Moreover, the state tends to secure its own interests and those of concentrated special interest groups first and foremost. Bills that pose a substantial threat to the NSA, their telecom company collaborators or profiteers like Booz Allen Hamilton will tend to be eroded or defeated due to the power of these predatory interest groups. Or worse, they will be twisted to serve the interests of these oligarchs.

Legislative reform is a dead end, but there’s a better way. We can route around the state, thwart its surveillance efforts, and make it progressively harder to intercept and watch our communications.

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The first thing I heard on the radio after it woke me was that the first tower of the World Trade Center had been struck. As I lay listening, the report came in of a plane crashing into the second tower. It was clearly no accident.

My first thought was that Bush would get a grant of executive power rivaling the Enabling Act passed after the Reichstag fire. The FBI and intelligence community would once again drag out their Christmas wish list of surveillance powers they didn’t manage to get rubber-stamped after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Bush would get a blank check to fight wars anywhere in the world under the pretext of fighting “terrorism,” just as previous Executives had fought endless illegal and undeclared wars in the name of combating “communism” and “narco-trafficking” in previous decades. But this time public gullibility would be fueled by outrage, and Bush’s ability to wave the bloody shirt would get his wars approved with even less scrutiny than Vietnam and all the other dirty little American wars during the Cold War era. I figured I’d be lucky if my Red Card from the Wobblies and the anarchist circles I hung out in online didn’t get me held without charge in a detention camp.

The Al Qaeda attack came two years into the heady atmosphere of the post-Seattle movement, part of the upsurge in global networked activism sparked by the 1994 Zapatista uprising, in which multilateral agencies like the G8 and WTO couldn’t meet without being disrupted by anti-globalization protesters. I thought it likely that the post-9/11 war hysteria would  result in this wave of resurgent radicalism being marginalized or suppressed, much as the hysteria during WWI was used to suppress most of the American Left. At my job (a VA hospital), I’d worked hard to drive a wedge between management and my fellow workers, and to promote a resentment and willingness to fight back. I feared that the wave of “patriotic” sentiment after the terrorist attack would result in a “we’re all in it together” attitude, and drown our workplace activism in a sea of red white and blue ribbons.

Much of this came to pass. Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSA expanded illegal wiretapping, the military and CIA created a detention camp at Guantanamo (and tortured detainees at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram), Bush immediately went to war in Afghanistan and then in 2003 used fear over 9/11 to get approval for the war in Iraq. To this day, supporters of Obama’s new war on ISIS are denouncing opposition as a “September 10 mentality.”

The atmosphere of waving flags and yellow ribbons in the ensuing weeks seemed like bedlam to me. The nurses enthusiastically handing out homemade lapel ribbons at work reminded me of Red Army political officers. And the post-Seattle anti-globalization demonstrations did indeed slow to a trickle and then stop.

They didn’t open internment camps on US soil for American citizens or suspend habeas corpus, but most of my expectations came to pass to some degree.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. The past few years have been the time of Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks and Edward Snowden. If the Seattle movement fizzled out, the Arab Spring, M15 and Occupy have since taken place on an even greater scale. Far from class consciousness being buried in a wave of patriotism, labor activism has come back with a force I couldn’t have imagined, in the form of Coalition of Immokalee Workers boycotts and networked campaigns by Walmart and fast food workers.

The capitalist state and its security apparatus gave it its best shot after 9/11 and still couldn’t take us out, or even slow us down very long. We’ll bury them.

Kevin Carson discusses how the makers and takers aren’t who you think.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the War on Drugs, intervention, and immigrant children.

Patrick Cockburn discusses the Saudi complicity in the rise of ISIS.

Gina Luttrell discusses bootleggers, baptists, and birth control.

Justin Raimondo discusses how neocons are going undercover.

Ivan Eland discusses resolving conflict in artificial states.

Bionic Mosquito discusses the criteria for a just war.

Eric Peters discusses the non-aggression principle.

Patrick Cockburn discusses ISIS in Syria.

Norman Solomon discusses the god complex of Uncle Sam.

Wendy McElroy discusses voluntaryist anthropology.

Sheldon Richman discusses the smear of isolationism.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses how government power is about having power rather than catching terrorists.

Nick Gillespie discusses a libertarian foreign policy.

Jeffrey Miron discusses libertarianism.

Andrew Bacevich discusses the lessons from America’s war for the Greater Middle East.

Justin Raimondo discusses the new meaning of isolationism.

Patrick Cockburn discusses Christians in Iraq.

Sheldon Richman discusses Jane Cobden.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the practicality of libertarianism.

Sheldon Richman discusses the politics of the border.

Sheldon Richman discusses why he can’t help being a libertarian.

John LaForge discusses censorship and myth-making surrounding the atomic bomb.

Ron Jacobs discusses Tonkin and Watergate.

Patrick Cockburn discusses how ISIS is winning on two fronts.

James Rothenberg discusses the American flags and its followers.

Empty Wheel discusses whether civil libertarians are falling for faux NSA reform.

Alexey Shirov beats Boris Gelfand.

Yifan Hou beats Li Chao.

In North Carolina, governor Pat McRory signed the Energy Modernization Act, which includes a provision criminalizing (reduced in the final version, due to public outcry, from a felony to a misdemeanor) to publicly disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has appealed to the Supreme Court to contest an interpretation of the Whistleblower Protection Act that protects government employees who leak information to the public.

If the North Carolina legislation sounds familiar, it should. It follows on the heels of legislation in other states that turns the filming of animal abuse and other unethical practices in the agribusiness industry into a criminal offense. You may also remember that BP, after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, refused to disclose the composition of dispersal agents it was dumping in the Gulf by the ton on  “proprietary information” grounds.

Now, first of all the very concept of “proprietary information” is nonsense. And it’s nonsense many times over when a company can use it as legal cover to pump tons of potentially toxic chemicals into the ocean or into bedrock that may (make that “will”) leach into our groundwater, without telling us what they’re doing. Not only should it not be a crime to reveal such information, but in a free society local residents could — and should — demand immediate disclosure of the chemicals that energy companies were pumping into their air and water in a civil discovery process, shutting them down forthwith if they failed to comply.

The Obama Justice Department’s position should also sound familiar. Obama has a worse record of persecuting whistleblowers and passive-aggressive sabotage of Freedom of Information requests than George W. Bush, if such a thing is imaginable. Obama’s government also sentenced Chelsea Manning to thirty years in Leavenworth for revealing to the American people the war crimes and diplomatic skullduggery “our” government engages in, and is hounding Edward Snowden to the ends of the earth for similar revelations about illegal NSA surveillance.

An important concept in organization theory, in considering the power relationship between a principal and agent, is “moral hazard.” The less information the principal has about the actions of the agent, the more room there is for moral hazard — that is, for the agent to take advantage of the principal’s limited information and promote her own interests under cover of serving the principal. The less the principal knows about what the agent is doing, the less meaningful her actual status as principal becomes.

This moral hazard is a problem in all principal-agent relationships, and becomes more severe as the principal’s knowledge of the agent’s day-to-day activities is diminished. The result, in all ostensibly representative institutions, is what Robert Michels called the Iron Law of Oligarchy: The tendency for power to shift upward from the delegator to the delegate, from the principal to the agent, and from the elector to the representative. No matter who the acting leadership of an institution ostensibly represents — voters, shareholders, whatever — their superior access to inside information and control over the agenda will effectively nullify any real control by those on the outside they claim to represent.

And of course when the “agent” has the authority to decide what the “principal” is or is not allowed to know about the agent’s activities, and punish the agent’s subordinates for leaking information to the principal, the claim that the agent derives her authority from the principal becomes a complete and utter farce.

These recent news items demonstrate this in spades. As Marja Erwin argued, in response to claims that Chelsea Manning was a “traitor” for divulging government secrets to the public the government allegedly answers to, “consent requires equality. As long as the government keeps secrets from the governed and has power over the governed, it does not have consent, and does not have legitimacy” (“The persecution of Breanna Manning and the incoherence of American Centrist ideology,” April 25, 2012).

Short of a direct democracy in which all decisions are made directly by the governed themselves, it’s impossible to conceive of a government or other representative institution that couldn’t control the information available to those it “represents.” And the ultimate in direct democracy is a stateless society without hierarchical institutions, in which all decisions are made by individuals or by voluntary associations of those affected by the decision.

-Lucy Steigerwald: Columnist for VICE.com, Antiwar.com, Rare.us, and Editor in Chief of The Stag Blog; @lucystag
-Joe Steigerwald: Publisher for The Stag Blog, technical dude; @steigerwaldino
-Michelle Montalvo: Perpetual intern, sci-fi enthusiast; @michelle7291
-Cory Massimino: Student, writer for DL Liberty, Students for Liberty Blog, Center for a Stateless Society; @CoryMassimino

Our cranky, liberty-loving panel discussed Glenn Greenwald’s latest leaks, the NSA, the 9/11 Museum, Chris Christie being a hack, and whether libertarians hate sports, even if they’re way better than politics.

Trevor Timm at the Guardian writes, “in a compromise that moved the formerly strong legislation out of committee and into action, the bill was weakened significantly: in came more immunity for telecoms, and out went tough transparency and provisions for the Fisa court, along with protections against warrantless “backdoor” searches of your communications.”

The bill was later watered down further, widening NSA’s search powers and placing even more power in the hands of the Director of National Intelligence.

The bill’s original backers dropped their support for the USA Freedom Act.  “Under the finalized floor version of the USA Freedom Act, it would be completely legal for the NSA to request all records for an area code, zip code, or even all of the emails for accounts that start with the letter ‘A,’ all without a warrant,” US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) says. Many civil liberties groups also abandoned support for the bill.

These developments are disappointing, but not surprising. This is how government works. Bills are passed largely through logrolling, a process of give and take where propositions supported by different ideologies or interest groups are put together under one bill to increase its chance of passing. So bills originally intended to protect civil liberties often have provisions added to secure the support of hawks, statists and surveillance enthusiasts.

Moreover, the state tends to secure its own interests and those of concentrated special interest groups first and foremost. Bills that pose a substantial threat to the NSA, their telecom company collaborators or profiteers like Booz Allen Hamilton will tend to be eroded or defeated due to the power of these predatory interest groups. Or worse, they will be twisted to serve the interests of these oligarchs.

Legislative reform is a dead end, but there’s a better way. We can route around the state, thwart its surveillance efforts, and make it progressively harder to intercept and watch our communications. A coalition of civil liberties groups, progressive advocacy organizations and libertarian organizations is urging people to do just that. They’re calling it Reset the Net. On June 5th, they urge Internet users and web developers to begin using a wide variety of internet security tools to thwart the NSA. These tools include everything from open source encryption protocols to anonymity services like Tor. Reset the Net’s privacy pack specifically offers open source tools because these tools allow any user to test, verify and improve their security. Tools like this can be installed, designed and improved by any individual, with no permission needed from any government.

Reset the Net is an inspiring example of mainstream civil liberties groups from across the political spectrum embracing the anarchist tactic of direct action. Rather than begging governments to limit themselves or pass benevolent reforms, direct action takes change into our own hands without asking permission.

Direct action allows us to route around the state, to make its mass surveillance operations much more difficult to perpetuate. This is how we can and must end state criminality. Not by reforming the state, but by treating it as damage and routing around.

Justin Raimondo discusses the troubling return of nationalism.

Jayel Aheram discusses how Malala Yousafzai is being used as a puppet for imperialism.

Philip Giraldi discusses torture, the Senate, and the CIA.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses how No Place to Hide is a conservative critique of a radical NSA.

Alexander Reid Ross discusses drones over Nigeria.

Ramzy Baroud discusses what the media is not telling us about Yemen.

Peter Lee discusses local nationalism and big bullies.

Andrew Levine discusses the Cold War Obama-style.

Franklin Lamb discusses Palestinian refugees coming from Syria to Lebanon.

Alyssa Rohricht discusses the mantra of the NSA.

Medea Benjamin discusses the promotion resulting from killing a 16 year old via drone.

Jeff Ricketson discusses fractal libertarianism.

Pepe Escobar discusses the pivot to Eurasia.

Roderick Long discusses strong words and large letters.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the FBI, NSA, and reforms.

Shikha Dalmia discusses why Muslim bashing by Bill Mahr is uncool.

Matthew M. Robare discusses Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky speaking together.

J.D. Tuccille discusses the late R.J. Rummel’s work on death from government.

Brian Dohetry discusses Robert Sarvis.

Paul Hein discusses the irrelevance of government.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses why conservatives are doomed.

Lawrence Samuels discusses Mussolini’s place on the left-right political spectrum.

Alex R. Knight III discusses defending the state.

Jacob G. Hornberger and Sheldon Richman present The Libertarian Angle.

Margaret Kimberly discusses the situation in Nigeria.

Wendy Call discusses how the War on Drugs destroys lives.

Eric Margolis discusses the bridge that began the Great War.

Ernst Gruenfeld beats the great Alexander Alekhine.

Ernst Gruenfeld draws with David Janowski

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.

Binoy Kampmark discusses the march to war with Iran.

Andrew Levine discusses what will happen for Obama upon the unraveling of Iraq.

Alfred McCoy discusses the surveillance state.

Kevin Carson discusses the worship of authority.

Jose Martinez discusses Wal-Mart racism.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses the legacy of a congressman who helped reveal covert crimes.

Peter Frase discusses leftism and the state.

Will Wilkinson discusses liberalism, libertarianism, and the illiberal security state.

Chase Madar discusses the hawkishness of supposed human rights advocates.

Eric Draitser discusses the resistance to NATO rule in Libya.

Sheldon Richman responds to a recent hit piece on Juilan Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden.

William A. Cohn discusses the farce of secret law.

David Swanson discusses the stopping of war.

Lew Rockwell discusses 21st century mussolinism.

Stephan Kinsella discusses the libertarian case for gay marriage.

Michael S. Rozeff discusses the national security state.

Nick Gillespie discusses how the FBI’s ugly past undermines Obama’s War on Terror.

Paul Buhle reviews a new book on Robert M. La Follette.

Melvin A. Goodman discusses Robert Gate’s new memoir.

Daniel McCarthy discusses Leo Strauss and the American right.

Carole Simonnet discusses pot smoking in Mexico.

Daniel McCarthy reviews a book on Leo Strauss.

Robert Colls discusses George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War.

Ivan Eland discusses the growing militarization of U.S. society.

Conor Friedersdorf discusses why the GOP can’t win on a hawkish platform.

J.D. Tuccille discusses the weak reforms of the NSA.

Roman Skaskiw discusses Albert Jay Nock’s famous memoir.

Mark Donlan reviews Chess Superminitaures.

John S. Hilbert discusses Charles Seymour Taylor.

Tempo fa conoscevo una persona che rispondeva alla descrizione generica di “accaparratore”. Collezionava… bè, di tutto. Quando l’ho conosciuto io, aveva la casa piena di “antichità” (leggi: qualunque mobilia che avesse più di un paio d’anni), “computer classici” (elettronica obsoleta) e pile su pile di vecchi giornali e riviste.

Questo mio amico non soffriva della mancanza di volontà di organizzare la propria vita. Collezionava anche oggetti che servivano ad organizzare qualcosa: box raccoglitutto, schedari, libri su come “tenere in ordine” una casa disordinata. Purtroppo tutto quello ne ricavava era… bè, semplicemente accumulava. Aggiungeva in cima ai giornali vecchi, che stavano in cima all’elettronica obsoleta, che stava in cima ai mobili vecchi. Oh, e collezionava anche gatti. Tanti, tanti gatti. Questo significava che tutte quelle pile di roba erano ricoperte di peli di gatto, grumi di peli di gatto, e altra roba lasciata dai gatti. Aveva un sacco di roba. La maggior parte probabilmente era inutile, rovinata dalla sua mania di collezionare se mai era valsa qualcosa.

Non si preoccupò mai di mettere ordine, e quando morì sono sicuro che i suoi figli adulti (crescendo si erano trasferiti altrove prima che lui sviluppasse questa malattia, se era una malattia) abbiano fatto una sfacchinata per sbarazzare la casa e recuperare qualcosa di valore.

Mi sono ricordato del mio vecchio amico quando ho letto una notizia che diceva che l’Nsa non sa come cavare qualcosa di utile da tutte le informazioni che raccoglie attraverso le sue operazioni anticostituzionali di sorveglianza (“NSA Can’t Make Sense of Masses of Culled Data,” Antiwar.com, 26 dicembre, 2013).

Credo che molti di noi (sì, compreso io) abbiano osservato questa roba di spionaggio, rivelata nei mesi scorsi dall’informatore Edward Snowden, dal punto di vista sbagliato. L’abbiamo vista in termini orwelliani: Uno stato onnisciente che stringe la morsa attorno alla popolazione registrando ogni cosa che fa, ogni acquisto, ogni frase affidata all’elettronica.

Comincio a pensare che quello che vediamo in realtà è l’equivalente dell’ossessione che aveva il mio amico accaparratore.

Se spingiamo l’accaparramento fino a considerarlo un sintomo di problemi mentali, il mio sospetto è che le sue origini stiano nella percezione della perdita di controllo di se stessi. L’acquisizione di tutta quella roba è un tentativo di restaurare quel controllo: di agire, di prendere il comando.

Secondo me, l’accaparramento dell’Nsa rivela le stesse paure. Non è uno stato onnipotente che difende il suo potere e il suo controllo. È piuttosto uno stato fallimentare, tremante e impaurito che cerca disperatamente di riprendersi il potere perduto.

Così come l’accaparratore non capisce che è la sua collezione che controlla lui e non il contrario, l’Nsa non riesce a capacitarsi del fatto che sarà l’ordine anarchico mondiale emergente – una rete volontaria e decentrata di uguali tutti con lo stesso potere – a determinare il futuro degli stati centralizzati e gerarchici, e non il contrario.

Questo non significa che gli stati con le loro spie non sono più pericolosi. Ma stanno diventando sempre più pericolosi per se stessi e sempre meno per noi. Le loro pile di giornali spandono polvere e urina di gatto sui loro apparati elettronici obsoleti, facendo marcire la sottostruttura formata dalla mobilia sottostante. Alla fine tutto precipiterà sulle loro teste.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.