The dangers of Adderal and the good-grades drugs for ADHD

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

Anonymity Suggestions - from Your Anon News

Privacy Alert: Change and delete your Google Search history before the end of February

“Anonymous” Reveals Close Ties Between Ron Paul And Neo-Nazis

Got a nickname? Google + wants your driver's license or else.

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/

Google’s no-opt-out privacy changes and the end of the anonymous Internet

Google plans to track you all across its web property, and you can't opt out

Google's new "privacy" policy - Washington Post explains.

Some Google employees are upset, but boss says, my way or the highway.

Here are some things you can do.

Get Firefox
Get DuckDuckGo search plugin

Log out of Google, YouTube, Picassa, Blogger, Gmail, G+, and so on, when you're done using one, so you're not dragging your browsing history around for them to collect.

Sure, it's a tiny hassle to log back in, but you can keep your passwords in a password safe app on your phone.

(You're not reusing your passwords, are you?? Good. Because passwords keep getting posted publicly on the internet.)

Your activities are being collected by DoubleClick, which Google owns also, and Google ads, even when you are not on a Google-owned website.

So get an ad blocker too. Adblock Plus is great.

Fox news defended its "right" to misinform the public, and won? - about milk and cancer, and who knows what else

Protecting yourself and friends from being compromised online (and on phone) when you are arrested

How to surf anonymously, like hackers do

Turkey (and other places) How to bypass internet ban and censorship

Wikitravel: free travel info, made by everyone, everywhere

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. 

Ron Paul, the paper trail - US presidential candidate has deeply disturbing beliefs

Techno life skills you will need

Must read: Putting the future back in the room

Using birth control pills for emergency, morning-after contraception

The "morning after pill" has been denied to many women, most recently in the United States, as an over-the-counter emergency contraception method. In a pinch, some kinds of birth control pill can be used:

http://ec.princeton.edu/questions/ecother.html

Also, again in the USA, women can go to a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive a prescription for the morning-after pill, and you can get the prescription filled there as well in many cases.

Of course, prevention is so much better than cure, so be careful out there. Condoms help prevent disease, but they are not 100% effective for birth control, so women should use an additional method.