[sudo-discuss] Sudo! Wanna co-host this surveillance event?
GtwoG PublicOhOne
g2g-public01 at att.net
Mon Feb 3 05:15:46 PST 2014
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.
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."
The emotional narrative in that sentence is: "...once I gave up... I
sort of stopped caring..."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
About Kapital:
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.
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.
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.
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.
-G.
=====
On 14-02-03-Mon 2:33 AM, David Keenan wrote:
> Matt, I will bring up your point at the next organizing meeting for
> sure. Thank you for being willing to sponsor.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> 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.
>
> Yeah. Tired.
>
> David
>
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 1:12 AM, GtwoG PublicOhOne
> <g2g-public01 at att.net <mailto:g2g-public01 at att.net>> wrote:
>
>
> Re. "what does the rest of sudo think?"
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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...?
>
> 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.
>
> Corporate power says "don't bite the hand that feeds you."
>
> Resistance says "don't feed the hand that bites you."
>
> -G.
>
>
> =====
>
>
>
>
>
> On 14-02-02-Sun 11:12 AM, David Keenan wrote:
>> Jeremy - Of course! And we should.
>>
>> what does the rest of sudo think?
>>
>> On Sunday, February 2, 2014, Jeremy Entwistle
>> <jwentwistle at cryptolab.net <mailto:jwentwistle at cryptolab.net>> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> On 2014-02-01 21:58, David Keenan wrote:
>>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> The Bay Area Public School has scheduled a surveillance
>> awareness
>> event on Friday 2/21 7-9pm in the common room entitled
>> Spied Upon:
>> Surveillance & Resistance. I was hoping we (sudo) could
>> co-host this
>> event with BAPS, because I think it'd be really cool if
>> we start doing
>> more events together. BAPS can do most all of the setup,
>> but it'd be
>> great if Sudo can do outreach too, since I think it'd be
>> in the
>> interest of both communities.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> There's a twofold focus on informants and technological
>> surveillance.
>> Here's the Sudo Room calendar EVENT LINK [1]. Details are
>> below -
>>
>> SPIED UPON: SURVEILLANCE AND RESISTANCE
>> Join us Friday February 21st 7-9 pm at the Bay Area
>> Public School [2]
>> & Sudo Room
>> 2141 Broadway (enter on 22nd), Oakland - three blocks
>> from 19th St.
>> Bart!
>>
>> Between the ever-present fear of informants to the
>> profusion of
>> metadata collection and the construction of the Domain
>> Awareness
>> Center [3] (DAC) in Oakland, the growing problem of
>> surveillance has
>> made it into the mainstream dialog, but the people and
>> communities
>> most affected are sometimes being left out of the
>> conversation.
>>
>> Join us for an evening of ideas, discussion and questions
>> about
>> solidarity in the face of this intimidation. How do we
>> support one
>> another and our movements when being targeted by police,
>> surveillance
>> and informants? What are the legal, community and
>> political responses
>> that can best keep the larger "us" safe and allow our
>> movements to
>> flourish?
>>
>> - SPEAKERS -
>> JASON KIRKPATRICK, filmmaker and activist, will show
>> clips of and
>> discuss his upcoming film, _SPIED UPON_ [4]. Interviewing
>> activists
>> across the world and telling his own personal story,
>> Jason will take
>> us on a journey into one of Europe's biggest political
>> surveillance
>> scandals, documenting growing movements of resistance to
>> surveillance
>> along the way.
>>
>> ZAHRA BILLOO, Civil rights attorney and Executive
>> Director at the Bay
>> Area COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS [5] (CAIR),
>> speaks on the
>> use of informants in a post-9/11 context, their impact, the
>> community's resistance and lessons learned.
>>
>> RICHARD BROWN, Black Panther and member of the SF8 [6],
>> will share his
>> history with undercover police and surveillance,
>> imparting the 'long
>> view' of solidarity learned from a lifetime of activism.
>>
>> - PANEL DISCUSSION -
>> Q & A with the speakers will follow in conversation with
>> representatives from:
>> BAY AREA ANTI-REPRESSION COMMITTEE [7]
>> BAY AREA COALITION TO STOP POLITICAL REPRESSION [8] (at AROC)
>> LEGAL WORKERS OF THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD [9] (NLG)
>> OAKLAND PRIVACY WORKING GROUP [10] (OPWG / anti-DAC)
>>
>> All donations gratefully received will go to the Bay Area
>> Anti-Repression Committee and the Legal Workers at the
>> Bay Area
>> chapter of the NLG - two groups long supporting the Bay
>> Area radical
>> community with legal and educational assistance. Thank you!
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1]
>> https://sudoroom.org/ai1ec_event/spied-upon-bay-area-premiere-baps/
>> [2] http://thepublicschool.org/node/36455
>> [3] http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center
>> [4] http://spiedupon.com/
>> [5] http://www.cair.com/
>> [6] http://www.freethesf8.org/who.html
>> [7] https://oaklandantirepression.wordpress.com/
>> [8]
>> http://araborganizing.org/campaigns-our-work/coalition-to-stop-political-repression/
>> [9]
>> http://www.nlgsf.org/national-lawyers-guild-mission-statement
>> [10] https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com/
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> https://twitter.com/jwentwistle
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