerated, they face brutal violence. From beatings to victim blaming to bigoted slurs from guards, queer and transgender youth are regularly abused in juvenile corrections facilities.

Some of America’s youth incarceration problem begins in the schools. “Zero-tolerance” policies in public schools criminalize violating school rules, producing what is often called the school to prison pipeline. The racially disparate impacts of this school to prison pipeline are well documented, and they often criminalize minor infractions.

Outside of school, youth are often directly targeted by police thanks to ageist laws like curfews. Laws often restrict freedom of movement and bodily autonomy for youth, and justify this coercion through condescending and paternalistic platitudes. In a particularly appalling recent case of paternalism sending youth to prison, a transgender girl was sent to an adult prison without charges or trial, because the state had power over her as her “guardian.” The desire to protect youth provides ideological cover for the state to treat them even more abusively than it treats adults.

The American state is uniquely punitive in some respects. According to Amnesty International, “The United States is believed to stand alone in sentencing children to life without parole.” Amnesty identifies “at least 2,500 people in the US serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.” Before turning 18, these youth were permanently separated from society, permanently sent to violent hellholes.

The essence of imprisonment as we know it is throwing away a human being, treating them as disposable. Prisoners are subjected to violence, abuse, and torture. They are held in austere and inhumane conditions. And they are kept out of the general public’s sight. They are punished rather than being made to make amends or provide restitution to victims. It’s bad enough to treat any human being this way. To treat children this way is unconscionable. Stop caging kids.

Lo stato vuole informazioni sicure sui suoi soggetti. Fin dal primo censimento in Egitto 5.000 anni fa, gli stati hanno sempre cercato di ottenere informazioni personali sui propri cittadini, soprattutto le tirannie, dove informatori e polizia segreta raccolgono informazioni su ogni attività potenzialmente sovversiva. Nell’era di internet e dello spionaggio governativo, le agenzie di spionaggio raccolgono informazioni su di noi – per lo più offerta ingenuamente da noi stessi tramite i social media – a livelli che avrebbero reso verde d’invidia l’NKVD di Stalin. Quando finirà tutto ciò non lo sa nessuno; intanto, meno informazioni utili si possono raccogliere e meno efficace è il controllo dello stato su di noi. Per quanto riguarda gli attivisti nel primo mondo, forme di comunicazione private o anonime potrebbe la soluzione ideale per evitare l’arresto preventivo. In posti come la Siria, poi, diventa una questione di vita o di morte.

All’inizio speravo che compagnie come Google sarebbero venute in soccorso implementando potenti sistemi di criptografia; purtroppo sembra sempre più improbabile che imprese in mano agli azionisti e intrecciate con il governo possano offrire servizi sicuri efficacemente. Se è vero che queste compagnie, che fanno grossi profitti e spendono grosse somme in attività lobbistiche, sono le meglio posizionate nella lotta contro lo spionaggio di stato, è anche vero che sono quelle che hanno più da perdere se non tirano dritto.

Lavabit di Ladar Levison era un servizio di email quasi sicuro. Ad agosto Levison lo ha chiuso citando interferenze e minacce da parte del governo. Secondo speculazioni terze, Levison aveva ricevuto una lettera della Nsa che chiedeva di ottenere dati sui clienti, probabilmente Edward Snowden. Recentemente si è scoperto che un giudice aveva emesso un ordine rivolto ad ottenere la chiave d’accesso SSL dei servizi offerti da Lavabit. Questa chiave permette una connessione criptata sicura tra utente e server. Il suo possesso dà la possibilità al governo di accedere in tempo reale alle informazioni mandate al sito dagli utenti. Questo a sua volta avrebbe reso possibile il rastrellamento delle credenziali e l’accesso alle email criptate dei 400.000 utenti di Lavabit.

Con suo grande merito, Ladar Levison decise di chiudere Lavabit, negando l’accesso all’archivio in cui sono custoditi i messaggi dei suoi clienti. Il suo rifiuto di principio è un’eccezione. Levison non aveva azionisti a cui rendere conto; solo se stesso e i suoi clienti. Non possiamo aspettarci che grosse imprese come Google, che finge di stare dalla nostra parte mentre in realtà cerca di favorire l’intrusione del governo, decidano di sfidare realmente lo stato. Altri, come la Microsoft, sembrano entusiasti di collaborare con l’NSA e altre agenzie a tre lettere.

Cosa significa per noi? Siamo condannati ad abbassare la testa? No! Dobbiamo prendere la cosa nelle nostre mani. Ci sono molti sistemi di criptografia gratis, open source e a standard aperto. Da quel che sappiamo, l’NSA è riuscita a penetrare i sistemi criptografati solo tramite la coercizione e la sovversione, non decodificando il codice. Molto probabilmente, possiamo ancora fidarci della matematica.

Quando un progetto è open source, il suo codice è disponibile allo scrutinio generale. Possiamo esaminarlo, possiamo sapere esattamente come fa quello che fa. La maggior parte di noi non ha le conoscenze tecniche per esaminare il codice di un programma prima di compilarlo, ma ci sono esperti e accademici fidati che possono farlo e lo fanno per noi. Così possiamo conoscere i potenziali punti deboli del software di criptografia e capire i limiti delle sua capacità. Quando comunichiamo usando PGP, ad esempio, usiamo uno standard aperto. Non abbiamo bisogno di affidare i nostri messaggi ad una compagnia che magari è stata costretta dal governo a compromettere la nostra riservatezza. Con PGP la chiave d’accesso è nelle tue mani; nessun altro può essere costretto a rivelarla. Il progetto Tor, più complesso, non è altrettanto ben definito. Per via della sua natura distribuita, le possibilità di abuso aumentano, ma il progetto è open source e questi possibili abusi sono documentati, e dunque possiamo studiarne i limiti.

La conclusione è che siamo tutti dentro. Se decidiamo di servirci dei servizi offerti dalle grosse compagnie, dobbiamo tenere conto del fatto che potrebbero comprometterci da un momento all’altro: non con la forza bruta ma con la coercizione. Con il software proprietario non c’è modo di valutare e prendere per buone le dichiarazioni dello sviluppatore. E quando usiamo un software open source dobbiamo renderci conto delle sue limitazioni e usarlo di conseguenza.

La sicurezza su internet è responsabilità nostra.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

One really excellent point Dean Spade made essentially concerned a knowledge problem that impacts attempts at broad prison policy reform. Spade has worked as an attorney for many prisoners, particularly queer and transgender prisoners, and he pointed out that for many of them the particular prison conditions that would make their stay more survivable varied substantially. This means that seeking top down prison reforms is not likely to benefit the human rights of all oppressed and brutalized prisoners, and that therefore we should advocate for the needs expressed by individual prisoners while also seeking to abolish the system that cages and brutalizes them. At another point in the discussion Reina Gossett mentioned the important work that a group called Creative Interventions does as one example of how we intervene to stop violence without the state. The full discussion, as well as four great videos with Gossett and Spade that preceded it, is available here. I highly recommend watching the entire thing.

Towards the end of the conversation, Dean mentioned some resources for those who want to learn more about prison abolition. He recommended Angela Davis’s excellent book Are Prisons Obsolete, as well as Towards Transformative Justice [pdf], which was developed by activists with the group Generation Five. He also mentioned the organizations Black and Pink, the Audre Lorde Project and their Safe OUTside the System Collective, FIERCE, No One Is Illegal, and the Young Women’s Empowerment Project, all of which do work around prison abolition.

So that was Friday afternoon for me. On Friday evening I attended a presentation by Amanda Lickers, a Haudenosaunee woman who has been active in fighting against corporations that attempt to engage in fossil fuel extraction on indigenous land. Her website, Reclaim Turtle Island, documents the indigenous movements that are resisting this ongoing land theft and colonialism. Amanda has worked with submedia.tv to produce a variety of videos on these grassroots movements and the police repression directed against them. She is also a prison abolitionist who has done some excellent prisoner support work, and throughout her talk she made many important points that should be relevant to prison abolitionists. For example, the colonialist roots of many governments’ policing and prison systems. She showed footage documenting the Royal Colonial Mounted Police’s brutal attack on indigenous activists who were protecting their land from companies seeking to engage in fracking. She further noted that the RCMP is an institution founded to repress natives and secure colonial outposts. She also pointed out that the Canadian state’s laws criminalizing sex workers, some of which were recently struck down in court, were rooted in the Indian Act. These moralist assaults on bodily autonomy and free association are rooted in colonialism. Moreover, Amanda pointed us to the cases of multiple indigenous activists who have been held in Canadian prisons, often in solitary confinement, for standing against land theft. This belies the common claims that prisons are necessary to protect us from theft. To the contrary, they often are used to repress those who seek to defend their lands from theft by powerful corporations and governments. This post at Reclaim Turtle Island provides one example of political prisoners being abused by the Canadian state for defending their land. Reclaim Turtle Island is currently doing a fundraiser on Indiegogo to support their ongoing work against colonialist land theft by extractive industries.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the great news we had this week about Hank Magee. Police violently raided Magee’s home on suspicion that he was growing marijuana. Understandably, Hank Magee defended his home, and in the process a police officer was killed. Prosecutors attempted to charge Magee with capital murder, but last week a grand jury refused to indict. While Hank Magee still faces marijuana charges, he is free from the state’s cages for now. He’s with his family. My friend Jesse Fruhwirth reported on this story at his excellent blog Utah 4Ps. Radley Balko has a blog up on the case at the Washington Post. And Jonathan Carp wrote up an op-ed related to the case here at the Center for a Stateless Society.

I’m overjoyed that Hank’s free from prison walls. And I’m even happier to know that so many great people are acting to abolish the prison state itself.

Arguably the most powerful person in the United States (even rivaling the POTUS), Ben S. Bernanke, has left the Federal Reserve. Since 2006 he has sought to make the economy his marionette. Fed policies, under his direction, worked to manage a collapsed housing market, busted mortgage industry and the 2008 global financial crisis – a manufactured crisis of the command and control mentality over the “free” market. Bernanke engineered perhaps the largest redistribution of wealth in American (if not world) history with massive bailouts given to the financial sector – money stolen from the labor of millions and given to the “too big to fail” economic elite. Aside from the initial 700 billion dollar bailout, a Federal Reserve audit revealed the central bank provided a whopping 16 trillion in secret aid to support the corporate state apparatus. Bernanke has released his reign, transferring power to the first woman in United States history to head the Fed: Janet Yellen.

Yellen was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 6, 2014, further committing Washington to even more Keynesian policies from the central bank. As a Fed official, Yellen was a great advocate of keeping interest rates artificially close to zero, increased government spending, and the controversial Quantitive Easing measures sought by the Fed to direct the American economy. Her rise to power will continue to favor the corporate state, even with rumors of economic growth.

There have been numerous libertarian/Libertarian arguments against the central bank. It is not my wish to re-invent the wheel. Most of these arguments, however, stem from the political right – most notably Ron Paul and even greater arguments from his mentor, Murray Rothbard. There is surprisingly little noise from the traditional left – the libertarian or market left - about the central bank, however. Even the famous American leftist and anarcho-syndicalist/libertarian-socialist Noam Chomsky supports central banking. Rather than re-invent the wheel, with this essay I hope to add to the small but sound left-libertarian opposition to the Federal Reserve.

A Brief History of Central Banking in the United States

Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, was among the first American politicians to argue for, and help develop, a central bank. Hamilton thought it would be irresponsible to place much democratic or economic control in the hands of the American populace. Hamilton and other federalists believed the country should be ruled by the economic ruling class – the elite, the educated and the privileged. Federalist John Jay put it as bluntly as possible: “Those who own the country ought to govern it.” Hamilton and company favored a strong national government, a broad interpretation of the constitution and put national unity above individualism and states rights. Their economic model, of course, was centrally planned with strict regulation of state economies. From this mindset the first central bank was born in 1791.

Hamilton’s bank, the First Bank of the United States, was kept out of the public arena and operated as a private financial institution. Hamilton’s main argument for the First Bank was that it would help repay the new nations war debt (Morgan 2012). Throughout its existence, however, the bank was met with popular backlash. Objections to the Federal Reserve today echo what was argued against the First Bank: It served moneyed interests (northern corporations), was a threat to property rights and restricted real economic growth (Morgan 2012). Some politicians of the time, notably Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued the bank was unconstitutional, that only congress, not a private bank, had the power to tax and print money. In 1811 the Bank was deconstructed as congress voted not to renew its charter (Morgan 2012).

In 1812 the United States found itself in the midst of another war and more national debt.  To deal with a growing financial crisis, Congress voted to charter the (larger) Second Bank of the United States. The Second Bank, at the moment of inception, was poorly managed (Scur 1960). A year and a half after it opened it almost collapsed, and would have, if not for Langdon Cheves. Cheves was the second president of the new central bank and effectively administered its operations. Still, popular sentiment about such a powerful, private institution raised concerns about the Second Banks existence (Scur 1960). This sentiment, and Andrew Jackson’s political clout, would ultimately dissolve this Second Bank in 1836.

The United States was free of central banking until yet another major war erupted. The Civil War, and the need to pay for it, again began the quest for a National Bank. In 1863 the “national banking system” (not a central bank) was developed (MFED 2013). The new banking system, with a national charter, dictated that banks had to issue government-printed bills for their own notes, these notes had to be backed by federal bonds – the war effort was funded (Sylla 1969). In 1865, as the war waged on between the industrialized North and the agricultural South, state bank notes were taxed out of existence – a uniform national currency was established in the United States for the first time (MFED 2013).

With the civil war financed and “won” by the Union, and with a uniform currency, the United States experienced a bank panic in every decade afterward (MFED 2013), ah,”The Gilded Age.” Economic panic began in 1873 due to runs on the free banking system. A “run” occurs when a large number of customers pull their money from banks (MFED 2013). The runs would lead to more and more folks withdrawing their money, causing a system wide economic panic. With the depression of 1893, the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the deep recession of 1907, banking moguls and the United States Government again sought the establishment of a central bank (Sylla 1969), as opposed to letting the market equilibrate.

What followed was a series of Congressional acts that led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908 established the National Monetary Commission, charged with managing the nations finances, which called for government intervention in the economy, via currency development, during times of financial crisis (MFED 2013). The election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson brought with it the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and American involvement in World War I. The Federal Reserve System was designed to be a government (not public) institution. The new central banking system was to work closely with the United States Treasury.

What followed the establishment of the Federal Reserve, after WWI, was the roaring twenties, further industrialization, the Great Depression, World War II, The New Deal, the rise of Keynesianism, explicit fiat currency, multiple recessions, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, multiple military interventions overseas, neoliberalism, the rise, fall and decay of the middle class, booms and busts, economic bubbles, artificial scarcity, artificial abundance and much more. In the wake of such history, the Federal Reserve has operated independently of the political process (MFED 2013). The Fed has become an independent centralized bank that is utilized to manage, and some would argue control, the United States economy.

The history of central banking is wrought with military conflict and depressed markets. States have long ignored moral objections to war, but economic restrictions have often halted violence. The printing press, however, allows governments to side step these restrictions. The century of the Fed has been a century of perpetual warfare. As Randolph Bourne wrote, shortly after the creation of the Federal Reserve, “war is the health of the state.” Central banking, Keynesian policies, and states are indeed dependent on jingoism and war. For in war governments flourish – allegiance to state blossoms, class struggle is stilled, spending keeps flowing, and worst of all, human beings, millions of us, die. Liberty is fundamentally opposed to this aggression, as noted here, by Anthony Gregory.

Sadly, as attributed to Nixon: “We are all Keynesians now.”

Liberty and the “Progressive Era”

United States history, like all history, can be defined as a race between social power and state power. It is outside the realm of this essay to describe all of the liberation movements that, in some context, sought the liberty of the true market form. Rather than try I will focus on the Progressive Era, which birthed the Federal Reserve.

The end of the Gilded Age was a period of great turmoil. It was good for business, the political class and those with a monopoly on capital, but the working class, people of color, women, political feminists, labor organizers, etc, realized they could not count on the national government to take their concerns, rights or liberty seriously. The Progressive Era did begin the Age of Reform, but this reform was not enacted to elevate the populace. Instead, reform was used to quiet popular uprisings, democratic social movements, and civil liberties – it was not intended to make fundamental changes to the established order (Zinn 2003).

The era has been termed “Progressive” because of the sheer number of laws that were passed. Upton Sinclair‘s “The Jungle” sparked a labor movement that accomplished passing the Meat Inspection Act, social movements engaged the system to pass the Hepburn Act which supported labor in railroads and pipelines (Zinn 2003), to name just a couple. Particular to the Federal Reserve, Woodrow Wilson’s presidency established the Federal Trade Commission and the Central Bank(s) itself. This was polished as progressive reform to control the growth of monopolies and to regulate the country’s money and banking system. Neither happened, in fact, power and influence of Wall Street only began to grow amidst giant surges of patriotism due to rising conflicts overseas. As noted by Emma Goldman (on patriotism and allegiance to government):

But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent-that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree-it suddenly dawned on us  … that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists.

Due to the work of early American libertarians such as Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman and others, movements developed that questioned the concentration of power. The labor movement began picking up steam and the marginalized voices in society were becoming amplified. It is true that working people benefited from some of the reforms of the Progressive Era – but the reforms protected the political and economic class from working people, giving just enough to stem off a major rebellion (Zinn 2003). A middle class cushion was manufactured to stem off class conflict as Howard Zinn (2003) explains:

Fundamental conditions did not change, however, for the vast majority of tenant farmers, factory workers, slum dwellers, miners, farm laborers, working men and women, black and white. Robert Wiebe sees in the Progressive movement an attempt by the system to adjust to changing conditions in order to achieve more stability. ‘Through rules with impersonal sanctions, it sought continuity and predictability in a world of endless change. It assigned far greater power to government . .. and it encouraged the centralization of authority.’ Harold Faulkner concluded that this new emphasis on strong government was for the benefit of ‘the most powerful economic groups.’

With the help of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street was able to take firm control of the political system. The market, as it existed, was not able to disperse protests at the grassroots level (Zinn 2003). The economic ruling class championed these reforms, to stabilize the state capitalist system in a time of uncertainty (Zinn 2003). These reforms gave rise to the corporation state that exists today. As noted by individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker: “Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.”

Social power is still racing against state power.

The Liberated Market

Enter, Janet Yellen, a grand proponent of quantitative easing in a depressed economy. The Federal Reserve, under her leadership, will continue to serve the politically connected and do very little for the average American. Even Andrew Huszar, an ex-Fed official, in a piece for the Wall Street journal described the programs Yellen champions as the “greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”

For all the discussion in the United States today about the proper function and role of our federal government, how to manage the economy, how to battle poverty, how to create jobs and so on and so on, what seems to be missing from national discussion is the true beauty of markets. A banking system, or piece of economic legislation, cannot fix the economy.

Economic systems are developed by the spontaneous order of society. The market is a product of inclined labor, derived from the dreams, aspirations, desires, passions and activities of free people. The market encompasses our places of exchange, but also the rest of human labor – social movements, federations, institutions, decision-making and all of human activity. This behavior cannot be managed from a centralized authority. The work of human beings, our inclined, creative labor, cannot be directed – it can only be realized in liberty.  The liberated market mechanism is the only cure for our past, current and future ills.

Today, in the era of too big to fail, it is corporate monopolies and financial institutions that benefit from the public. As George W. Bush said: “I have abandoned free market principles to save the free market.” What he meant was: “I have again exploited the middle and working classes to serve our economic ruling class.” While Bernanke, with the power of the Federal Reserve, was redistributing wealth to the upper tiers of society, organized people, from a diverse history of social movements, began developing the tools for market liberation.

The true market form, how people engage their labor, exists outside of the state.  The market left speaks of exchange and labor in human terms. The liberated market allows for economic, social and environmental justice. Liberation champions a society that allows the free flow of information, science and progress, democratic values, and the fruits of  labor so these principles can spread without restriction. The liberated market allows us to determine how great we can be. The liberated, free(d) market allows plans by the many, not by the few – it renders Yellen, Bernanke and all bureaucrats of the political class obsolete.

With booms and big busts, giant bubbles, manipulation of the market, a giant national debt and a decaying dollar accompanying promises in future spending, a full economic collapse of the United States government is a very real possibility (see Thomas L. Knapp: Government Spending: Two Steps Sideways, One Half-Step Back). This is scary, we all live here, we all have families here, we all have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Our way of life, however, is not at the mercy of the Federal Reserve or a conglomerate of folks in Washington. Though this realization is indeed scary, it should also be exciting. The market will finally have a chance to equilibrate. As witnessed in Detroit, free people can accomplish much with very little – and free people are already working on the solutions.

If we are to be serious about living in a peaceful and prosperous society, then we must also be serious about competing forms of currency, competing markets and the abandonment of the command and control mentality. Perhaps the Keynesians are right and government spending is the only way to prevent the collapse of state capitalism. What’s ignored by fans of the printing press is that state capitalism is unsustainable. If we all march off to battle there will be full employment, but nothing to eat. The only way out is the liberated market. In the words of Kevin Carson: “In the end we’ve got to find some way off the hamster wheel.”

Instead, may we work together and exchange services to co-ordinate and cultivate markets. The emergence of peer to peer currency, like Bitcoin, and the rise of voluntary exchange are sources of hope. The more we work around traditional power structures, the more we advance social power in our all too important race against the corporate state.

The creative labor of human beings will build markets, mutual aid, relief, decent societies and finally peace.  We can and will build a real and lasting peace that will make life on Earth worth living — a peace for every child of humanity. Free human beings will no longer die for governments and/or capital. The greatest moment in human civilization is within our grasp. It is time we reach out and attain liberty.

As Yellen continues, perhaps even enhances, the disastrous policies of the Fed, may we find solace and peace in the liberated market. May we soon, in liberty, say triumphantly: “We are all Agorists now.”

References:

Chandavarkar, Anand G. Keynes and Central Banking. Indian Economic Review / Volume XX, No.2

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. (2013) A History of Central Banking in the United States.  http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/student/centralbankhistory/bank.cfm

Morgan, H. Wayne. (1956) The Origins and Establishment of the First Bank of the United States. Business History Review / Volume 30 / Issue 04 / December 1956, pp 472-492

Scur, Leon M. (1960) The Second Bank of the United States and Inflation After the War of 1812. Journal of Political Economy/Volume 68, No. 2

Sylla, Richard (1969). Federal Policy, Banking Market Structure and Capital Mobilization in the United States, 1863 – 1913. The Journal of Economic History/Volume 29, No. 4

Zinn, Howard (2003). A People’s History of the United States: The Socialist Challenge. Harper Perennial.

PGP relies on what is called “Public Key Cryptography” to cipher and decipher messages. In times gone by, to send cryptographic messages to a recipient, an agreed upon key or method would need to be shared beforehand. This may have required meeting with the recipient in person to establish the “key” without fear of interception. If an encrypted letter was likely to be intercepted, it is just as likely that a letter detailing a secret decryption algorithm would be intercepted. This situation is clearly impractical in the current state of mass communication across the world with people you cannot easily meet in person.

Public Key Cryptography, or Asymmetric Key Cryptography, is a solution to this problem. First both parties wishing to engage in an encrypted conversation must generated key pairs. Each participant will generate a public and a private key using their PGP software (this only needs to be done once per person). The public key is the cipher. This is the key used to encrypt a message. The private key, which is mathematically related to the public key, is used to decipher the message. In reality, a symmetric session key is generated to encrypt each message. The session key itself is then encrypted with the public key and sent within the message.

How this works, practically,

• Person A shares their public key with Person B.
• Person B uses this key to encrypt a message and send it back to Person A.
• Person A then uses their own private key to decrypt the message.
• Person B‘s public key can be included in the return message or published publicly.

The efficacy of modern cryptography relies on the fact that certain mathematical problems are extremely difficult to solve. Such problems used are Prime factorisation and elliptic curve relationship; knowing this is not necessarily required to effectively use modern cryptography, but it is worth mentioning for those who may be interested.

A good analogy to this would be Person A sending Person B a lock-box with just a padlock, but no physical key. Person B then places a message inside the lock-box and locks it. From that point onward, Person A is the only one able to unlock the box with the key they have in their possession. Using this method, it is safe for anyone to have access one’s public key because all that it allows someone to do is encrypt messages to for that person. Only by compromising someone’s private key or failing to authenticate who you are communicating with will this secrecy and security be readily broken.

Now that there is a basic understanding of how PGP works, we will go through an easy method to implement it in email communications. Keep in mind that PGP will protect the privacy of communications, but not anonymity. An effective eavesdropper will still be able to know that you, Person A, has communicated with Person B. They will only be unaware of what is being communicated.

One of the easiest methods of setting up and using PGP is a browser plugin called Mailvelope. This is what I will be covering in the rest of the article. I suggest this because it does not require the installation of software to the PC, as it runs on the browser platform. This along with the fact that PC Email clients are in declining use is why I think Mailvelope is a worthy option. I will also link my public key and email at the end of the article, if you wish to practice sending and receiving encrypted email.

Mailvelope is currently only available for Chrome. It can be downloaded as an extension here: http://mailvelope.com/

Once you have Mailvelope added to your browser, a padlock icon will appear in the top right next to the Chrome settings button.

Left click on it and select “Options.” From here we need to generate a public/private key pair. This option will be in the left hand menu button.

Input your details in the fields provided. Make sure the passphrase you use is both long and something you can remember. If you forget this passphrase, you will no longer be able to encrypt or decrypt messages using that particular key pair. In the “Advanced>>” section, choose a keysize longer than 1024 bit for future’s sake. Once you have filled in the forms, click “Submit.”

Once you have completed this, go to the “Display Keys” option in the menu. From here you can “Export” your public key. You can choose to send it to another PGP user via email or you can export it as a block of text and shared via other means. Do not give out your private key – ever. Your public key is totally public and can be safely shared far and wide or published anywhere without worry – as promiscuously as you like. All the public key allows someone to do is send a message to you.

In order to send encrypted messages to others, you must import their public key. You can do this by importing an “.asc file” with the public key or copying their public key block. When obtaining someone’s public key, make sure you have, to the best of your ability, ascertained that who you are speaking to is really who you are speaking to.

Now that you have your keys set up and have imported someone else’s public key, you need to know how to send an email.

Open up your email client. Mailvelope comes configured to support Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail and GMX. For this Demonstration I will use Gmail:

Go to compose an email. You will immediately notice a new “pencil and paper button” inside the compose box. First enter the recipient and subject, then, once you get to the body of the email, click this “pencil and paper button.”

Compose the email in the box that opened up – this prevents clear text email from being automatically saved as draft by your email provider and potentially compromising the secrecy of your message.

Once you have written your message, click on the “padlock button,” choose the recipient’s public key from the drop-down menu, click “Add” and “Ok.” You then press the “Transfer button” to move the encrypted text back to the compose box. Note that because PGP encrypts your message with a generated session key, then encrypts the session key with the recipient’s public key, it is possible to encrypt a message for multiple recipients.

An encrypted block of text will look like this:

—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—–
Version: OpenPGP.js v.1.20130820
Comment: http://openpgpjs.org
wcBMAxLijeXaycuCAQgAl8n4g5ilhHXKoAqawIxn/bT3i8cZ4HP6JxtCZWWM
rzjX75QFffr3U6OSByqpU+DRBmhd2zG0akzkImUqrkVmQbbZv4vqEpQMMwzh
heX+MuZeUCXKAWTCGfcIMbeXKjpuqbuL0F8NkHeAkqFJ8hcMY8aYX3VtaRbQ
oVdL5aPzMbS5kPxjtr1OY93dwy1jV7JvrYgpyuk4wpynfS1AfKpn2lDyCQGH
sTxu6yqrJUDnnYrs0TkgLvkPXueggA8+yw7zDd3iQ5P2VeMWHH7EAUa+gFj7
x/M3DtHsGvfdssiPP35PZrglHCsJGCTZScO+Re1M2IxZtnZNHfDU0V9lhX4i
Q9JQAQlHtm8etEXlyvovsXDfIE2SdKgcj1bgx359V+zZsvPNyOtqfYEuyszM
7i65cEqz9GdLGFusSYSFpespUCHC71zFmaHEGcmUpglLIvvX2W4=
=g9Kk
—–END PGP MESSAGE—–

You can now send your message knowing that if intercepted, it will be unreadable.

When you receive an encrypted email, Mailvelope will detect this and overlay a “padlock and envelope symbol” over it. Clicking on this “padlock and envelope symbol” will prompt you to enter your passkey. Entering this will display the message in clear text for you to read.

Now you should be fully capable of using PGP to encrypt and decrypt emails to and from your contacts.

If you wish to test Mailvelope out and don’t yet know anyone else with PGP set up, I have set up an email account to receive encrypted messages. The Email is: williamsheppard101@gmail.com

My public key can be found on the MIT server: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x12E28DE5DAC9CB82

I will respond to all encrypted emails I receive. Ensure you include your public key in the email.

Below are a number of other tools that are worth noting, if Mailvelope does not suit your specific habits or setup.

EnigMail for Thunderbird mail client
https://www.enigmail.net/home/index.php
A very clean and versatile addon for those who still use local mail clients, once it is set up it is arguably easier to use than mailvelope.

PGP4win
http://www.PGP4win.org/download.html
Comes with a number of utilities, including the certificate manager Kleopatra, which allows you to import and export encrypted messages, allowing you to copy send encrypted messages over other platforms.

GNU Privacy Guard
http://www.gnupg.org/download/index.en.html
For Linux users, GPG can be downloaded from the distro’s repository, or a source package can be downloaded from the website.

GPG Tools
https://gpgtools.org/
A PGP suite for Mac users.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Como usar criptografia PGP para comunicação privada.

O estado requer que a informação acerca de seus súditos seja útil para os resultados desejados. Desde o primeiro censo no Egito, há mais de 5.000 anos, os estados buscaram informação pessoal acerca de seus cidadãos, especialmente em estados tirânicos, onde informantes e polícia secreta coletam informação acerca de qualquer e toda atividade potencialmente subversiva. Na era da Internet e do estado espreitador, agências de espionagem coletam informações acerca de nós que fariam a NKVD de Stalin morrer de inveja — muito dela ingenuamente entregue via mídia social. Quando o estado espreitador será extinto depende do palpite de cada um mas, enquanto isso, quanto menos úteis forem os dados coletados a nosso respeito, menos eficaz será o controle do estado sobre nós. Para ativistas, o uso de comunicação privada ou anônima em países do primeiro mundo poderá ser a chave para evitar prisão preventiva. Em lugares como Síria, torna-se questão de vida e morte.

Inicialmente eu tive a esperança de que empresas como a Google acorreriam em socorro, por meio da implementação de poderosos sistemas de criptografia; infelizmente parece cada vez mais improvável que corporações comprometidas com acionistas e envolvidas com o governo possam criar, eficazmente, serviços da espécie. Embora essas grandes empresas, com seus alentados lucros e seus orçamentos para lobby, estejam provavelmente na melhor posição para revidar ao estado espreitador, são também as que mais têm a perder se não cooperarem ou fingirem cooperar.

A Lavabit, de Ladar Levison, era serviço de email semisseguro. Em agosto, Levison fechou a Lavabit citando ameaças e interferência do governo. Observadores especularam que Levison havia recebido uma Carta de Segurança Nacional exigindo dados de cliente, provavelmente do denunciante da Agência de Segurança Nacional – NSA Edward Snowden. Recentemente deslacrado documento de tribunal mostra ter sido expedido mandado para obtenção da chave do protocolo de segurança SSL do serviço Lavabit. Tal chave permite conexão segura criptografada entre usuário e servidor. Ter acesso a essa chave daria ao governo acesso em tempo real a informações enviadas ao site pelos usuários. Isso, por sua vez, permitiria ao governo coletar credenciais de login e ter acesso a emails criptografados dos 400.000 clientes da Lavabit.

Muito louvavelmente, Ladar Levison resolveu fechar a Lavabit — negando acesso às comunicações privadamente armazenadas dos clientes da empresa. Esse tipo de postura baseada em princípios éticos não é a regra. Levison não tinha acionistas aos quais prestar contas. Ele respondia a si próprio e a seus clientes. Não podemos esperar que grandes corporações tecnológicas como a Google, que projeta imagem pública de estar do nosso lado e em verdade tenta dar divulgação ao intrometimento do governo, efetivamente enfrente o governo quando compelidas por lei. Outras empresas, como a Microsoft, parecem entusiasmadas com colaborar com a NSA e outros órgãos governamentais de espionagem.

Ora bem, o que significa tudo isso para nós? Está tudo contra nós? Não! Temos que tomar o problema em nossas próprias mãos. Há uma multidão de projetos livres e de fonte aberta e padrões abertos para criptografia. Do que entendemos, a NSA tem quebrado criptografia por meio de coerção e subversão, não por meio de tentativas de atacar cruamente os números e decifrar os códigos. Muito provavelmente, ainda podemos confiar na matemática.

Quando um projeto é de fonte aberta, seu código fica aberto para escrutínio. Ele pode ser examinado pormenorizadamente e podemos saber exatamente como faz o que faz. Embora a maioria de nós não tenha conhecimento técnico para examinar o código de programa específico para esquadrinhá-lo antes de compilá-lo, pesquisadores e acadêmicos fidedignos podem fazê-lo e esquadrinhá-los para nós. Portanto, podemos estar cientes de vulnerabilidades em potencial do software de criptografia e saber os limites de suas aptidões. Quando nos comunicamos usando PGP, por exemplo, estamos usando padrão aberto. Não precisamos confiar nossa comunicação a uma empresa que poderá ter sido coagida pelo governo a comprometer nossa privacidade. Com PGP, estamos de posse de nossachave privada e ninguém outro poderá ser forçado a entregá-la. O projeto Tor, por causa de sua complexidade, não é tão claro. Por causa de sua natureza distribuída, há mais oportunidades de vulnerabilidade, mas o projeto é de fonte aberta e suas fraquezas em termos de exploração que dele tire proveito estão documentadas e, portanto, temos como entender seus limites.

As conclusões a que temos de chegar são no sentido de que estamos nisso juntos. Se resolvermos usar serviço de empresa que afirme ser tal serviço seguro, teremos de estar cientes de que o serviço poderá ser comprometido a qualquer momento — não por meio de força bruta, mas mediante força coercitiva. Com software de criptografia de fonte fechada não há como avaliar ou confiar nas afirmações do desenvolvedor. Quando usamos software de criptografia de fonte aberta, podemos tornar-nos conhecedores de suas limitações e usá-lo acordemente.

Segurança na Internet é responsabilidade nossa.

Artigo original afixado por William Sheppard em 26 de outubro de 2013.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

The state requires information on its subjects to be effective. From the first census in Egypt more than 5000 years ago, states have sought personal information on their citizens, especially in tyrannical states, where informants and secret police gather information on any and all potentially subversive activities. In the age of the Internet and the surveillance state, spy agencies collect information on us that would make Stalin’s NKVD green with envy — much of it naively handed over via social media. When the surveillance state will be dismantled is anyone’s guess, but, in the meantime, the less useful data that can be collected on us the less effective the state’s control of us. For activists, use of private or anonymous communication in first world countries could be key to avoiding pre-emptive arrest, In places like Syria, it becomes a matter of life and death.

Initially, I had hoped companies like Google would come to the rescue by implementing powerful encryption systems; unfortunately it seems less and less likely that corporations beholden to shareholders and intertwined with government can effectively and securely create these services. While these big companies with their large profits and lobbying budgets are probably in the best position to fight back against the surveillance state, they  also have the most to lose if they don’t play along.

Ladar Levison’s Lavabit was a semi-secure email service. In August, Levison shut down Lavabit citing government threats and interference. Observers speculated that Levison had received a National Security Letter demanding customer data, likely that of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Recently unsealed court document show that a warrant was issued for the private SSL key for the Lavabit service. This key allows a secure encrypted connection between user and server. Having access to this key would give the government real time access to information being sent by users to the site. This in turn would allow them to scoop up log-in credentials and access the encrypted emails of any of Lavabit’s 400,000 customers.

Much to his credit, Ladar Levison decided to shut down Lavabit — denying access to the privately stored communications of its customers. This sort of principled stance is unexpected. Levison didn’t have shareholders to answer to. He answered to himself and his customers. We cannot expect large tech corporations like Google, who put forth the public image of being on our side and actually attempt to publicize government intrusion, to actually defy the government when compelled by law. Other players, such as Microsoft, appear to be enthusiastic in their collaboration with the NSA and other 3 letter agencies.

So what does this all mean for us? Is it all doom and gloom? No! We have to take this into our own hands. There are a multitude of free and open source projects and open standards for encryption. From what we understand, the NSA has broken encryption through coercion and subversion, not by raw attempts at bashing away at the numbers and cracking the codes. Most likely, we can still trust the mathematics.

When a project is open source its code is open to scrutiny. It can be vetted and we can know exactly how it does what it does. While the majority of us do not have the technical know-how to look through the code of a specific program to vet it before compiling it,  trusted researchers and academics can and do vet these for us. Thus we can be aware of potential vulnerabilities of encryption software and know the limits of its capabilities. When we communicate with PGP, for example, we are using an open standard. We do not need to trust our communications to a company that may have been coerced by government to compromise our privacy. With PGP, you are  in possession of your private key and no one else can be made to hand it over. The Tor project, due to its complexity, is not so clear cut. Because of its distributed nature, there are more opportunities for exploitation, but the project is open source and these potential exploits are documented so we are able to understand its limits.

The conclusions we must draw is that we are in this together. If we decide to use corporate service that claim to be secure, we must be aware that they could be compromised at any time — not through brute force, but coercive force. With closed source encryption software, there is no way to evaluate or trust the developer’s claims. When we use open source encryption software we must make ourselves aware of its limitations and use it accordingly.

Internet security is our responsibility.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Segurança Na Internet É Responsabilidade Nossa.
• Italian, La Sicurezza su Internet È Responsabilità Nostra.

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013, anarchist lawyer and activist Gerald “Jerry” Koch was taken into custody in New York City for refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the 2008 Times Square Military Recruitment Center bombing. This is the second time Koch has been subpoenaed, after the government informed his lawyers that it was believed that he was at a bar in 2008 or 2009 where a patron indicated knowledge of who had committed the bombing.

Koch is the latest victim in the Red and Black scare, a FBI campaign which began in earnest shortly after the Occupy Oakland demonstrations in 2011, where activists are being targeted for their political views and not on the basis of suspected criminal activity.

Another recent and prominent victim is libertarian Adam Kokesh, who is being held for resisting arrest during an anti-drug war demonstration. Kokesh may have been targeted due to publicity surrounding his upcoming “Open Carry March” on Washington, an action that remains controversial even among gun rights activists. One salient question is, in light of the successful 3D printing of a firearm (a movement initiated by Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed), whether this flamboyant open rebellion against state encroachment is even necessary.

Witch Hunt

Instead of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee of the “Cold” War, the Obama administration’s weapon of choice in the war on dissent is the eternally authoritarian grand jury.

This fresh abuse of power comes on the heels of numerous grand jury subpoenas of anarchists on spurious charges in the Pacific Northwest. Young anarchist were targeted in a series of FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of 2012 during an investigation into “acts of vandalism” that took place during the Seattle May Day protests just two months prior.

The search warrants issued required victims to provide agents with “anti-government or anarchist literature,” including flags, cell phones, hard drives, address books and black clothing.

Despite not being present or involved in the May Day march, Maddie Pfeiffer, Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik and Matt Duran were each imprisoned for almost six months for contempt of court after refusing to speak before the grand jury. They were mainly asked whether or not they knew other anarchists in their community and what their politics were.

Manufacturing Political Prisoners

Grand juries are when the state ostensibly believes you have knowledge of a crime and subpoenas you before a court — or else you face prison time. That’s right. If you don’t talk, have fun in prison. No evidence of wrongdoing required. Your freedom is revoked simply by failing to provide information to or submit your body before the cold legal machinations of a witch-hunt state.

Furthermore, you can’t have a lawyer in the room with you when before a federal grand jury, and the proceedings are not open to the public. Finally, there is no judge present in the courtroom. There are instead 16 to 23 citizen jurors and the whole affair is coordinated by the prosecutor, the Assistant US Attorney (AUSA).

As you might imagine, grand juries tend to indict successfully (estimates around 98% of the time). This led Judge Saul Wachler to state that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”

While the United States has been fond of grand juries, most other “nations” have long ago done away with this barbaric display of state power. The first such courtroom to be called a grand jury began with an 1166 act of Henry II of England, in an attempt to increase the power of the royal court over the local feudal courts. England abolished the grand jury in the Criminal Justice Act of 1948.

Back in the land of the free, the grand jury lays the groundwork for litigation by the attorney general (now district attorney) — prosecution by the state instead of by an aggrieved private party. This is how victimless crimes are punished, most notably the war on drugs (or tax evasion). The Black Panthers, anarchists, communists, environmental and animal rights activists have all been subjected to grand juries.

Take Action 

Koch, who has a record of defending Occupiers and activists, faces 18 months behind bars. An excerpt from a personal statement:

Over the past few decades, the FBI has demonstrated a consistent pattern of harassment and illegal surveillance of anarchists and other radicals not only here in New York, but also across the country.

Throughout this time, federal grand juries (incredibly secretive proceedings that do not permit one’s lawyers to be present) have played a significant role; a federal grand jury is authorized to ask questions about anything and anyone, and often the declared intention is simply a mask to disguise the actual goal of acquiring information for use in other politically motivated cases.

It is my belief that these two federal grand juries—despite the pretense of investigation into the 2008 bombing—are actually being used to gain information about my friends, loved ones, and activists for whom I have done legal support. By declining to testify, I refuse to be coerced into participating in a political witch-hunt that eerily recalls those of the McCarthy era Red Scare.

Please donate to his legal fund. Find out more on the beautifully designed webpage jerryresists.net.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
– Martin Niemöller

With the ever expanding surveillance systems being employed in the United States and around the world, the ability to use the internet anonymously is becoming increasingly important, especially for activists, or anyone who is not okay with your Search Engine provider, ISP (Internet Service Provider) and your government knowing everything about your internet use. Here, I will go into brief detail about the technical aspects of Tor, give reasons why you should use Tor and finally guide you through the installation of the Tor browser and how to contribute to the network by setting up a relay.

What is Tor?

Tor, formally an acronym for “The Onion Router“, is a distributed proxy network designed to provide anonymity on the web. Much like a VPN (Virtual Private Networks). Tor encrypts your traffic and bounces it through a number of relays before arriving at it’s destination. Preventing third parties from being able to see what you are sending through the network, and where your traffic initially came from. Tor can also be used for servers, to anonymize the physical location of websites, and those who visit them.

How does it work?

There are a number of very in depth resources that explain in a lot of detail how the network works, this is not that. This is a brief guide to introduce you to the concept of onion routing, and if you wish to learn further, there will be a number of links included.

When you attempt to contact a website using the Tor Browser, the Tor client randomly selects 3 nodes from the network. The client then encrypts a message to be sent to the final recipient (e.g a website you want to visit). The encrypted message is sent to the first node, the first node then peels off an initial layer of encryption, revealing where to send the message to the second node, this process is repeated until it reaches the third and final node, also known as the “exit relay”, where the message is unencrypted and sent to the final recipient. The effect of this is to obscure your IP address from the destination server by providing multiple barriers between you and the server. Keep in mind however, personal information that you choose to give to a website, such as in a sign up form, is treated like any other data by the website, it can be looked at by an administrator, or subpoenaed by Law Enforcement, Tor works most effectively if you keep your information private as well as anonymous.

Why should you use it?

Increasingly, governments around the world have become preoccupied with what is known as Total Information Awareness, the ability to track every piece of digital information that we create: financial transactions, instant messages, email, web history, etc. This information can be used to intimidate, harass, or even jail dissidents, journalists and those who may pose some form of nuisance to the government. Many nations have strong controls on what people can search for and view on the internet. Tor allows for the bypassing of these filters, and has been especially useful in Iran, a nation which enjoys extremely high usage of the Tor network.

In the short term, there is little we can do to stop this encroaching surveillance state. But we are able to protect ourselves and others by obscuring as much data as possible. Tor is one such solution. The more people who use Tor, among other things, to browse the web, when they feel it necessary, the less useful our data will be to the government. The more of us who run relays for the Tor network, the faster the system will function for those who need to use it.

Setup

In recent times, attention has been paid to making the use of Tor extremely easy for the less technically proficient, with minimal setup required. The Tor browser bundle can be downloaded from here:

• https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en

This will install the components needed to use the Tor network, including a modified version of Firefox specifically configured for Tor and Vidalia, a graphical front-end that will allow you to configure your Tor settings, including setting up a relay to contribute to the network.

If you do not feel the need to use the Tor browser on your system, but wish to set up a Tor relay, the package can be downloaded by following this link, choosing your operating system, then choosing the Tor Relay Bundle. This will be especially useful on desktop computers, or dedicated computers that run constantly. While a temporary relay does not harm the network, a permanent one is much more useful. When you run a relay from your system, you will be making the Tor network larger and faster. By adding a node, you make the network more distributed, providing for more robust anonymity. You are also spreading the traffic load, increasing the speed of the network.

The Tor Relay bundle can be downloaded from here:

• https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en – Choose your operating system, then “Tor Relay Bundle”.

Setting up the browser is simple, just download the file, extract it to the folder of your choice, then click the “Start Tor Browser” in the folder. Vidalia should start to run, and once it is connected to the network, the browser will open and will notify you if you are successfully running Tor.

If you wish to run a relay along with the browser, go to “set up relay” in Vidalia and check “relay traffic inside the Tor network (non exit relay)”, set how much bandwidth you wish to donate and you are good to go.

If you have installed the relay bundle, the relaying option should be set up automatically, and Vidalia will attempt to run whenever you boot your computer. You may wish to run as an exit relay, but do so at your own risk. If you run as an exit relay, your IP will be what the destination websites see when someone uses your relay, the traffic runs unencrypted from your connection to the destination, and if someone is using Tor for less than savory purposes; spamming, Wikipedia vandalism, child pornography, etc. You run the risk of having your IP banned from many websites due to actions of others, have your computer seized or even be arrested by law enforcement. If you wish to run an exit node, please follow this guide from the Tor Project to mitigate the risks involved. I must emphasize however, these are not issues if you run a relay inside the network, as all traffic you send and receive will be encrypted.

I hope this guide has been useful and convinced those not already using Tor to give it a try. If you do set up a relay, please let us know in the comments section.

There are further resources available for a more in depth look at:

• https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en
• https://www.torproject.org/dist/manual/short-user-manual_en.xhtml
• https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki