<div dir="ltr">damn, g. when you write you right.<div><br></div><div>You're completely on point - but of course, I actually do care a lot about this issue. All I was inferring is once in a while the time comes to just shift productive energies into a new paradigm and maybe stop playing whack-a-mole with unsecurable modalities like email, and instead work on using something better to replace it. Same with the declining fair use and vanishing anonymity of the internet in general - the wonderful work the mesh folk are doing are to me a really big part of this solution. I almost mentioned something about appropriation (or feeding biting hands styrofoam peanuts) as a tactic being a noble way to cannabilize and take back our infrastructure that our tax dollars largely built, so I am 100% with you there. I have also said many times myself how we need to start a movement to have a right to data about ourselves, so I am thrilled to hear you say the same thing. Absolutely. </div>
<div><br></div><div>When it comes to the event, we need to fight back with technological tools, but also with ideas. Not sure which is more important (or if thats even worth asking), they might be equal, but for me it comes down on the side of ideas, as all the tech in the world won't help if people don't give a hoot because they're too exhausted by the Spectacle-induced trance of capital etc to care, or dont see why its necessary or in their self-interest. I fully support the cryptoparties - what we also need are the crypto-semantic frames i guess, to help us put this fucking insane world where companies pirate and monitize our digital lives into a moral logic everyone, even our grandmas, can all intuitively grasp and therefore resist. Drive the demand as it were, for 'privacy'. I see events like this being part of that conversation on the side of ideas, but the cryptoparties, and making them less technically abstruse, are the other half for sure. Theory + practice = praxis, we need both.</div>
<div><br></div><div>You know the only thing I'm not totally sure I agree with is that money is information..if we're talking about money and not capital I might agree, if we're talking about capital (which of course is not just 'money') I'm too tired to know if I agree or not. </div>
<div><br></div><div>On the one hand, I am wary of what I see everywhere as a massive informationalization of our lives and in our language, of experience and of concepts... a scientism really thats always trying to quantify the qualitative - or at least, valorize the former and dismiss the later, if it cannot transmute it. Its a naturalizing, essentializing cultural phenomenon wherein we are led to simply accept without question that the essential aspect of anything in the world is ultimately 'information': Music is 'information', plants are 'information', we - online and in our 'genes' and 'dna' - the universe - are fundamentally reduceable to codes, chemical properties, etc. I suspect this aspect of our culture is tied to capital ideology (marx: 'they don't know it, but they are doing it') and biopower (think Patrick McCuehen saying 'I am not a number! I am a FREE MAN!'), although I can't think of how right now, because as I said I'm pretty tired, but anyway its a real mythology that needs unpacking, or totalizing kool-aid that needs a bit of unslurping. Nothing against 'information' or using 'information' as but one metaphor with which analyze the workings of the world, but we should never mistake our tools of analysis - i.e., our abstracted representation of reality, like calling the smell of a rose 'information' - for reality itself, and it seems like that's whats actually happening at some level. We must be epistemologically reflexive and catch ourselves before we fall into that trap. So, I have to think a lot before I decide that money is 'at its root' essentializable as 'information', too.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Along the same lines another argument against money as essentially, fundamentally 'information' thing is this notion that its ultimately governed by 'math', or that the cycle of capital exploiting our surplus labor value is ultimately governed by math, or that financial markets are ultimately governed by math. I'm not sure I agree, because markets are also ultimately governed by human beings, who are not just information, and human beings, as Plato well knew, but maybe Adam Smith and Descartes did not, are simply not rational. At all. This is in large part why game theory is a total fail, why people vote against their economic self-interest, and also why people are not outraged at the deprivation of their digital liberty, etc. Scientific rationalism is in a way a beautiful dream, like a wonderful, utopian idea, and a nice way to organize a representation of the world, but it is not <i>the</i> world, and we don't operate, for even one millisecond, as rational creatures. Just as we do not build up the world out of a series of concepts - we just ARE in the world, all at once, and from that, we think of concepts to organize it with, for ourselves. We are subject to cognitive and emotional centers in our brain that were indirectly induced to connect in accordance with certain decidedly a-rational cultural ways and mores through processes of socialization of which we had no control...</div>
<div><br></div><div>Folks are tempted to think about 'math' as something pure, a religion practically, but how often do people get reflexive about math? Like the fact that we can't conceive of 'math' without also simultaneously conceiving of metaphors that have nothing whatsoever to actually do with math, but without which we could not perform math: If I say one is a 'higher' number than two, that has no strictly mathematical meaning. One is not 'higher' than two. An increase in quantity is not an increase in height. It's simply an increase in quantity. And yet numbers go 'up'. Makes no sense man...mathematically. But it does at the level of non-math, in real life, because if I pour you a glass of water, the quantity increases as the level rises. But what if we lived in a society where I we poured water out on the floor and drank it from there. Would you say that numbers go up or down? Hm. So math itself is actually utterly imbricated with entirely qualitative dimensions that only make sense from the perspective of human experience. And so is not so pure: the basis for 'money', perhaps, after all.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Sleep now. Good nite.. and thanks for your awesome email..</div><div>-d </div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 5:15 AM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:g2g-public01@att.net" target="_blank">g2g-public01@att.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<br>
<br>
David, it's not to your discredit, it's to the discredit of Kapital,
and it's been foisted on the whole Neo-Proletariat, which is anyone
making less than six figures a year (look up union wages in 1974 and
then apply increases at the rate of inflation every year with
compound interest: that's what we all _should_ be earning right
now). We shouldn't blame ourselves for getting screwed.<br>
<br>
Here's another example of Kapital sinking its hooks into our brains
(I'm quoting you here not to criticize you, but to illustrate how
common this type of dynamic has become): "Personally, once I gave
up on email qua email as being meaningfully secure, I sort of
stopped caring who my provider was."<br>
<br>
The emotional narrative in that sentence is: "...once I gave up... I
sort of stopped caring..."<br>
<br>
That's what the Bigs want us to do: give up and stop caring, the
better to spend our efforts producing and consuming. And they are
enormously clever at how they go about it: too much work, just
enough bread, and plenty of circuses. About which more below under
"Kapital."<br>
<br>
Where you say "I really don't have an answer for this one," that
makes the vitally important point that we ALL need answers to this.
The fact that we don't have comprehensive answers and solutions
shows exactly where our efforts need to be. <br>
<br>
Agreed, email is broken. IMHO the whole internet architecture is
broken (don't get me started;-) but in any case we need new
infrastructure and a solid collaborative effort to build it. Not
just "good enough for coders & geeks to use" but "good enough
for your grandmother to use without you providing tech support."
You shouldn't have to _teach_ people to use crypto: it should be
built-in, with nothing more than a check in a box to encrypt/decrypt
email. The global community of hackers can build all of that and
much more if we choose.<br>
<br>
Good point about "metadata" being a euphemism to obscure the fact
that it's OUR data. In the past I've used the term "CDR" for "call
detail records," a telephony term that has lately been in the news
since it's what NSA gets from our phone calls (date, time, calling
number, called number, duration of call); it could also be used to
refer to email to/from addresses and subject headers. But "OUR
data," emphasis on OUR, is better, because it's so direct and
assertive. <br>
<br>
This translates to something specific we should be demanding:
personal ownership of all data about ourselves, without compromise.
Treat it like copyright with exceptions for fair use. Make the
maximum demand, so that when the usual attempts at legislative
watering-down occur, we still get something better than if we had
tried to "be reasonable" and "pre-compromise" our demands. <br>
<br>
If it's necessary to use Facebook for publicity, the way to do it is
by using a fictitious name & email address for the FB account,
and then putting up a message on the Facebook page saying "find us
_here_ (link)," which goes to a website on a more trustworthy
hosting service. Then, that website does not have the accursed
Facebook beacon-button on it that lets Facebook follow people around
like a stalker. (Anyone who can't bother clicking a link that goes
off Facebook, isn't worth the effort to reach. Seriously.) <br>
<br>
That's the answer to having to feed the hand that bites: Feed it
styrofoam peanuts with no food value. Use its own infrastructure
sparingly and temporarily, as a way to get people to leave it
behind. For example, one of the topics at the surveillance event
ought to be a how-to for getting the snoops & stalkers out of
our lives: dumping Google, installing security apps on your browser,
installing an OFF switch in your mobile device, etc., all with
specifics: this email service, this app, here's where to find it,
how to do it, etc.<br>
<br>
About Kapital:<br>
<br>
Karl Marx got it almost-right, but "surplus value" is an
abstraction: the real deal is the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Kapital depends on "energy conversion." What humans are to Kapital,
are highly efficient energy-converters that turn calories into
money. The abstraction layer is between the work output of the
human organism, and the translation of that into money. At root,
money is energy converted to information. And information is
ultimately Platonic, governed by math and orthogonal to
thermodynamics. <br>
<br>
The goal of Kapital is to extract every calorie that's not needed to
keep the energy-converters producing and consuming. Latest example:
Amazon's patent for "predictive shipping," where they send you
things that you haven't ordered, but Amazon predicts you'll want, on
the premise that you'll probably keep them. Translation: people
will pay for the "stuff" because they're too tired to deal with the
hassle of returning it. Amazon predicts, humans acquiesce.<br>
<br>
The reason that so many people "give up and stop caring" is that
they are being sucked dry. Think of all the "too tired" moments and
what they have in common.<br>
<br>
In the end, the scam is self-limiting. Kapital thrives on the
exponential function: the unlimited growth of money and the economy
despite the limits of a finite planet. Kapital will break as it
runs into resource limits, including the limits of humans to
relentlessly produce and relentlessly consume. <br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
=====<div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>On 14-02-03-Mon 2:33 AM, David Keenan
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Matt, I will bring up your point at the next organizing
meeting for sure. Thank you for being willing to sponsor.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Yardena - your point is exceedingly well taken, as I sit here
from my gmail account, writing about how if want to do the
event, we should post it on facebook...sigh.
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>To my discredit, I really don't have an answer for this one
except that in my opinion, email as a medium is itself an
inherently broken means of secure communication, a lotta
people on sudo have google accounts, and yeah sudo posts
regularly to facebook, which is why I asked.. Sometimes you
have to reach out to people in an archaic medium they already
grok - like on a listserv, or fb - in order to tell them that
is maybe not The Best Way. <br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
Personally, once I gave up on email qua email as being
meaningfully secure, I sort of stopped caring who my
provider was. Or teaching people how to encrypt their
message content, only to have them never get that doesn't
secure their attachments or the "metadata" or render
messages readable from the web from any device anymore or or
or (I kind of hate the term metadata btw, as in mass culture
'metadata' has seemingly come to infer something other than
'our' data, and as if metadata is not also our data, just
like our non-meta data). </div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">But yes for sure, if we care about
'privacy', we DO need to be off fb (and onto building up
diaspora or something similar), and, we need to be off
email. And use some darkmail, or otr or a private forum or
something else. </div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">I feel like for us to all get off fb,
we need a real alternative to go to, and a campaign. Same
with email. But before we build that up.. using fb/email or
not using it, it seems like being caught between a rock and
a hard place when trying to promote an event but not feed
the biting hand, you know?</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">As this is precisely the position I
feel like the system of capital as a whole places us in, far
beyond mark zuckerberg and google and 'big data': We can't
help but feed the hand that bites us. We 'need' to be
bitten, so our traumatized, bitten selves can feed somebody
or something else..often while simultaneously handing a bite
to somebody else less powerful, as in in the case of
gentrification. If that partially re-inverted idiom still
makes any sense..which um, no, looks like it doesn't. Well.
Sorry, tired. But I totally get you.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Yeah. Tired.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">David</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 1:12 AM,
GtwoG PublicOhOne <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:g2g-public01@att.net" target="_blank">g2g-public01@att.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <br>
Re. "what does the rest of sudo think?"<br>
<br>
Microphones & cameras on shot-spotters? What
about the software-controlled mics & cameras on
smartphones, that people carry into indoor places
where the DAC cameras and mics can't go? If it
doesn't have a physical OFF switch or a removable
battery, it's always ON.<br>
<br>
NSA snooping your metadata? What about Google Mail
and Google Voice scraping the full content of both
sides of every email & conversation for everything
down to the level of "sentiment analysis" which is a
euphemism for spying on your emotions? "Targeted
advertising" is a distraction; Big Data is the real
product.<br>
<br>
DAC data center creepy? What about Facebook creepy,
and Sudo having a Facebook page, even as Mark
Zuckerberg spends $16 million to buy up every house on
his block, so his neighbors can't do unto him that
which he does unto others...? <br>
<br>
Big Power is inherently corrupt wherever it resides.
Big Data is Big Power. Even if it has good marketing,
cute logos, total convenience, free apps, free games,
and endless entertainment.<br>
<br>
Corporate power says "don't bite the hand that feeds
you."<br>
<br>
Resistance says "don't feed the hand that bites you."<br>
<br>
-G.<br>
<br>
<br>
=====
<div>
<div><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>On 14-02-02-Sun 11:12 AM, David Keenan wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">Jeremy - Of course! And we
should.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>what does t<span></span>he rest of sudo
think?<br>
<div><br>
On Sunday, February 2, 2014, Jeremy
Entwistle <<a href="mailto:jwentwistle@cryptolab.net" target="_blank">jwentwistle@cryptolab.net</a>>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I think
that's an amazing idea. How to do you feel
about the mesh and our cryptoparty (2/23)
being mentioned? As both are very
practical methods of promoting secure and
decentralized communications.<br>
<br>
On 2014-02-01 21:58, David Keenan wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> Hey all,<br>
<br>
The Bay Area Public School has scheduled
a surveillance awareness<br>
event on Friday 2/21 7-9pm in the common
room entitled Spied Upon:<br>
Surveillance & Resistance. I was
hoping we (sudo) could co-host this<br>
event with BAPS, because I think it'd be
really cool if we start doing<br>
more events together. BAPS can do most
all of the setup, but it'd be<br>
great if Sudo can do outreach too, since
I think it'd be in the<br>
interest of both communities.<br>
<br>
What do you think?<br>
<br>
There's a twofold focus on informants
and technological surveillance.<br>
Here's the Sudo Room calendar EVENT LINK
[1]. Details are below -<br>
<br>
SPIED UPON: SURVEILLANCE AND RESISTANCE<br>
Join us Friday February 21st 7-9 pm at
the Bay Area Public School [2]<br>
& Sudo Room<br>
2141 Broadway (enter on 22nd), Oakland
- three blocks from 19th St.<br>
Bart!<br>
<br>
Between the ever-present fear of
informants to the profusion of<br>
metadata collection and the construction
of the Domain Awareness<br>
Center [3] (DAC) in Oakland, the growing
problem of surveillance has<br>
made it into the mainstream dialog, but
the people and communities<br>
most affected are sometimes being left
out of the conversation.<br>
<br>
Join us for an evening of ideas,
discussion and questions about<br>
solidarity in the face of this
intimidation. How do we support one<br>
another and our movements when being
targeted by police, surveillance<br>
and informants? What are the legal,
community and political responses<br>
that can best keep the larger "us" safe
and allow our movements to<br>
flourish?<br>
<br>
- SPEAKERS -<br>
JASON KIRKPATRICK, filmmaker and
activist, will show clips of and<br>
discuss his upcoming film, _SPIED UPON_
[4]. Interviewing activists<br>
across the world and telling his own
personal story, Jason will take<br>
us on a journey into one of Europe's
biggest political surveillance<br>
scandals, documenting growing movements
of resistance to surveillance<br>
along the way.<br>
<br>
ZAHRA BILLOO, Civil rights attorney and
Executive Director at the Bay<br>
Area COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC
RELATIONS [5] (CAIR), speaks on the<br>
use of informants in a post-9/11
context, their impact, the<br>
community's resistance and lessons
learned.<br>
<br>
RICHARD BROWN, Black Panther and member
of the SF8 [6], will share his<br>
history with undercover police and
surveillance, imparting the 'long<br>
view' of solidarity learned from a
lifetime of activism.<br>
<br>
- PANEL DISCUSSION -<br>
Q & A with the speakers will follow
in conversation with<br>
representatives from:<br>
BAY AREA ANTI-REPRESSION COMMITTEE [7]<br>
BAY AREA COALITION TO STOP POLITICAL
REPRESSION [8] (at AROC)<br>
LEGAL WORKERS OF THE NATIONAL LAWYERS
GUILD [9] (NLG)<br>
OAKLAND PRIVACY WORKING GROUP [10] (OPWG
/ anti-DAC)<br>
<br>
All donations gratefully received will
go to the Bay Area<br>
Anti-Repression Committee and the Legal
Workers at the Bay Area<br>
chapter of the NLG - two groups long
supporting the Bay Area radical<br>
community with legal and educational
assistance. Thank you!<br>
<br>
Links:<br>
------<br>
[1] <a href="https://sudoroom.org/ai1ec_event/spied-upon-bay-area-premiere-baps/" target="_blank">https://sudoroom.org/ai1ec_event/spied-upon-bay-area-premiere-baps/</a><br>
[2] <a href="http://thepublicschool.org/node/36455" target="_blank">http://thepublicschool.org/node/36455</a><br>
[3] <a href="http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center" target="_blank">http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center</a><br>
[4] <a href="http://spiedupon.com/" target="_blank">http://spiedupon.com/</a><br>
[5] <a href="http://www.cair.com/" target="_blank">http://www.cair.com/</a><br>
[6] <a href="http://www.freethesf8.org/who.html" target="_blank">http://www.freethesf8.org/who.html</a><br>
[7] <a href="https://oaklandantirepression.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">https://oaklandantirepression.wordpress.com/</a><br>
[8]<br>
<a href="http://araborganizing.org/campaigns-our-work/coalition-to-stop-political-repression/" target="_blank">http://araborganizing.org/campaigns-our-work/coalition-to-stop-political-repression/</a><br>
[9] <a href="http://www.nlgsf.org/national-lawyers-guild-mission-statement" target="_blank">http://www.nlgsf.org/national-lawyers-guild-mission-statement</a><br>
[10] <a href="https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com/</a><br>
<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
-- <br>
<a href="https://twitter.com/jwentwistle" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/jwentwistle</a><br>
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