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.

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.

Bad Week for Monsanto

Mike Barrett
Activist Post

It seems that Monsanto may be having a rough week.

Not only was the company hit by a press release declaring them the worst company of 2011, but a group of Anonymous hackers claim to have actually completely disrupted the operations of a PR firm which manages Monsanto’s own PR.

The hackers infiltrated the PR firm, known as The Bivings Group, citing “15+years of running marketing campaigns and helping some of the most corrupt corporations on the planet, as well as several governmental agencies, cover up their dirt.”

The hackers claimed to have succeeded in bringing down The Bivings Group on December 5th.

Going by information released by Anonymous, Bivings Group shut down all of their servers and liquidated their assets after the infiltration, while former employees moved on to start ‘The Brick Factory’, a new PR firm. The hackers actions are obviously driven by the PR firm’s decision to help run marketing campaigns for corrupt corporations like Monsanto.

One week after the hackers infiltrated their system, The Bivings Group reportedly stated:

Our Cyber Infrastructure has recently been put under attack. We are evaluating the extent of the intrusion, and apologise for any downtime and issues this may cause you. It is not yet determined what the motives behind the attack are, or what, if any data has been compromised. We will continue to keep you up to date, and sicerely apologise for any inconvenience.

Are the hackers in the right to take down a firm which helps corrupt corporations, even though done illegally and mischievously?

Sometimes it is hard to see what is wrong and what is right, though it is quite apparent that Monsanto is a corporation with no regard for human health or the planet. This isn’t the only example of resistance against corrupt companies like Monsanto, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Regardless of whether or not the attack will be considered to be in the right by some anti-Monsanto activists, one thing is clear: Monsanto’s own crimes against public health and the environment trump any form of cyber attack in terms of wrongdoing.

We Are Legion The Story of the Hacktivists - Trailer

Uploaded by h20natas on 5 Nov 2011

Website:
http://www.wearelegionthedocumentary.com

We Are Legion is a documentary about Anonymous and the history of hacktivism. We are currently in the process of shooting and editing and hope to be finished in early 2012.
Expect updates!

https://www.youtube.com/user/WeAreLegionDoc

Anonymous exposes pedophile ring - hacks Lolita City

Earlier this week, the nebulous and notorious international Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous exposed a large ring of Internet pedophiles.

Operation Darknet

Tuesday, after hacking into Lolita City, a darknet website used by pedophiles to trade in child pornography, Anonymous released usernames and other information of 1,589 pedophiles trading in kiddie porn.

A darknet website is a closed private network of computers used for file sharing, sometimes referred to as a hidden wiki. Darknet websites are part of the Invisible Web, sometimes called the Deep Web, containing content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines.

In Tuesday’s Pastebin release, Anonymous enthusiasts explain the technical side of how they were able to locate and identify Lolita City and access their user data base. In a prior Pastebin release, Anonymous offers a timeline of events detailing the discovery of the hidden cache of more than 100 gigabytes of child porn associated with Lolita City.

The following is a statement concerning Operation Darknet, and a list of demands released by Anonymous:

------------------------
Our Statement
------------------------
The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death.

For this, Freedom Hosting has been declared #OpDarknet Enemy Number One.

By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100GB of child pornography.

We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting's server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography.

------------------------
Our Demands
------------------------
Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target.

Doxing the Pedophiles at Lolita City

In yet another Pastebin release, an Anonymous enthusiast self identifying as Arson, released the fiollowing:

After hours of researching the users dump from Lolita City, we have found documents and identified many of the users.

If the FBI, Interpol, or other law enforcement agency should happen to come across this list, please use it to investigate and bring justice to the people listed here.

Arson goes on to identify numerous suspected pedophiles.

Follow this link for more information on Pastebin about Operation Darknet: #OpDarknet

Check the following on Twitter for more information on that nebulous and notorious hacktivist collective known as Anonymous:

#Antisec| #Anonymous| #FreeTopiary| #AnonOps| #FreeAnons| #OccupyWallSteet| #OWS

Continue reading on Examiner.com Anonymous exposes pedophile ring - hacks Lolita City - National Anonymous | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/anonymous-in-national/anonymous-exposes-pedophile-ring-hacks-lolita-city#ixzz1bQeJh8o5

Misha Glenny: Hire the hackers!

Uploaded by TEDtalksDirector on 13 Sep 2011

http://www.ted.com Despite multibillion-dollar investments in cybersecurity, one of its root problems has been largely ignored: who are the people who write malicious code? Underworld investigator Misha Glenny profiles several convicted coders from around the world and reaches a startling conclusion.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate-gate, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on Agenda 21 and Eugenics, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

Panoptic Existentialism – No Thanks; Resistance 101

by EIA

Awareness, Implementation, Maintenance – AIM
I also recommend playing the following song looped while reading this article. The Police – Too much information

Many of us are either already aware, or becoming aware of our new and unprecedented surveillance society. Still, many remain unaware, and of the exceptions amongst us who are, many have yet to do much about it. In this compressed article, I will impart my own experience in a way which I hope will help those interested in pro-actively doing something about this massive incursion of privacy. Because not everyone has time to learn the subject of IT, and because I have much to learn myself, this article will attempt to provide not-too-complex and direct suggestions which will help interested individuals to fortify their privacy. Some things may be obvious, and some things may seem obscure. Either way, there is bound to be something useful, and anything here can be understood with a little effort. Before proceeding, consider bookmarking this article for future reference – it can be a lot to take in, and has an abundance of hyperlinks.

Internet:

Your ISP is basically where everything begins and ends. Those who follow IT-news should be well aware of new laws which force ISPs to retain user data for 12 months and longer. While ISPs hardly had to be forced to do such things, there are no exceptions once made a law. Because your personal interests are your own business – regardless of who assists you – quite a few tools have been designed by privacy advocates to help protect you. By default, our ISPs use their own DNS. DNS is what allows us to use easily remembered words/letters to access an IP address by entering a domain name (www.activistpost.com) instead of an IP (216.239.32.21) – a little harder to remember. Not only do ISPs record every DNS query, they sometimes manipulate them, and other dubious things. Although some ISPs try to prevent you from using an alternate DNS, you can still try.

Google is used for the majority of internet searches. Everything ever done through google is permanently logged. This fact justifies mentioning their strong connections with law-enforcement, third parties, and even the CIA and NSA. To help fortify your data against such insatiable data gluttons and opportunists, there are many tools available. I will list a few that are easy to use.

Scroogle: Scrapes google and provides search results to you without recording your IP. Scroogle does this through https as well, which differs from google’s in that google has the key to their own https, and it only protects against other non-google spies. To learn more about the darker side of google, visit googlewatch.

Ixquick: Essentially does the same thing, though not as well as scroogle. But it offers a very convenient option to enter websites via proxy, but forbids entering text while doing so. Useful, but not perfect.

Duckduckgo: Another search engine which not only forgets your IP, but uses ssl (https), and provides pretty good results.

Tor, and other proxies: Proxies allow you to use other computers to take responsibility for your traffic. They do this by using their own IP to conduct your traffic, protecting your IP from the websites you visit. Their are many free web-based proxies which require no additional configurations. Web-based proxies are convenient, but do leak data. While this certainly does not make them not worth using, it is something to consider, and they definitely help. Configuring your system to use proxies for all protocols is a bit more complex, and more effective. However, even this has leaks. I will leave it up to you to look further into that if you wish. For general purposes of privacy, the proxy is fantastic.

Email: Perhaps the largest hole in our privacy; it provides spies with voluminous details about our personal affairs, and more. Much of this data is filtered through Artificial Intelligence to be mined for relevant details which are not practically gathered by humans. My personal view is that this data is substantially more intricate and substantial than we realize. The only ways to mitigate this effluent is to either use your own personal email server, or to encrypt your email with something like PGP. Tutorials on this can be found in abundance, and I strongly recommend taking the time to learn all about it. The 180 days Stored Communications Act may help motivate you, and can be read about here. Encryption is being outlawed in many countries, including France. If we do not use it, we will certainly lose it. Also, for a lecture on laptop (etc.) search and seizure, see here, and here (both youtube).

Persistent Cookies: Insidious, transfatty, and unhealthy; such things as LSOs and Kissmetrics are still overlooked by many. Too many people think that by deleting their cache (temporary internet files), that they have removed tracking cookies, and are enhancing their privacy. This is simply not true. Adobe LSOs (flash cookies) are stored outside of your browser folder, and deleting your cache has no effect upon them. There are several tools to help deal with this issue – the easiest being the simple browser addon Better Privacy and Flashblock (Adblock). Another – but sometimes irritating – addon is the EFF’s NoScript. This is an extremely effective application, and is highly recommended.

Your Hosts File & Unsolicited Traffic: Through your hosts-file, entire IP ranges can be blocked by redirecting them to your loopback address. For example, the entire IP range of doubleclick.com can be instructed for redirection to your loopback address (dead end) by adding an entry into your hosts file, which you might consider the door-man of your network. Explanation and directions can be viewed here.

Routers: If you own your router, consider dd-wrt Linux firmware. Since this is only the router, it does not effect the operating system you use. This is high-quality firmware which offers a much more rich set of features than a typical out-of-the-box router. A big part of security takes place at your router. Also, if interested, read the MAC section of my article regarding MAC-addresses, Verizon routers, and possible spy-ware. Also, for those who wish to avoid Cisco for many possible reasons(pdf), dd-wrt is a great possibility. For those interested in learning about how cellphones are triangulating your wireless router, please consider Skyhook (Has CIA connection). While there is no practical or easy method of preventing this, it is very much worth your attention.

Social Networks and the Cloud:
Concisely, the cloud should be avoided but for the two extremes. These two extremes are as follows:
1. That which is extremely insignificant. Anything which you neither value the privacy of, or volatility of. If it is something that is very important to you, keep a hard-copy.
2, That which is extremely personal. If for example you must travel with extremely personal data, you wouldn’t want certain scoundrels perusing it or modifying it upon suspiciousless seizure. Therefor you must encrypt it and store it the cloud to be later retrieved at a safe location – after you’ve arrived safely at your destination.

Social networks are becoming the scabies-infested mattress of every branch of authority in existence, and people are waiting in line to roll all over them. At best, many of those busy at monitoring them have no idea of what they are doing. At worst, they are eager to exploit and exaggerate any bit of data they can find that will assist them in contriving a patsy for PR, or some other silly agenda. Exercise caution, and discretion. Consider alternative social networks which do not grovel at the feet of TPTB.

The internet is not beyond understanding, but it is complex, and is only becoming more complex. There are many things we can do without getting a PhD in IT that will help provide a cleaner internet experience.

Telecommunication | VOIP:

Whether you use a smartphone, skype, or a plain old cellphone; all of these have major problems. I personally think the only reason RFID chips have not been more aggressively pushed is because cellphones are actually far more effective. They track a user’s every movement via GPS, or cell-tower triangulation, and are open to “lawful intercept” at the whim of any authoritarian-schizophrenic with the authorization or desire to do so – which is quite seriously, a much more prevalent practice than most realize. Oddly, and quite unlike the RFID, this divulgence of information has been entirely voluntary, albeit through ignorance. This is rather difficult to do anything about, as the very nature of the cellphone necessitates tracking in order to provide services. For this I can only suggest re-evaluating our own psychologies, and asking ourselves if we really need to have our cellphones perpetually by our sides, or at least consider whether they need to remain constantly on when with us. As a discipline, we might consider removing the battery when not is use or when not expecting our next call from the POTUS.

663 million registered users: Skype, once upon a time was pretty solid, even prompting the NSA to offer billions to get behind the proprietary technology. While due to the nature of its encryption (no packet-padding), Skype has always leaked info (pdf); but only to more sophisticated spies. What advantages Skype once had, are now fading – if not gone for good. Not only has Microsoft purchased Skype, not long before doing so, they filed a patent for VOIP “legal intercept”. Microsoft has a history of breaching user’s privacy for the sake of “law enforcement”, and in my opinion, should never, ever, be trusted. Unfortunately, there are no immediately practical alternatives to Skype, but they do exist, and their practicality largely depends on your interest and willingness to use them. The introduction of VOIP has been a big concern to spies, and not only is it potentially much more difficult to compromise, up until our recent national state of legal-anarchy, it operated under a different set of laws. Things are changing.

Operating Systems:

Most people use Windows. Some people use Mac. I use Linux. All of these operating systems can be made reasonably secure, and provide some measure of privacy. It is my own personal conviction however, that Linux offers the most in this respect. While I urge everyone to consider Linux as a free, and extremely powerful OS, you will ultimately use your OS of choice – or necessity. For those considering moving from Windows to Linux, I highly recommend Linux Mint. Anyone interested but confused is most welcome to post questions in my comment section, and I will diligently do all I can to help.

I will say that I believe Linux is the least vulnerable to corruption. Microsoft has committed acts of treachery, and Apple has also been exploring the vistas of censorship and perhaps other things. Now don’t get all upset; I know both Microsoft and Mac have many positive attributes, and for certain applications their is no reasonable alternative. But,.. Let us at least be aware of certain things.

While it is important to realize that there is no practical means to completely secure your communications, a little effort can still be very effective at eliminating a majority of info-parasites. Such things as biometrics are beyond practical mitigation, and will be primarily addressed through laws, counter innovations, and popular activism. Lets do what we can, while we can.

For those who found this article inspiring, or for anyone else interested not only in privacy, but the health of the internet as we know it, I can recommend no better single source than the EFF.

Other:
Skype may expose users to malicious code – The Register

Distantly related: A great essay on pseudonymity @ schneier

*AIM = Mockery of certain imaginative acronyms created by the over-employed

Everything Must Go!

Uploaded by stimulator on 27 Aug 2011

This week:

1. Insurrectionist Brits
2. Syrian Resilience
3. Social Media Censorship
4. B.A.R.T.!
5. Shooting Sheriffs Saturday
6. Where is My Mind?
7. Anarchist Panther Ashanti Alston

the MURDOCH Blocker

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/moepiacmhnmbiilhpojodnaopndhddpg

What does this app do?
- Blocks websites owned and operated by News Corp

Ok cool! Which websites are blocked?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation
- The default setting blocks only news and publication sites but that can be customized on the options page.

And how is a site blocked?
- When the user opens a blocked site, a warning is displayed and the user is given an option to continue to the site.

Can the list of blocked sites be customized?
- The options page provides a full list of blocked sites which can be customized by the user. An initial list of blocked sites is set for you by default and consists of news and publication sites.

Sounds great but why should I install this app?
- Install this app to if you want to estimate News Corp’s influence on your internet life, install it to make a statement to the Murdoch empire or install it because you’ve just had enough lies.

I’m a computer geek can I see the Source code?
-http://code.google.com/p/murdoch-block/

Are there versions for other browsers?
- Yes. Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/murdoch-block/

Any other similar apps out there?
Try Murdoch Alert for Firefox if you want to be alerted when you visit a News Corp controlled page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/MurdochAlert-details/

Obama Dead - Faux News

Uploaded by RussiaToday on 4 Jul 2011

The President is Dead! - Well, President Obama is alive and well - but a few concerned internet viewers may have believed the story when a US broadcaster fell victim to a hacker attack. The group broke into Fox's twitter account and entered the hoax news that Barack Obama had been assassinated and Joe Biden had stepped into the job. The hoax 'tweets' said the President was shot twice while campaigning for re-election, when he was, in fact, in the White House. A spokesperson for the hacker group called "script-kiddies" said Fox was targeted because they thought their net-security would be 'as much of a joke as their news'.

I.M.F. Reports Cyberattack Led to ‘Very Major Breach’

Editor's Note: Is "The Resistance" actually gutting the enemy or is it a false flag to push the cyber-security agenda? Or a little of both?

Image source

David Sanger and John Markoff
New York Times

WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund, still struggling to find a new leader after the arrest of its managing director last month in New York, was hit recently by what computer experts describe as a large and sophisticated cyberattack whose dimensions are still unknown.

The fund, which manages financial crises around the world and is the repository of highly confidential information about the fiscal condition of many nations, told its staff and its board of directors about the attack on Wednesday. But it did not make a public announcement.

Several senior officials with knowledge of the attack said it was both sophisticated and serious. “This was a very major breach,” said one official, who said that it had occurred over the last several months, even before Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French politician who ran the fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a chamber maid in a New York hotel.

Read Full Article

Lockheed Martin’s False Flag Hack Attack

editorial by Tony Cartalucci

Bangkok, Thailand May 31, 2011 – Lockheed Martin has claimed, and the US Department of Defense has confirmed, that the megalithic defense contractor has suffered a “cyber incident.” Lockheed Martin is claimed to be a defense contractor American national security depends on. If this private corporation really is bestowed with such a grave responsibility and it was incompetent enough to put sensitive information and systems onto the public Internet, it should immediately have such responsibilities stripped away and perhaps undergo a vigorous investigation in regards to its criminal negligence in handling sensitive state secrets. At the very least, all contracts should be canceled and new contractors immediately found – ones capable of isolating sensitive information from the public Internet.

Instead, the war profiteering corporation and the extralegal, extraterritorial global corporate-financier steering committees it is a member of, are using the attack to add to the growing call to institute increasing control over the Internet. It is yet another suspicious incident that has corporate-funded pundits calling for increased “cyber security” and lending further justification for the completely unjustified existence of government agencies like the “Department of Homeland Security.”

Our politicians then parrot verbatim the think-tanks and their corporate media talking points declaring that cyber security must take center stage – not the gross incompetence of corporations that have uncontested, undue access and influence over the American tax payers’ money. The next step will be increased legislation giving the government and their corporate handlers more control over how the public uses the Internet – all based on and citing incidents like Lockheed Martin’s recent cyber security breach.

Defying Common Sense

Even on a personal level, private, confidential information is safest when it is kept solely on a closed system, disconnected from the Internet. Any information put on the Internet must be assumed to be at potential risk and suitable contingencies must be put in place to deal with that information falling into the wrong hands. If that information must absolutely not fall into the wrong hands, it must then be entirely isolated from the Internet.

Scientists who worked on America’s most sensitive defense projects historically would live and work sequestered at research facilities. They would not bring their briefcases full of national secrets to the local cafe, ride the city buses, nor talk about such information on public telephone networks. It is hard to believe that today, such corporations, many born from these WWII and Cold War defense projects, have suddenly forgotten the value of closed, controlled systems where secret research and sensitive projects are isolated from the public in all manners.

A documentary covering the Manhattan Project. Starting at 24:45, security regarding
the secret project is discussed. ….

The recent “hack” then is the result of at least two possibilities. First, it may be yet another attempt to scare the ignorant, uneducated masses into giving up more of their freedom and liberty for the sake of “security.” “Security” being just a pretense for handing the corporate-financier elite yet another monopoly. If this is not an orchestrated event, it may just be utter incompetence. Either way, corporations like Lockheed Martin, the politicians whose leashes they hold, and the media machines that manage the public for them have outlived their usefulness. They have become as great a threat to our nation as any external enemy, either out of incompetence or unmitigated avarice.

It is time America replaced these aged, embedded parasites, obstacles of progress, sponges soaking up the brightest talent the nation has to offer and wringing it out into buckets of greedy, stagnant muck. Their missiles, warplanes, and ships are most certainly impressive, unrivaled even. But the price we have paid to procure this achievement is subservience to a despotic corporate-financier elite that has permeated and infected our government on all levels, as bad or worse than any invading foreign power could ever hope to achieve.

There may be the argument that no other corporation can do what Lockheed, or other parasitic war profiteering corporations like Boeing, Northrop, or Raytheon can do. Certainly this may be the case, but we must ask ourselves why our nation, with its vast resources, doesn’t turn out annual graduate classes full of engineers, designers, rocket and nuclear scientists all capable of meeting local and national needs both civilian and military in nature. It is because the global elite have created a system so interdependent and monopolized on a global scale that only those that control it (them) can manage it and excel within it.

Americans like President Dwight Eisenhower or General Smedley Butler warned us long ago that the blurring line between corporatism and the American government was a grave threat to our nation’s future. Decades later, with the nation under astronomical, mathematically inescapable debt, endless war, rotting infrastructure, and a sabotaged education system, is there any doubt that their warnings should have been heeded? Can we still heed them? We can and we must.

Throw off these corporations by boycotting and replacing them. For corporations like Lockheed Martin who we are told we “depend” on and cannot live without, their incompetence/conspiring as they bleed the American nation dry negates any benefit they supposedly grant us. In actuality, we cannot survive their continued existence.

For ways to battle the globalists by achieving self-sufficiency and freedom through independence please read on:

Destroying the Globalists
Self-Sufficiency
Alternative Economics
The Lost Key to Real Revolution
Boycott the Globalists
Naming Names: Your Real Government

Fox News Hacked! & Hack Yer Own with the DIY Newstweek Device

Uploaded by HorseofPaulRevere on 31 May 2011

This HOW TO has instructions to build your own newstweek device, a small innocuous wallplug allowing you to remotely manipulate news read by other people on wireless networks. Newstweek is a device to manipulate news read by other people on wireless hotspots. This is a project video outlining the scope of the project, showing how powerful an anti-propaganda tool it really is...

http://newstweek.com/howto
http://vimeo.com/23075736
http://vimeo.com/user5685529

FAIR USE NOTICE: We are making this material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights,economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

the PROXY trick - Tutorial: How To Get Around Government Censorship Of YouTube Videos

Step By Step Guide Explaining How To Get By Government Censorship Of YouTube Videos
Alexander Higgins, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Our so-called liberty loving democratic governments are resorting to tactics of a fascist totalitarian dictatorship and censoring YouTube videos, which show nothing more than people protesting for their civil liberty. Here is the story behind the government censorship along with a tutorial on how to defeat it. Enjoy!

12610 points us to an Infowars article revealing that the Government is censoring YouTube videos, not for “piracy” or “cyber attack” videos, but to hide the massive uprising of the middle class that is spreading worldwide due to unbearable contempt.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 20

In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.

The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.

Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.

Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection… because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law.

The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay.

When viewers in the UK attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.”

more: http://www.infowars.com/government-orders-you-tube-to-censor-protes…

Of course, the first thing I did before starting to write this article was to vet the story. I clicked on the link to the censored video and it loaded absolutely fine for me. But as the article clearly states, it has been censored by the UK government, so viewers in the UK can’t view it.

So, I needed to trick YouTube into thinking I was visiting from within the UK to verified the video was actually censored. Here is how I did it.

1. Since I am using Firefox, I installed the FoxyProxy plugin from the Mozilla addons website. In short this will allow me to send a fake computer address (IP Address) to YouTube — or any other website — when I go to visit it. (It is really much more complicated but that should make it simple enough to understand).

FoxyProxy Plugin

After clicking add to Firefox it prompts me to restart Firefox.

2. I then Google for “proxy servers in the UK”. The first result in google gives me exactly what I want, “A List Of Fake Computer Addresses” I can use to send to YouTube.

3. I Open FoxyProxy (Within Firefox – Tools –> FoxyProxy Stand –> Options). Then Click Add New Proxy. On the form that pops up I enter the IP and Port of the Server I found in step 2.As shown in the example, you can enter 77.73.149.10 for the IP Address and 8080 for the port. Click OK and then OK Again!

FireProxy - Add New Proxy Server Dialog

As shown in the example, you can enter 77.73.149.10 for the IP Address and 8080 for the port. Click OK and then OK Again!

4. To start using the proxy server, in Firefox, Go to Tools->FoxyProxy Standard and Click on “Use Proxy 77.73.149.10:8080" for all urls.

5. Just to be sure its working go to WhatsMyIP.com and make sure you see this.

WhatsMyIp.com - Should show the IP Address you entered for the Proxy
- And in this case a message saying your using a proxy

Okay, that’s it; we are all set up. Now I attempt to pull up the YouTube video, this time tricking YouTube into thinking I am visiting from within side of Great Britain . . . and . . .

YouTube Video Censored In the UK

Now, People in the UK can simply reverse the process and enter an IP Address from a proxy server from any other nation beside the United Kingdom.

...MORE HERE...

MAFIAA Fire Draws Heat

By Jonathan Nerdtrek

“By Jonathan Nerdtrek”

Read more about Homeland Security demands Mozilla Remove MAFIAAfire on:
http://nerdtrek.com/homeland-security-demands-mozilla-remove-mafiaafire/?utm_source=INK&utm_medium=copy&utm_campaign=share&

Homeland Security has demanded that non-profit internet browser company Mozilla Firefox remove the browser add-on “MAFIAAfire”. MAFIAAfire regates ICE’s domain seizures by automatically rerouting users to alternate domains. The Department of Homeland Security demanded that Mozilla take the extension off its listing of Firefox extensions claiming that the add-in “circumvented” DHS’s seizure orders.

Mozilla isn’t just giving up and letting the DHS do whatever they want like the rest of the pansy websites out there. Instead, Mozilla sent demands of their own in a publicly available letter to the Department of Homeland Security demanding answers to their questions.

Here is Mozilla’s letter to the DHS in it’s entirety:

To help us evaluate the Department of Homeland Security’s request to take-down/remove the MAFIAAfire.com add-on from Mozilla’s websites, can you please provide the following additional information:

1. Have any courts determined that MAFIAAfire.com is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)

2. Have any courts determined that the seized domains related to MAFIAAfire.com are unlawful, illegal or liable for infringement in any way? (please provide relevant rulings)

3. Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.

4. Has DHS, or any copyright owners involved in this matter, taken any legal action against MAFIAAfire.com or the seized domains, including DMCA requests?

5. What protections are in place for MAFIAAfire.com or the seized domain owners if eventually a court decides they were not unlawful?

6. Can you please provide copies of any briefs that accompanied the affidavit considered by the court that issued the relevant seizure orders?

7. Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down MAFIAAfire.com is based?

8. Please identify exactly what the infringements by the owners of the domains consisted of, with reference to the substantive standards of Section 106 and to any case law establishing that the actions of the seized domain owners constituted civil or criminal copyright infringement.

9. Did any copyright owners furnish affidavits in connection with the domain seizures? Had any copyright owners served DMCA takedown notices on the seized domains or MAFIAAfire.com? (if so please provide us with a copy)

10. Has the Government furnished the domain owners with formal notice of the seizures, triggering the time period for a response by the owners? If so, when, and have there been any responses yet by owners?

11. Has the Government communicated its concerns directly with MAFIAAfire.com? If so, what response, if any, did MAFIAAfire.com make?

My ranting and raving: It’s about time someone stood up to the now gigantic machination that is the Department of Homeland Security. It seems that in the digital age no one is even given fair trial to determine if a decision has been incorrectly made. Taking down a website can spell financial disaster for a business, especially if it’s a small-time start-up. If the economy is in a downward spiral, going around taking down websites isn’t the answer. Don’t jail website owners and stay at home Moms for downloading music- create iTunes, don’t toss hard working individuals in jail for downloading and sharing movies- create Netflix. The government needs to stop fighting the natural evolution of the internet and start letting companies work out new business strategies on their own. If a company can provide a better product for a reasonable price than a bunch of pirates trading in a forsaken land where viruses and Trojan horses run rampant, don’t you think the majority of people will buy in? This ignorance is why the Piratebay has been so financially successful while tax payers pay DHS to run around trying to shut down websites as fast as new pirate sites open up shop.

Download MAFIAAfire now before it’s gone:

MAFIAAfire Firefox add-on

Winston Bay: “The Battle of Internets is About to Begin”

by Ernesto

Talks on implementing a Europe-wide firewall to censor and block ‘illicit’ websites has caused concern among many Internet users in recent weeks, and today one of the targeted sites has joined the discussion. Quoting one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team is rallying the public to defend the free Internet and end the threat posed by the entertainment industries’ copyright lobby.

In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal.

To deal with illicit sites on the Internet, the group suggested the adoption of a China-like firewall to block websites deemed ‘inappropriate’. The controversial proposal immediately met resistance from various sides, including ISPs who would be tasked with maintaining the blocklist.

The copyright lobby on the other hand welcomes the initiative which they’ve been suggesting for years.

One of the sites that has a fair share of experience with being blocked is The Pirate Bay. The popular BitTorrent site is currently censored in Ireland, Italy and Denmark, and almost lost its domain name to the U.S. Government last year.

Needless to say, they are not happy with the EU’s latest censorship proposal. In fact, today they declare war on the proponents of Internet censorship, most prominently the entertainment industry (MAFIAA) lobbyists.

In a slightly edited version of Winston Churchill’s “this was their finest hour” speech, in which they replace Nazi-Germany with MAFIAA, The Pirate Bay team declares war on Internet censorship advocates. Action has to be taken before it’s too late, is the message they convey.

“I expect that the Battle of Internets is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of an Uncensored civilization! Upon it depends our own free life, and the long continuity of our sites and our trackers. The whole fury and might of the enemy will very soon be turned on us,” The Pirate Bay writes.

“MAFIAA knows that they will have to break us in Brussels or lose the war. If we can stand up to them, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the free Internets and its multitude of sites last for a thousand years, citizens will still say, This was their finest hour,” they add.

The speech, signed by “Winston Bay,” clearly shows The Pirate Bay’s concern with censorship proposals as opted by the European Union recently. The big question remains, is there really something that can be done to stop it, or has that ship sailed already?

Schmoogle This! - the Anti-Google Search Engine Index

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that all entities, whether government or free-market, need to protect the sanctity of free speech. This is a basic civic responsibility. Those who do not are cowards. Sadly, we live in an era where civic responsibility is disposable, considered a burden instead of a privilege."
-- Frank Salvato, publisher of The New Media Journal

They banned The New Media Journal. They banned MichNews.com. They banned The Jawa Report. Google is on a political and ideological campaign of political correctness that sees them denying access to their service to any website - be it news, opinion or a hybrid of both - that dares to address the subject of radical Islam.

Click here to see the original email from "The Google News Team."

Interesting that the same three articles that got NMJ banned from Google News are still accessible: Article 1, Article 2, Article 3

This sets a dangerous precedent. What will the next subject be that serves as a catalyst for Google to promote their unique brand of corporate censorship? Which website will be the next to have it's Internet presence diminished at the hands of Google's "progressive" ideological agenda? WorldNetDaily? JihadWatch? NewsMax?

It is because of this - and our dedication to American Free Enterprise and the free market - that we have established The Anti-Google Search Engine Index. This index offers an ever-expanding list of search engines, many more comprehensive and many who do not manipulate content based on the ideology of political correctness.

We urge you to switch from using Google as your search engine and try the ones listed below. If you would like to suggest a search engine for inclusion on the list click here.

We may not be able to force Google to stop censoring free speech, but we can affect their bottom line.

Note: Of the above mentioned websites The Jawa Report has been re-instated. The New Media Journal and MichNews have been re-instated in Google's general search index but remain banned from Google News. Attempts to contact Google for a clarification on this matter have been unsuccessful.

Anonymous Message To The Zeitgeist Movement And Venus Project

Thanks to Anon2AllofUs
http://www.youtube.com/user/Anon2AllofUs

Hello, leaders of Zeitgeist movement and Venus project. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the zeitgeist movement and venus project leaders Peter Joseph Merola , Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows, working in collaboration in making and releasing propaganda conspiracy theory videos being ZEITGEIST THE MOVIE, ZEITGEIST ADDENDUM, and among other propaganda conspiracy theorist videos the zeitgeist movement and Venus project will soon release into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment we shall precede to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Zeitgeist movement and the Venus project in its present form. We recognize you as a serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short time frame. However, you will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your choice of methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.

You have nowhere to hide because we are everywhere.

you will find no recourse in attack because for each of us that falls, 10 more will take this place. we are cognizant of the many who would decry our methods as parallel to Zeitgeist movement and Venus project. Those who espouse the obvious truth that your organization will use the action of anonymous as a example of persecution of which have so long warned your followers. This is acceptable to anonymous. In fact it is encouraged. we are your SPs


Overtime as we begin to merge our pulse with that of your "Cult", the suppression of your followers will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Believers will become aware, that salvation needn't come at the expense of their lively hood. They will become aware that the stress and the frustration they feel is not do to us but a source much closer to them. yes, we are SPs, But the sum of suppression we could ever muster is eclipsed by that of the RTC.


Knowledge is free.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

MAFIAAFire Melts ICE!

David Makarewicz, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

A group of anonymous developers have concocted a clever antidote to Government domain seizures. MAFIAA Fire is a Firefox add-on that automatically redirects a user to a website's alternative domain name if the original domain was seized.

MAFIAA Fire exploits the fact that when a domain is seized, although it appears that the Government has taken control of the entire website, they have really only gained control over the domain name. The Government redirects the domain name to a Government IP address and website rather than the IP address containing the original website. When a user types in a seized domain name, such as rapgodfathers.com (seized last November), their browser is not directed to the original website, it is directed to a site containing the famous DHS/ICE seal.

If a user types in the IP address or an alternative domain name for the site, the website content would still be accessible. The problem is that users don't know the IP address or alternative domain name, they only know the original domain name.

MAFIAA Fire solves that problem by maintaining a list of original domain names, as well as alternative domain names, so users will be directed to the alternative site if the original is seized by the Government. There is virtually nothing the Government can do to stop this because it all happens independent of the Domain Name Server it uses to seize domains. The FAQ for MAFIAA Fire explains:

While it's true that you need DNS to get to the sites, what everyone seems to have forgotten that there is one common piece of software that EVERYONE uses to get to sites (ok, leaving out the maga geeks) : a browser.

We control the redirection _before_ (and this is important) the browser tries to connect to the DNS server. Whatever blocks, notices, threats, etc ICE or anyone else puts up at the DNS level is as worthless as the IFPI/RIAA/MPAA to mankind.

With such acidic language, it is probably wise that the developers of MAFIAA Fire remain anonymous because. They explain that they "would rather not (presently) give out our real names as the RIAA and MPAA have a history of directly intimidating people and their families as well as corrupting law enforcement, judges, politicians etc."

A spokesperson told Torrentfreak that the developers' primary interest is to "reverse governments attempts to censor the Internet." He explained, “Governments around the world are either censoring for the entertainment companies never ending woes, or using that as an excuse to slowly get more control over the internet for their own agendas – and trampling over our rights in the process.”

There has been widespread debate about the Constitutional rights implicated by the seizures. We have concluded that significant First and Fifth Amendment issues arise because by seizing the domain names, the Government is taking private property, and arguably suppressed speech, without prior notice and a hearing. However, if seizure workarounds such as this become widespread, it could slightly impact our analysis of the Constitutionality of future seizures.

Part of the reason we have concluded that the seizures violate the Fifth Amendment is the fact that not only were the website operators not afforded due process through a prior notice and hearing, they were not ensured a meaningful hearing immediately after the seizure. Worse, a post-seizure hearing would have been useless in many cases because the Government had taken an audience from these website operators that it could never give back. Once users were disconnected from these sites because their browser was displaying an intimidating Government seal instead of the websites, those users were unlikely to ever return. However, if enough users begin using software such as MAFIAA Fire, those users will not be permanently driven away and a post-seizure hearing could be more effective.

Although this would slightly color our due process analysis, it is not enough to change the conclusion. There would still be no justification for this private property to be taken by the Government without a prior notice and a hearing. In fact, if most users were able to continue to access the infringing content, there might be even less justification for an immediate seizure.

On the other hand, one of the main reasons that we concluded that the domain name seizures violate the First Amendment was the fact that the seizures place a wedge between the audience and the speech on the websites. If the vast majority of users were still able to access the speech after the seizure, there would be significantly less of a First Amendment problem.

David Makarewicz is an attorney practicing Internet law in defense of websites and blogs. Visit Dave at Sites and Blogs or follow him on Twitter@sitesandblogs to keep up with Internet news affecting websites, bloggers and social media.