USA: Act today against CISPA spying bill - your freedom depends on it

Stop Cyber Spying - a week of action against CISPA

https://cyberspying.eff.org/

Please participate. CISPA is worse than SOPA/ACTA and it already passed the House of Representatives in the US. It affects everyone whose internet traffic crosses US servers. Basically everyone. It's a Big Brother move to remove due process and allow spying on anyone's internet traffic anytime, for any alleged reason. 

Related: Find out if your representatives voted for it and complain to them and the corporate sponsors named. They deserve your contempt.

The Senate and those companies need to hear the noise we make about this online and on their phones, in the next few days. We can't depend on the President to veto it, because his track record on civil liberties is very poor so far.

News: Microsoft just withdrew their support. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - Surveillance Self-Defense

USA: Occupy the vote - The list of NDAA/SOPA/PIPA/ supporters we don't need in office

Video of Poland's ACTA protests earlier this week, more today - informative

Why all the non-graffiti posts?

I've been posting a lot about freedom, liberty, privacy, and censorship because if we don't act to save the internet and our countries from corporate and authoritarian control now, we might not get the chance to do it again.

The laws that corporations are paying lawmakers to enact threaten networked civilization, globally. Anything that criminalizes painting and showing cartoon characters and other popular culture themes in art threatens graffiti, and it threatens Art Crimes.

Please educate yourselves about these issues because your future depends on you doing smart things now to protect yourselves and all of us, through taking positive action to raise some hell while you still can.

Trouble signs in the US for authoritarianism and censorship - proxies

Twitter took on a Saudi investor and now they are censoring tweets in certain countries.  Twitter users plan to stay off Twitter Saturday Feb 28 in protest. But you know, money talks. http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/0127/Twitter-censorship-Posts-now-yanked-country-by-country
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399465,00.asp
Twitter Faces Backlash Over Censorship Plan
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/27/worried-about-possible-restrictions-on-twitter-heres-how-to-get-around-them/
How to get around Twitter censorship

The US press freedom rating has plummeted this year with the arrest of journalists over Occupy Wall Street protests:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/26/2315249/us-plummets-on-world-press-freedom-ranking
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

And, as I blogged earlier, Google has decided it's more profitable to be Evil(TM)

How to manage your Google info a bit:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/what-google-knows-about-you-and-how-to-tweak-it.ars

How to get around country blocking and have a bit of privacy on the web, using proxy servers:
http://whatismyipaddress.com/using-proxies
Some configuration info (a bit old but probably works) with a search for proxies (you have to change them from time to time when yours is blocked).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server
Some info about proxies

http://url.sc/
Clickable web proxies. You can start surfing from here. It's a bit busy so if you don't get it right away, try back. The links above probably list more of these. Here's a dump of today's list on url.sc in case it's unavailable:

1. Hide My Ass!
2. Can't Bust Me!
3. Proxy Mafia
4. MySpace Proxy
5. Proxy Pimp

6. Secure Proxy
7. Proxrio
8. 250eu
9. Kroxy
10. Unblock Filters

11. Proxy Buddy
12. Army Proxy
13. Anonr
14. Vulb
15. Invisible Surfing

16. Surfaz
17. Site Surf
18. Our Proxy
19. Web Proxy Pro
20. Hide My Info

Anonymous Communications - How to:
http://www.infoanarchy.org/en/Anonymous_Communications
A bit dated but lots of good education to be had here, from the anarchist community.

This year's guide, from Anonymous:
http://www.sectechno.com/2011/06/30/the-opnewblood-super-secret-security-handbook-by-anonymous/
Read it and download the PDF guide

(Tip: Beware of using the LOIC if you don't know what you're doing. People are in jail today because they didn't know how to hide their location while attacking websites with Anonymous. If you just want to cobble together a better online security setup for yourself, that's not illegal in most countries yet, though.)

Remember: Self incrimination is the worst kind. Be careful what you say on the net, in email, on phones, in texts, because all of that is being collected now and it will be used against you whenever it's convenient to do so. This is not paranoia, this is fact.

The 28th Chaos Communication Congress (hacker camp) took place recently, and you can watch some amazing talks from it here:

http://ondemand.28c3.fem-net.de/
(English and German) I think you'll find these particularly interesting:

4848 (Must see - Cory Doctorow explains. I blogged this before.)

• 4897 Marriage From Hell: On the Secret Love Affair Between Dictators and Western Technology Companies

• 4916 BuggedPlanet

• 4749 Does Hacktivism Matter?

• 4800 How governments have tried to block Tor

Thes are all on YouTube also, on the 28c3 channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/28c3 which seem to be more available for the moment than that streaming server. You can also download them here: http://mirror.fem-net.de/CCC/28C3/

ACTA is also a worldwide problem - find out more

#SOPA is a sucker punch by the 1% to the face of our Freedom of Speech! #PIPA a sock to the stomach!

How to surf anonymously, like hackers do

The future of network computing, and what hackers do about it, affects us all

Together, we're in a world of trouble. Corporations and governments are conspiring to keep regular people down in every way possible. In our change from a mechanical world to a computerized world, now for the first time, it's possible for governments to spy on all of us, all the time, including every phone call, every email, everything digital we do. 

If you think this sounds far fetched, this blog post is for you. If you're worried or not worried, this post is for you too. 

This first video talk, below, is by two computer security researchers who build Tor, a privacy system that keeps activists and journalists, and soon graffiti writers, safer in places like Syria, Libya, China, your country and mine. 

In the beginning of the talk they detail the Arab countries' revolutions this year, the role of Tor in those, and the importance of anonymous communication in preventing security services from chopping people up into small pieces and mailing them back to their families. Really. This last 10 minutes or so of the talk is essential. Please give the end of this talk a few minutes of your time, because it matters. Then pass it on. 

I've bookmarked it so it starts near the end, but you can rewind it with the player controls to get the whole talk if you find you want more.

If you live in the Middle East, or you think this is an exaggerated threat, you must watch the whole thing. If you fear your government (or your mafia or your military or your employer) now or in the future, you should probably watch the whole thing too. 

Read about Tor and maybe get and install it now, before it becomes both difficult and necessary to do so.

I encourage you to consider our collective online future with Corey Doctorow as well.

Corey's hair-raising rant on the future of computers (phones, games, iPads, etc.) and why it matters to us all. Video talk and text transcript. He also spoke to an audience of enthusiastic hackers this week at 28c3 (more videos there), a.k.a. the 28th Chaos Communications Camp in Germany. Both of these talks are from 28c3, and if you are a privacy, computer, or phone enthusiast, the other talks on YouTube from this event will blow your mind.

And last but certainly not least, here's the roundup of recent events featuring Anonymous and Lulzsec hacker collectives, at Wired's Threat Level.

Happy 2012! It's going to be interesting.

And now back to working on my Art Crimes web update, which should be available sometime on the first, with any luck....

Be careful out there. No drinking and driving. Watch out for the drunken fools. You are your biggest asset. Take care and take condoms. 

Chicago Job: hacker/journalist/camera drone pilot

video: LulzXmas

Protect IP / SOPA Act breaks the internet. USA take action immediately!

Please circulate this info, watch the video, stop the stupid law, and do it quickly:

Video: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

Corporations pressing the US government to pass bad laws like this is why we have no hip-hop lyrics site on the web anymore. Think of a net without YouTube and Tumblr ... or anything new that might be used for remixing anything. What if Art Crimes got knocked off the net because someone painted a cartoon character owned by Disney? Right. That kind of stupid. Act now to oppose this before the stupid greedy Congress lets another corporation buy its votes.

More info:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/disastrous-ip-legislation-back-%E2%80%93-and-it%E2%80%99s-worse-ever

http://www.cdt.org/blogs/david-sohn/2710house-copyright-bill-casts-dangerously-broad-net

http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/house-version-rogue-websites-bill-adds-dmca-b

Occupy what? Anonymous explains

Keith Olbermann calls for feet in the street, before it's too late

Wow. Listen to the whole thing.

On the other hand, there's been some declaring of victory for The People today also. Check that link for the optimistic view, summaries and links to official docs. It also says Pell Grants are intact so far, which will be a huge relief to many of the college students in the US.

Bottom line, the governments and corporations are just too friendly with each other. They are running increasingly expensive wars for fun and profit, on our backs. We need a bunch of new players, ASAP.

I hope we can do it the gentle way, by voting better people in, by putting ourselves in areas of influence, by holding politicians to account, by working for change, and by making our voices heard. We can't afford to let the ignorance, power and greed of the powerful and noisy few ruin our lives and our planet. This is not the governing we deserve.

Essential reading: The Tenfold Path to Guts, Solidarity and the Defeat of the Corporate Elite

15th anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

https://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/barlow_0296.declaration.txt

Just as inspiring today as it was then.

Thanks, John Perry Barlow!