WiFi + USB Drive = Your Own Mini-Internet (Freedom)

Tony Cartalucci, Contributor
Activist Post

Worried about draconian Internet laws? Creeping surveillance? The inability to share with others without being criminalized? The Internet is still a tool of tremendous power, but a deep rot has set in. We have caught it early and we are fighting to stop this rot, but there are other options we can begin exploring to hedge our bets, enhance our current efforts of fighting against corporate monopolies, and eventually, build an Internet of the people, by the people, for the people - big-telecom monopolies not welcomed.

Image: The PirateBox in use on a handheld device. Once the PirateBox is up and running, either on a standalone device like the one pictured to the right (background), or on your laptop as described here, it will appear as another WiFi network for people in range to connect to. Once connected files can be freely shared, and there is even a chat client users can communicate with. It is just as useful as a file server for a small business, as it is for circumventing the draconian criminalization of Internet file sharing.

In last week's "Fighting Back Against the "Intellectual Property" Racket," the "PirateBox" was introduced. The PirateBox transforms a laptop, router, or single board computer into a mini-Internet hub where files can be freely shared, and even features a chat program so users can communicate.

It is a lite version of the mesh networks described in December 2012's "Decentralizing Telecom" where independent mesh networks featured many software alternatives to emulate popular online programs such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and others. The PirateBox is an introductory project anyone with a WiFi adapter and a USB thumbdrive can do on their own with a little motivation and an hour to experiment.

In a busy office, a PirateBox can serve as a simple local wireless file server and chat client. In an apartment complex, it can become the center of a social experiment, an opportunity to reach out to neighbors and organize constructively, or just for fun - building badly needed local communities back up.

Instructions for perhaps the easiest of PirateBox's implementations can be found on blogger, designer, and activist David Darts' website here. The instructions are nearly foolproof, and a lot of the common problems ran into are described and their solutions linked to throughout the explanation.

The PirateBox does not connect to the Internet, nor does it operate from your hard drive. It works entirely on the USB thumbdrive you install it on, simply using your computer's WiFi to network all who are in range.

Ideally you'd want to make a dedicated, standalone PirateBox to serve your space, office, and neighbors. A great place for beginners to embark on this is at your local hackerspace. If you don't have a local hackerspace, look into starting one up.

Protesting is important, but protesting alone will not stem the problem at its source. The rot will continue to spread unless we develop tangible tools to pragmatically excise it and repair the damage it has already done.

The problem of corporate monopolies ensnaring and subjugating us through their telecom monopolies can and is being solved by solutions like mesh networks, the PirateBox, and the onward march of open source software and hardware, simply displacing proprietary products and services. The best way to ensure success is to have as many informed and constructive people as possible join in the problem-solving process.

Since posting about the PirateBox, LocalOrg has received several success stories of people who have either already been using it, or have looked into it, prompting this follow up. Continue sharing your success, and if you would like, contact us and have them covered here on LocalOrg.

Tony Cartalucci's articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.

Decentralized Internet Being Built to Thwart Censorship

J.P. Hicks
Activist Post

Bloggers represent one of the last bastions of independent journalism. Since the Internet presents a level playing field for information, it's possible for talented bloggers to reach millions of people which only used to be available to large media conglomerates.

But the free Internet appears to be under attack on multiple fronts. It seems that these conglomerates don't like losing their audience to lowly bloggers. And, apparently, they have the government on their side not just because they fund politicians to do their bidding, governments themselves also don't like it when pesky bloggers expose their dirty deeds.

The result of this corporate-government merger against the free Internet has resulted in endless calls for Internet legislation from Net Neutrality, blogging taxes, cyber security trolling, to various draconian laws to enforce copyrights like SOPA, PIPA, and international attempts like ACTA.




Bloggers are now even being prosecuted for offering advice about nutrition and dieting. This story is explained in the video below:



So is it any wonder why many bloggers are concerned with Internet freedom and censorship?

-->

Although protests have stalled many of these bills from becoming law, authorities persist in getting their way. In fact, they are trying to jam the wording of such bills into international trade treaties like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is so secretive that a crowd-funding platform is offering an award just to read the treaty. Imagine how awful it must be for freedom if the people who it will govern aren't even allowed to know what's in it.

Since the writing is on the wall that these censorship forces will stop at nothing until they get their way, free speech activists and tech geeks are seeking to build a new decentralized Internet called MeshNet, which is essentially a peer-to-peer network that "makes the oppression of free speech impractical bordering on impossible."


Introduction to the MeshNet from Nicholas Ferrar on Vimeo.

Anyone who believes in their right to blog about anything they please should support these projects and others like it. Visit Project MeshNet today to learn more.

J.P. Hicks is an info-activist, pro blogger, editor of Blog Tips and author of a book about blogging. Follow @ Twitter, or like on Facebook and get the FREE ebook SEO For Bloggers.

Deep Web, Deep Privacy

By Conrad Jaeger:

Tell someone that you know how to go off-radar on the Internet and, as a rule, they won’t believe you. They imagine shadowy intelligence agencies have state-of-the-art technology and can see everything you do. Bkut they would be wrong.

No doubt they do have amazing technology, but it is perfectly possible to hide yourself on the Internet, to send and receive emails that nobody can intercept or read, to upload and download securely, to visit banned websites, blog anonymously, and do anything you want without being followed, profiled or analysed. Those that know how use the Deep Web.

In essence, the Deep Web is the same Internet we’re using now but it’s the hidden parts of it, the parts not indexed by Google and the other search engines. Most of it is made up of databases and archives, many of which can be accessed by anyone with the right knowledge.

And then there are the Hidden Networks of the Deep Web. Nobody knows how many there are because that’s the nature of the thing. The most popular and easiest to access is Tor. You can start now by downloading the Tor/Firefox covert browser but, be warned, there are a lot of seriously bad people down there and it’s very easy to give yourself lasting nightmares by following some of the links at the main entry point, the Hidden Wiki.

But not everybody who uses these Hidden Networks is up to no good. Lots of people would rather that the Internet allowed them to be anonymous and to go and look up things and chat and all the rest of it without having someone or something looking over their shoulder.

Journalists use these networks to talk securely with whistle-blowers and dissidents. Aid agencies use them to stay in touch with base from inside repressive regimes. Activists of all sorts can organise amongst themselves and get their message out to the rest of the world.

And to do so they use much the same tools as we use on the Surface Web. To send emails that cannot be traced, consider an email re-mailer like awxcnx.de or cotse.net which strip off any identifying codes and add new ones along the journey. When the email arrives at its destination, there is no way that it can traced back to you.

The Deep Web has several email options, such as TorMail, which allows you to send and receive secure email with a you@tormail.org address both to addresses within and outside of Tor.
Additionally, the content of emails can easily be encrypted with both free and paid-for programs like PGP keys which are uncrackable even by the new mega-computers being used by the National Security Agency.

You can send someone a harmless-looking photo of yourself on holiday but nobody need know that the image contains a secret document. You can hide almost any kind of digital file by embedding it inside another digital file. This art is called steganography and there are a number of programs that perform this magic, some free like QuickCrypto.

Top Secret documents can be embedded inside a photo, short videos can be transmitted secretly inside a music file, and messages can be passed on by a digital ‘drop box’ held on a photo within a website. Counter-technology is next to hopeless.

And when the authorities force the ISPs to switch off access to Twitter and Facebook during civil unrest, the Deep Web allows those that know how to maintain connection. There are even Twitter and Facebook clones on Tor.

You can upload and download any amount of data via dozens of free hosting sites on the Deep Web, such as PasteOnion. Here you can make your post public or set a password, and determine how long it stays up there. Use can also use this service to construct a simple webpage in HTML or even as an image file and then upload it and pass on the address.

You can also go all James Bond and install the covert browser in a smart-phone or onto a USB thumb drive which you can then plug into a computer in a cybercafé or public library and leave no trace.

But don’t assume that everything done on the Deep Web will make you invisible. The Hidden Networks have their flaws and these need to be fully understood before embarking on anything that might cause a problem.

The art is to combine the different techniques available, to mix and match, until not even the most determined adversary can find you.

Conrad Jaeger


Conrad Jaeger is the author of ‘Deep Web Secrecy and Security’
(available for Kindle at Amazon.co.uk and at Smashwords for
all other formats).

When the Government Comes Knocking, Who Has Your Back?

EFF Charts the Privacy and Transparency Practices of the Internet's Biggest Companies

EFF

When you use the Internet, you entrust your thoughts, experiences, locations, and more to companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. But what happens when the government asks these companies to hand over your private information? Will the company stand with you? Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) releases its second annual "When the Government Comes Knocking, Who Has Your Back?" report – this time as a white paper and chart tracking some of the Internet's biggest service providers on their public commitments to their users' privacy and security.

Increasingly, federal law enforcement agents are demanding that Internet companies provide their users' data as part of government investigations – sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. EFF's report examines 18 companies' terms of service, privacy policies, public representations, advocacy, and courtroom track records, awarding them gold stars for best practices in categories like "tell users about government data demands" and "fight for user privacy in courts."

"This year, we saw a big increase in the number of companies making a public promise to their users to inform them whenever possible when the government comes knocking," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "This notice gives users the chance to fight back against government overreaches and to defend themselves if investigators want to unfairly fish around in their personal information. It appears that promising to notify your customers of government data demands is on the way to becoming an industry standard for responsible companies."

EFF first published its chart last year to recognize exemplary practices by some companies. We were pleased to see that Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter have each upgraded their practices in the past year. Sonic.net, an ISP based in Santa Rosa, California, earned a gold star in every category. Cloud storage sites Dropbox and SpiderOak and business networking site LinkedIn also fared well, earning recognition in three categories each.

"Online service providers are the guardians of some of your most intimate data – everything from your messages, to location information, to the identities of your family and friends," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "We wanted to acknowledge companies that are adopting best practices and taking exceptional steps to defend their users against government overreaches in the courts and in Congress."

In addition to upgrading their own practices, many Internet companies have joined with civil liberties groups into a powerful coalition working to clarify outdated privacy laws so that there is no question about when the government needs a warrant to access sensitive users data.

"This year, we saw a number of major Internet companies join the Digital Due Process coalition, which is aimed at getting Congress to make lasting improvements in the laws that protect our electronic privacy," said EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman. "This should be a wakeup call to Congress to clarify outdated laws so there is no question that government agents need a court-ordered warrant before accessing sensitive location data, email content, and documents stored in the cloud."

For the full report "When the Government Comes Knocking, Who Has Your Back?":
https://www.eff.org/pages/who-has-your-back

Last year's report can be viewed here:
https://www.eff.org/pages/when-government-comes-knocking-who-has-your-back-2011

Contacts:

Cindy Cohn
Legal Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
cindy@eff.org

Marcia Hofmann
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
marcia@eff.org

Rainey Reitman
Activism Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
rainey@eff.org

BIG BROTHER NEVER GOES AWAY.

Big brother never goes away, the tentacles of the corporate empire wriggle their way into ever aspect of your life. Government is there to further the aim and to protect the wealth of the corporate empire. It always takes a consolidated effort by the people to stop this continued attempt at control over all aspects of our life, the Internet is there for you as a tool of self expression and creativity and they don't like that, if they can't control it then they will do their damnedest to destroy it. This bill going through Congress is just another example of the corporate fascism that demands total control over our lives. Only the strength of people power can stop their strangling the creativity of the people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://boingboing.net/

Tell Congress not tocensor the Internet NOW! - fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IPis a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and ismoving quickly through Congress. It gives the government andcorporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting"creativity". The law would let the government orcorporations censor entire sites-- they just have to convince a judgethat the site is "dedicated to copyright infringement."
The government has already wrongly shut down sites withoutany recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video withanything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitterdo, would be considered illegal behaviour according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill wouldcost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that's for a fix thatwon't work, disrupts the Internet, stifles innovation, shuts outdiverse voices, and censors the Internet. This bill is bad forcreativity and does not protect your rights.

Popout
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

File sharing is now an official religion in Sweden

By: Will Shanklin

For many people, file sharing is a way of life. At any given time, they will be seeding handfuls of torrents, downloading several more, and searching The Pirate Bay for something new. The practice provides a cathartic experience that you could even say gives meaning to their lives. So why not take the next step and turn it into a religion? That’s exactly what one man tried to do. The crazy part? He succeeded.

Yes, file sharing has been officially recognized as a religion by the Swedish government. The Church of Kopimism is the fruit of philosophy student Isak Gerson’s efforts. After two unsuccessful attempts to convince authorities to recognize the religion (its methods of praying or meditiaton were deemed too informal), Kopimism was finally granted religious status.

What does Kopimism hold as beliefs? You don’t think that it could have been officially recognized without its own set of creeds, do you? Among others, it holds the following axioms (paraphrased from an English translation):

copying of information is ethically right

spreading information is ethically right

copying or remixing information from another person is an act of respect and an expression of faith

Kopimism even has priests. A file sharing priest is called an Opar. An Opar’s duty is threefold: to live according to Kopimistic values, to help others live according to Kopimistic values, and to actively shape his environment to be more Kopimistic.

Most religions have a formal set of symbols, and Kopimism is no exception. It appropriately uses Control-C and Control-V (keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste) as sacred symbols. The church’s website does denote that any symbol can be reproduced as a Kopimist symbol, so perhaps Mac users will prefer to hold Command-C and Command-V as sacred symbols.

It’s easy to get a chuckle out of file sharing being recognized as a religion, but why not? If someone finds joy, purpose, and a sense of oneness with the universe by visiting The Pirate Bay, then how is that less important or less “right” than someone who has the same experience in a religion that society has deemed acceptable? Of course they’re breaking the law and taking copyrighted content for free, but they’d be doing that anyway. If you’re going to be doing something regardless, I say it’s better to celebrate it than to feel ashamed about it.

One thing that Kopimists won’t likely get, however, is immunity from prosecution based on religious grounds. Rastafarians, whose religion is much older and larger than Kopimism, are routinely rejected by courts when they attempt to defend their marijuana use on religious grounds. While file sharing isn’t prosecuted as often as cannabis use is, the results of such a legal defense — in Sweden or elsewhere — aren’t likely to be different.

Those looking to join the Church of Kopimism can sign up at the church’s new member’s page.

Church of Kopimism, via TorrentFreak

2011: Piracy Wars and Internet Censorship

• by Ernesto

Looking back at the past 12 months it’s fair to conclude that 2011 was the year that the entertainment industries focused on piracy-fueled Internet censorship. Domain seizures, DNS blockades, raids and arrests dominated the news, and the threat of the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US left millions of Internet users worried. Let’s see how events unfolded.

At the end of the year when new developments draw to a close, it’s time to take a look back and take stock. Below is our overview of some of the most interesting events we reported during the first half of 2011.

Take a deep breath…

January

After pressure from the entertainment industries, Google started to censor piracy-related keywords from its instant and autocomplete services. Keywords such as ‘torrent,’ ‘BitTorrent’ and ‘RapidShare’ were excluded from the start, and later in the year Google added a wide range of new terms including ‘The Pirate Bay.’

Despite these efforts the RIAA remained dissatisfied, patronizing the search engine with a could-do-much-better “Report Card” in December.

The mass-BitTorrent lawsuits that entered the US during 2010 reached a new milestone in 2011 with the 100,000th person being sued for alleged copyright infringement. In January alone several prominent lawsuits were added. Anime distributor Funimation announced a lawsuit against 1337 alleged BitTorrent downloaders, and the rights holders of “The Expendables” and Paris Hilton sex tape did the same.

One alleged BitTorrent user paid a mysterious settlement of $250,000.

There was also positive news from the UK, when so-called Speculative Invoicing schemes there came to an end, at least for a few months. ACS:Law, the law firm that had terrorized untold thousands of alleged file-sharers in the UK, quit the anti-piracy business and went into bankruptcy a while later. ACS:Law’s Andrew Crossley was honored with the title of “Internet Villain” of the year and will now face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in early 2012.

Two lawyers who were responsible for introducing Speculative Invoicing to the UK were fined and banned from practicing for 3 months. David Gore and former partner Brian Miller of the law firm Davenport Lyons were each told to pay a £20,000 fine and interim costs of £150,000 for their professional misconduct.

Meanwhile, RapidShare and Megaupload fought back against entertainment industry propaganda.

February

Early February, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized several domains belonging to major sports streaming sites. One of the websites was Rojadirecta, an unusual target because two courts in Spain previously ruled that the site operates legally. Rojadirecta appealed the seizure but thus far without result.

In response to domain seizures many people voiced concern that they may be unconstitutional. US Senator Ron Wyden feared that the seizures could stifle free speech, and this indeed turned out to be the case as the US government shut down 84,000 websites by mistake late February.

In Australia, the Federal Court dismissed the movie industry’s appeal against a 2010 ruling which found that Internet service provider iiNet is not responsible for copyright infringements carried out by its file-sharing customers. This decision was appealed once more and is now with the High Court.

Oh, and despite rampant piracy Hollywood box office grosses worldwide surpassed the magic $30 billion mark for the first time in history.

March

Following the February seizure of several domains belonging to major sports streaming sites, the feds arrested the operator of Channelsurfing.net in March. The 32-year-old Texan Bryan McCarthy was taken into custody on suspicion of criminal copyright infringement. In November, McCarthy was indicted on several copyright related charges. Awaiting his trial, the psychologically-troubled operator pleaded not guilty on all counts.

In the same month President Obama’s “IP Czar” Victoria Espinel laid the foundations for PIPA and SOPA, calling on Congress to make changes in order to make it easier to clamp down on copyright infringement. Among the recommendations were calls to turn streaming into a felony alongside authority to wiretap in copyright cases. Music industry expert, book author and Grammy winner Moses Avalon welcomed the plans, which he declared would signal the end of TorrentFreak.

In the ongoing mass BitTorrent lawsuits, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell laid down a landmark verdict that would make it easy for copyright holders – the makers of The Hurt Locker in particular – to send cash demands to people they suspect of copyright infringement. The fact that Howell previously worked as an RIAA lobbyist and as the Managing Director of a pirate-chasing outfit led to suggestions of a conflict of interest.

Meanwhile in Belarus, a pirated copy of The Hurt Locker aired on national TV.

April

In April, worries about the US domain seizures prompted another major torrent site to move to a new domain as a precaution. KickassTorrents, one of the most visited torrent sites on the Internet, replaced its .com domain name with the Philippine extension .ph.

At the same time a group called MAFIAAFire coded a browser plugin to make these type of domain transitions go more smoothly by automatically redirecting users to these new homes. The release went viral and in the following months more than 200,000 people installed the add-on. ICE wasn’t happy with this and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. However, Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.

An Italian court ordered all ISPs to block subscriber access to BTjunkie, leaving hundreds of thousands of Italians with the task of finding a new torrent site. At least, that was the plan. Just hours after the news was made public, a brand new and ad-free proxy site was launched. The site allowed Italians to browse an uncensored web and access BTjunkie, as well as another popular blocked site, The Pirate Bay.

May

In May, US lawmakers introduced the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), a bill that delivers a wide range of censorship tools authorities and copyright holders can use to quash websites they claim are facilitating copyright infringement. It is basically a revamped and worsened version of the controversial COICA proposal which had to be resubmitted after its enaction failed last year. Two weeks after its introduction, the Senate’s Judicial Committee unanimously approved the bill and it now awaits the senate vote.

In the same week as PIPA was introduced, three U.S. Senators presented the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, a bill that would make streaming unauthorized music, movies and TV-shows a felony. The bill is said to address a gap in current legislation where streaming is not considered a criminal offense.

The popular video streaming site “Fast Pass TV” was shut down following the arrest of one of the site’s alleged operators. The site itself didn’t host any copyrighted content but indexed videos hosted on third-party sites.

In the US the controversial mass-BitTorrent lawsuits continued. Early May the makers of the Expendables set a record when they sued 23,322 people at once, but this record was broken a few weeks later when The Hurt Locker lawsuit was updated to include 24,583 alleged BitTorrent users. Both cases were dismissed a few months later.

In another mass-BitTorrent lawsuit – VPR Internationale v. Does 1-1017- Judge Harold Baker denied a Canadian adult film company permission to subpoena ISPs for the personal information connected to the IP-addresses of their subscribers. The reason? IP-addresses are not people, and especially in ‘adult entertainment’ cases this could obstruct a ‘fair’ legal process.

US authorities resumed “Operation In Our Sites” and seized several domain names associated with copyright infringement or counterfeit related crimes. Among the new targets were two sites that linked to copyrighted films hosted on third-party streaming sites such as megavideo.com and veoh.com.

Oh, and in the midst of all the censorship talk The Pirate Bay moved their severs to a secret mountain complex after Comcast offered help to fix a network issue.

June

A report from the UN’s Human Rights Council labeled Internet access a human right, arguing that laws which allow for the disconnection of Internet users are disproportionate and should be repealed.

Richard O’Dwyer, the 23-year-old UK-based administrator of a TV show and movie links site was arrested by police. Following his detention in the UK’s largest prison, the admin continued fighting his extradition to the U.S.

On June 11th 2011, Europe witnessed one of the largest piracy-related busts in history. The popular movie streaming portal Kino.to was shut down and a dozen people connected to the site were arrested.

As collateral damage, several file-hosting services connected to Kino.to also went down. Several people went on trial for their part in the site’s operation and the main admin was sentenced to three years in prison. Interestingly, a report published after the raids revealed that Kino.to’s users were actually the movie industry’s best customers.

—

Part 2 follows.

Be a HERO and Help STOP SOPA Now

Website for this image

Will 2012 see the end of the internet as we know it?

In the USA there is something called the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa)



Uploaded by JeepersMedia on 22 Dec 2011
Go to http://onecandleinthedark.blogspot.com/ and http://www.cbsyousuck.com/ for thousands of pages of evidence and links to the original source research on the Internet Wayback Machine.

Many thanks to anonymous for the links. Merry Christmas to all.

‘The Pirate Bay Dancing’ Add-On Killls DNS and IP Blockades

Efforts to censor the Internet are increasing in the Western world. In the US lawmakers are currently discussing legislation (SOPA/PIPA) that could take out The Pirate Bay, or disable access to it. In several other countries such as Italy, Finland and Belgium, courts have already ordered Internet Providers to block their users’ access to the site. Demonstrating the futility of these efforts, a small group of developers today releases a browser add-on called “The Pirate Bay Dancing.”

When Homeland Security’s ICE unit started seizing domain names last year, a group called “MAFIAAFire” decided to code a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains.

The release went viral and by now more than 200,000 people have installed the add-on. ICE wasn’t happy with this and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. However, Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.

Today MAFIAAFire delivers a new release that aims to thwart the increasing censorship efforts in countries worldwide. Named “The Pirate Bay Dancing,” the Firefox add-on undoes local DNS and IP blocks by routing users through a series of randomly picked proxies.

The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that the development of the plugin was partly motivated by SOPA and PIPA, the pending anti-piracy bills in the US.

“DNS and IP blocking is probably the most dangerous part of SOPA/PIPA in terms of ‘breaking the Internet,’ so we tackled that first. We will be going after the other parts of SOPA in later releases but probably not in ‘our usual plugin form’ – the other parts require different solutions that we have already started work on,” we were told.

Although the add-on carries The Pirate Bay in its name it also works with other sites such as Newsbin2 and BTJunkie which are blocked in the UK and Italy respectively. In a broader sense it can also be used to bypass national “firewalls” such as in China, and soon perhaps the US.

Putting the add-on to work only requires two clicks and is completely free.

After the add-on is installed users can specify the websites for which they want it to work, and these sites then trigger a response from the plugin. If someone from Italy for example chooses to unblock The Pirate Bay, the add-on will save this preference and load the site through a proxy on the next visit.

MAFIAAFire is using thousands of proxies which will be rotated constantly, hence the (dirty) dancing. The current version is fully working but TorrentFreak was told that the functionality will be expanded in future releases.

The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that they were eager to help The Pirate Bay out, as the site’s operators have been an inspiration to them. The Pirate Bay team on their turn will soon feature the add-on on their homepage.

“Saving TPB was a big deal to us, we love the site and how it has stood the test of time while dozens of others fell, bent over or were run over. The MAFIAA have been trying to take down TPB’s sails for years, country by country, this extends its life a little more to give it smooth sailing,” TorrentFreak was told.

“In the bigger picture, other than the US’ SOPA we also have each country experimenting with its own mini-firewall. This makes all those blocks in all those countries, and all the millions the MAFIAA have spent to get to there, useless,” the MAFIAAFire team added.

While the latest MAFIAAFire add-on shows how easy it is to bypass these censorship attempts, supporters of the measures would argue that it will nonetheless stop the vast majority of casual pirates.

The creators of “The Pirate Bay Dancing” are not ignorant of this, but aside from delivering a working product, one of their main goals is to send a signal that censorship is never the right path to take. Judging from the recognition they’ve received so far, they sure have succeeded on that front.

The Pirate Bay Dancing

How the Internet Evolves to Overcome Censorship

Getty Images

Last week’s congressional hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, drew attention to the fact that Congress has it within its power to censor the Internet. Dozens of sites across the web blacked-out their logos in opposition to the bill. Social blogging service Tumblr took it farther, redacting all content on its users’ dashboards and asking them to phone their members of Congress, resulting in over 87,000 calls.

Some folks, however, are not content to leave the fate of the Internet to politics.

Several efforts are underway to rethink the domain name system (DNS) to route around the potential censorship. Last year after U.S. authorities seized dozens of domains, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde began work on a peer-to-peer DNS not susceptible to the type of blacklisting SOPA and similar bills would mandate. Another group is trying to develop a censorship-proof top-level domain using technology based on the Bitcoin protocol. The result is the further decentralization of the Internet.

(MORE: SOPA Won’t Stop Online Piracy, Would Censor Everyone Else)

When governments want to control information on the Internet, they invariably head for the choke points, like ISP-run DNS servers in the case of SOPA. If you could replace those servers with a peer-to-peer source for the same information, there would no longer be central point a government could control or shut down.

There is nothing new about the impulse to engineer one’s way around the law. For example, once Napster was found to be infringing, it was easily shut down because it relied on centralized servers. Napster’s eventual successor was BitTorrent, which is distributed and decentralized, and as a result can’t be shut down–even if it’s found to be illegal.

If governments continue to assert control over information on the Internet, as they have increasingly been doing, then we will likely see more attempts to dismantle the intermediary points of control. Government reactions to WikiLeaks highlight this.

Late last month, the whistle-blowing site announced it was halting operations over financial difficulties. It blames payment processors, such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, which have been persuaded (some say through political pressure) to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks. And two weeks ago, a federal court ruled that the FBI could access information about the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks volunteers without a warrant.

These blows to WikiLeaks were possible because it relied on centralized intermediaries. If one could accept donations or receive short messages directly from the sender without them first going through hubs like PayPal or Twitter, then there would be no intermediary to control. Fortunately, such projects are in the works.

Bitcoin is a decentralized and distributed digital currency, which means a donation or payment would travel directly from sender to recipient without the need for a third-party payment processor. Wikileaks began accepting Bitcoin donations in June. Decentralized social networks, such as such as Diaspora and Identi.ca, are also being developed to supplant Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, you still have to connect to the Internet through an ISP, and that could be the ultimate choke point. But you can guess where this is going: There are projects under way looking to decentralize the physical layer of the Internet. Project Kleinrock and the Darknet Project are just two efforts to build an independent “second-layer” of the Internet using wireless mesh networking.

It’s not a certainty that these projects will all succeed. Most probably won’t. Yet these far-out efforts serve as proof-of-concept for a censorship-resistant Internet. Just as between Napster and BitTorrent there was Gnutella and Freenet, it will take time for these concepts to mature. What is certain is the trend. The more governments squeeze the Internet in an attempt to control information, the more it will turn to sand around their fingers.

MORE: The Consequences of Apple’s Walled Garden

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/11/21/how-the-internet-evolves-to-overcome-censorship/#ixzz1f08XVFn0

Say NO to ACTA

Uploaded by laquadrature on 27 Oct 2011

Negotiated in secret by 39 countries, ACTA is one more offensive against the sharing of culture on the Internet. Officially The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that countries can join on a voluntary basis and would create its own governing body outside existing international institutions. Negotiating countries have described it as a response "to the increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works. The scope of ACTA includes counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet."

A signing ceremony was held on 1 October 2011 in Tokyo, with the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea signing the treaty. The European Union, Mexico, and Switzerland did not sign the treaty, but "attended the ceremony and confirmed their continuing strong support for and preparations to sign the Agreement as soon as practicable." Article 39 of ACTA specifies that the agreement is open for signature until 31 March 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

Learn more and take action about ACTA at
http://lqdn.fr/ACTA
(subtitles included : fr, en, es)

Here are few ways to act against ACTA, right now: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA

Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

By Jeffrey R. Young

Washington

Computer networks proved their organizing power during the recent uprisings in the Middle East, in which Facebook pages amplified street protests that toppled dictators. But those same networks showed their weaknesses as well, such as when the Egyptian government walled off most of its citizens from the Internet in an attempt to silence protesters.

That has led scholars and activists increasingly to consider the Internet's wiring as a disputed political frontier.

For example, one weekend each month, a small group of computer programmers gathers at a residence here to build a homemade Internet—named Project Byzantium—that could go online if parts of the current global Internet becomes blocked by a repressive government.

Using an approach called a "mesh network," the system would set up an informal wireless network connecting users with other nearby computers, which in turn would pass along the signals. The mesh network could tie back into the Internet if one of the users found a way to plug into an unblocked route. The developers recently tested an early version of their software at George Washington University (though without the official involvement of campus officials).

The leader of the effort, who goes by the alias TheDoctor but who would not give his name, out of concern that his employer would object to the project, says he fears that some day repressive measures could be put into place in the United States.

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He is not the only one with such apprehensions. Next month The­Doctor will join hundreds of like-minded high-tech activists and entrepreneurs in New York at an unusual conference called the Contact Summit. One of the participants is Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School who has built an encryption device and worries about a recent attempt by Wisconsin politicians to search a professor's e-mail. The summit's goal is not just to talk about the projects, but also to connect with potential financial backers, recruit programmers, and brainstorm approaches to building parallel Internets and social networks.

The meeting is a sign of the growing momentum of what is called the "free-network movement," whose leaders are pushing to rewire online networks to make it harder for a government or corporation to exert what some worry is undue control or surveillance. Another key concern is that the Internet has not lived up to its social potential to connect people, and instead has become overrun by marketing and promotion efforts by large corporations.

At the heart of the movement is the idea that seemingly mundane technical specifications of Internet routers and social-networking software platforms have powerful political implications. In virtual realms, programmers essentially set the laws of physics, or at least the rules of interaction, for their cyberspaces. If it sometimes seems that media pundits treat Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Apple's Steve Jobs as gods, that's because in a sense they are—sitting on Mount Olympus with the power to hurl digital thunderbolts with a worldwide impact on people.

Instead of just complaining, many of those heading to New York next month believe they can build alternatives that reduce the power of those virtual deities and give more control to mere mortals.

I was surprised by the number of homegrown Internet projects described on the Contact Summit's Web site—though most of them are not yet operational, and some may never be. Among the approaches: an alternative to Facebook that promises better privacy control; a device that automatically scrambles e-mail and Web traffic so that only people authorized by the user can read them; and various mesh-network efforts that can essentially create an "Internet in a suitcase" to set up wherever unfettered Internet access is needed.

Whether you see these techies as visionaries or paranoids, they highlight the extent to which networks now shape nations.

"Anyone who cares about human rights anywhere should dedicate themselves to building these systems," is how Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, put it when I asked him about the trend.

Bazaar 2.0

One organizer of the Contact Summit, Douglas Rushkoff, compares the disruptive power of the Internet to the impact of bazaars in the Middle Ages.

In his latest book, Program or Be Programmed (OR Books), he argues that the earliest bazaars helped transform feudal society by allowing vigorous information sharing—a low-tech peer-to-peer network. "Everyone was speaking with everybody else, and about all sorts of things and ideas," he writes. "All this information exchange allowed people to improve on themselves and their situations," allowing craftsmen to form guilds and share techniques. "As the former peasants rose to become a middle class of merchants and crafts­people, they were no longer dependent on feudal lords for food and protection."

The Internet has created a bazaar 2.0, says Mr. Rushkoff, accelerating information exchange and giving people the power to organize in new ways.

At least so far. Mr. Rushkoff argues that companies and governments are gaining too much power, in ways that could limit communication in the future. Facebook, for instance, is a centralized system that forces users to run communications through its servers—and, he observes, its main goal is to make money by analyzing data about users and sharing that information with advertisers.

"The Internet that we know and love is not up to the task of being both a fully commercial network and a people's infrastructure," Mr. Rushkoff told me. "The Net is not a marketing opportunity—it's something much bigger than that."

...MORE HERE...

The Globalist Empire Strikes Back With Censorship

Ethan Jacobs, J.D.
Activist Post

Update: Activist Post has been restored!

In a telling act of desperation, the failing globalist empire, Google Blogger, completely deleted Activist Post, one of the top alternative news websites, without warning or reason. The elite see that their global fascist world government agenda is falling apart due to the alternative media educating the public. Globalist puppet Hillary Clinton recently told a congressional committee, “We are in an information war and we are losing that war.”

Each day more people question why we have a private Federal Reserve that creates money out of nothing and exerts Communist-style central economic planning for the benefit of bankers, the 9/11 fable and other false flags, vaccines, fluoridated water, endless wars of military conquest and the absurd war on drugs.

Google is a CIA/NSA front company that collects information on its users and social trends based on Internet traffic.

"The CIA’s technology investment operation, In-Q-Tel, and Google are supporting a company that monitors the web in real time. The company, Recorded Future, scans tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find imputed relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents. Recorded Future claims it can utilize this information to predict the future."

Google founder Eric Schmidt attended the 2008 and 2011 Bilderberg meetings, where David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger most likely gave him his marching orders.

Google has a history of censoring constitutionally protected political speech and the alternative media. Earlier this year Google-owned YouTube censored a video clip showing Eric Schmidt at the 2011 Bilderberg Group conference, by removing the “honors” associated with the Alex Jones Channel and preventing the clip from being widely viewed. YouTube also has been caught distorting “channel views” and deleting popular documentaries such as The Obama Deception.

During November of 2010, Google’s news aggregator blacklisted Prison Planet and Infowars despite the fact that both websites are internationally known and now attract more traffic than many mainstream media websites, while Google-owned YouTube temporarily froze the Alex Jones Channel based on a spurious complaint about showing Wikileaks footage that had been carried on hundreds of other YouTube channels for months.

Google’s deletion of Activist Post and acts of censorship build upon the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird.

Starting in the early days of the Cold War (late 40s), the CIA began a secret project called Operation Mockingbird, with the intent of buying influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and putting reporters on the CIA payroll, which has proven to be a stunning ongoing success. The CIA effort to recruit American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda, was headed up by Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post).

Media assets will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. and 400 journalists, who have secretly carried out assignments according to documents on file at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens. The CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives by the 1950s. CIA Director Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale with figures like George Herbert Walker Bush from the "Skull and Crossbones" Society.

The deletion of Activist Post is the progression of White house information czar Cass Sunstein’s policy of speech and thought repression. Sunstein, who authored a white paper calling for banning “conspiracy theories,” demanding that websites be mandated by law to link to opposing information or that pop ups containing government propaganda be forcibly included on political blogs.

In a set of proposals designed to counter “dangerous” ideas, Sunstein suggested that the government could, “ban conspiracy theorizing,” or “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories”. So-called “conspiracy theories that Sunstein said could be subject to government censorship included beliefs held by the vast majority of Americans, such as the notion that the JFK assassination occurred as part of a wider plot. In his white paper, Sunstein also cited the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government censorship.

Sunstein is no entrepreneur when it comes to free speech suppression as his policies are reminiscent of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. One of Goebells first acts was the burning of books rejected by the Nazis. He exerted totalitarian control over the media, arts and information in Germany.The ambitions of the Propaganda Ministry were shown by the divisions Goebbels soon established: press, radio, film, theater, music, literature, and publishing. In each of these, a Reichskammer (Reich Chamber) was established, co-opting leading figures from the field to head each Chamber, and requiring them to supervise the purge of Jews, socialists and liberals, as well as practitioners of "degenerate" art forms such as abstract art…Goebbels’ orders were backed by the threat of force.

Control of the arts and media was not just a matter of personnel. Soon the content of every newspaper, book, novel, play, film, broadcast and concert, from the level of nationally-known publishers and orchestras to local newspapers and village choirs, was subject to supervision by the Propaganda Ministry, although a process of self-censorship was soon effectively operating in all these fields. No author could publish, no painter could exhibit, no singer could broadcast, no critic could criticize, unless they were a member of the appropriate Reich Chamber, and membership was conditional on good behavior.

Sunstein relates to the Soviet Union:

Eastern Bloc information dissemination was controlled directly by each country's Communist party, which controlled the state media, censorship and propaganda organs. State and party ownership of print, television and radio media served as an important manner in which to control information and society in light of Eastern Bloc leaderships viewing even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat to the bases underlying Communist power therein.

During the Stalinist period, even the weather forecasts were changed if they would have otherwise suggested that the sun might not shine on May Day. Under Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop.

Sunstein’s views are also similar to those of communist China:

Censorship in the People's Republic of China is implemented or mandated by the Communist Party of China . Censored media include essentially all capable of reaching a wide audience including television, print media, radio, film, theater, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature and the Internet. Chinese officials have access to uncensored information via an internal document system. China's Internet censorship is regarded by many as the most pervasive and sophisticated in the world. According to a Harvard study, at least 18,000 websites are blocked from within the country.

Sunstein is not alone in his desire to suppress free speech by censoring the Internet. According to the great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, nephew of banker David Rockefeller, and former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, the Internet represents a serious threat to national security. His belief that the internet is the “number one national hazard” to national security is shared by the former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Obama’s current director Admiral Dennis C. Blair.

Likewise, Senator Joe Lieberman stated, “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too [in the United States].” The Senator’s reference to China is a telling revelation of what the cybersecurity agenda is really all about. China’s vice-like grip over its Internet systems has very little to do with “war” and everything to do with silencing all dissent against the state.

Lieberman himself proved to have the power to shut down websites with a mere phone call, as was underscored when Amazon axed Wikileaks from its servers after being pressured to do so by Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security Committee.

If the globalists have their way, the light of free speech and the alternative media will be extinguished from the Internet.

In conclusion, the globalists’ agenda is collapsing faster than the debt-based economy due to the alternative media exposing their crimes and informing the public. The elites know they are losing the information battle and are acting out of desperation. That is why they censor the alternative media and why they deleted Activist Post. I am confident that Activist Post will return stronger and better than ever. In the meantime, please continue to share important articles from the alternative media with your friends, family, and contacts. The elites are up against the ropes and with your continued help, their global fascist agenda will soon suffer the long-overdue knockout punch.

Ethan Jacobs holds a Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. His passion is researching and writing about important issues to defeat every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

The Next Phase of Internet Censorship Has Begun: Man the Battle Stations!

Activist Post
24 September 2011

Reports pertaining to the censorship and takedown of personal websites continue to flood in.

First, YouTube meddled with the view counts of folks like Alex Jones over at Info Wars and Prison Planet. Then Flickr, MySpace and Facebook began censoring comments and material. Now an increasing number of independent online media is beginning to feel the sharp edge of the blade.

Amazon & Wikileaks

When Wikileaks went under fire for its publication of material such as the quarter million diplomatic cables (or Pentagon Papers 2), Amazon decided to pull the plug on its service to the whistleblower website.

Subsequently, we found out that the CEO and founder of Amazon attended the most recent Bilderberg group meeting in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Is it any wonder that Amazon too has joined the bandwagon? Average Joe’s who shot to fame and fortune, respective business empire founders such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, have been enticed by the club of “good old boys” and awoken that innate and evil human desire to play God with the rest of us.

This author was responsible for the Wikileaks publication of the few Bilderberg meeting documents available a week before their meet in Greece of 2009. They had been obtained from the author of Illuminati Conspiracy Archive, whose website seems to have become now defunct. Apparently, they had floated around on the net some years before, to have been taken down, and this author figured it wise to republish the few documents available to aid research.

A final disclaimer on the subject of Wikileaks. This author believes Wikileaks to be a “US Government con job.” Esteemed analyst William Engdahl has written extensively on this topic. Daniel Estulin of Bilderberg fame has also recently published a book on the deceptive nature of Wikileaks and its use as a tool of disinformation, the results of which we are now witnessing. Founder of Cryptome (John Young) worked with “Wikileaks” in its infancy and left after growing suspicion.

Don’t Tread on Me

A few weeks ago, Silver Shield’s popular economic and political commentary blog had been hacked. He has been wildly popular with his Sons of Liberty Academy and drive to make people aware of the true nature of the monetary system, suggesting the purchase of physical silver as one way to be free of the false paradigm. A similar hack had also been perpetrated against Freedom Force International a few years ago.

SGT Report & Bank of America

Just recently, SGT Report, who provides excellent economic reality and freedom related reporting, had been subjected to COINTELPRO commentary assault by the Wall Street-Pentagon nexus which includes Bank of America. See the site editor’s excellent detective work HERE.

Activist Post & Google via Blogger

The excellent Activist Post, to which Global Governance Archive is a frequent contributor, seems to have just been taken down by Google-owned Blogger. Recall that Google CEO Eric Schmidt also attended the last Bilderberg meeting.

Rick Rozoff (Stop NATO) & WordPress

The website of important analyst Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, has now been threatened by WordPress, who seems also to have taken to the chopping block.

Yahoo & the Day of Rage

Finally, we have Yahoo censoring the Day of Rage attempts to coordinate their occupation of Wall Street. Full Spectrum Dominance.

Full Spectrum Dominance

This insane Pentagon doctrine seeks to dominate land, air, sea, outer space, inner space and cyber space. It seeks “informational superiority” which is defined as “the capability to collect, process and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying adversary’s ability to do the same.”

Prepare for the Cyber False Flag

Corporate interests have been co-opted by the global elites and their secret societies. Bilderberg 2011 saw the coming together of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Amazon, among others. We are now only beginning to witness the outcome of their policy agenda. Companies are being bought up and merged by the new world elites, with Skype going to NSA Microsoft and YouTube to CIA Google.

As the few, the wise, those that enter through the narrow gate have long been warning and preparing for such issues as food storage, survivalism and spiritual preparedness, our essential lines of communication are gradually being cut. Skynet is becoming self-aware. Take all preventative measures and bat down the hatches. There be a storm on the horizon. Godspeed.

Global Governance Archive is an information war desk which seeks to aid researchers both new and old in sifting through the most important material on everything from economy to the architecture of global government which is now being built.

Activist Down!

Reason and Jest -- Scott Lazarowitz's Blog – Defending Market Voluntaryism

It appears that one of my newest favorite websites, Activist Post (www.activistpost.com) has been taken down by its host, Blogger.com. Activist Post posts original articles and articles from other websites that highlight the news items of what various government agencies and the military are up to, and investigative reporting on the latest injustices, corruption and crimes, that we don’t hear about from cowards government lapdogs gutless weasels mainstream news sources.

I am suspicious of this, especially given that Blogger.com is owned by Google. And we know about the cozy relationship between Google and the Obama Administration. It’s very suspicious. TPTB do not like their corruption and crimes being exposed, and they have been very happy lately with the complicity and cover-ups of the mainstream media, the subservient, obedient stenographers of the so-called “free press.” It would not surprise me that Blogger shut down Activist Post for political reasons, not particularly from the web people and managers of Blogger.com, but from pressure from TPTB.

Does this mean that they are going to shut down MY website, too? Or LewRockwell.com, Infowars, Future of Freedom Foundation, Antiwar.com, Strike the Root, The Daily Bell, Washington’s Blog, Economic Collapse Blog, the SHTF Plan, The Burning Platform, Glenn Greenwald, the Tenth Amendment Center, and many other “challenging the status quo” websites and blogs? These websites and blogs are openly critical of the status quo of statism and centralism, and have been trying to expose how governments in America, federal, state and local, have been removing our liberty and our rights, from the left and from the right, and the people who cherish freedom DON’T LIKE THAT!

I can see why those people in power don’t like being exposed for what they are. But they do have power, that’s for sure.

In fact, just recently, the other major blogging website (in competition with Blogger.com), WordPress.com, had threatened to suspend Rick Rozoff’s website, Stop NATO, but it is still up. The message from WordPress was: “Warning: We have a concern about some of the content on your blog. Please click here to contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue and re-enable posting.”

Do you think the same kind of thing happened to Activist Post? But this time, they’ve been taken down without warning, without the chance to copy their material to transfer to a different blog? (Jeepers, I hope it doesn’t happen to me, after two years of a lot of writing and hard work that I put into this website.)