Once again, we’ve fallen behind in the blogging, though not from lack of interest. Here are some random tidbits to keep you occupied until we get back on track:

* Worth reading: Towards a Democratic Conception of Science and Technology

* Added an old Aufheben critique of primitivism and Liberate Not Exterminate, an anarchist defense of cities, to the sidebar links.

* If any of our readers happen to be tabletop RPG geeks, there’s a transhuman-flavored sci-fi RPG in the works called Eclipse Phase that has a significant anarchist element. Some info here and here.

* If you’re looking for more reading, check out these (dated) threads on the Anarchist Black Cat Forums: Techno-Hubris or the Shape of Things to Come? and The Continuing Appeal of Primitivism

NEFAC recently (re)published a refreshing look at the ecological problem from a libertarian communist perspective. Though this is only a framework, and doesn’t take into account the accelerating pace of technological change, it does correctly pinpoint the solution as dismantling capitalism and establishing new models of production, distribution, and energy rather than opposing (the misuse of) technology.

* Open Source 3D Printer Copies Itself

The RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) printer can replicate and update itself. It can print its own parts, including updates

* Science 2.0 — Is Open Access Science the Future?

A small but growing number of researchers (and not just the younger ones) have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open tools of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement—yet—their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based “Science 2.0” is not only more collegial than traditional science but considerably more productive.

* Liberate and Disseminate

So, I’ve taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the “Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers”. What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I’m interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens.

* DIY Weapons

We can expect to see these weapons become dominant (in use) in the next decade as they branch out into new areas and begin to take advantage of newly emerging capabilities. For example: personal fabrication that can churn out rockets/UAVs with tight form factors and customized/integrated flight systems — or — bioengineered pathogens that use commonly available materials, university sequencing/design software, widely available skills, and labs on a chip. The only limiting factor are the imaginations of the world’s guerrilla entrepreneurs. In combination with systems disruption and increases in lethality, the sky’s the limit.

NOTE: In contrast, the big defense contractors will find themselves focused increasingly on developing anti-weapons to counter innovations in the DIY space. Not sure they will be flexible enough to pull it off.

See also: Tinkering Networks and DIY Rockets.

* Hackers Publish German Interior Minister’s Fingerprint

To demonstrate why using fingerprints to secure passports is a bad idea, the German hacker group Chaos Computer Club has published what it says is the fingerprint of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s interior minister.

* How to Fake Fingerprints

Instructions from the Chaos Computer Club.

* Reward Offered for UK Minister and Home Secretary’s Fingerprints

Privacy International and the UK’s NO2ID are offering a reward for the first person to collect and submit the UK Prime Minister’s and Home Secretary’s fingerprints. Plus you can download and print your own Wanted Poster!

* The Myth of the Transparent Society

This article by Bruce Schneier does a good job of expressing one of the critiques I’ve held regarding calls for a transparent society or participatory panopticon:

Explained in books like David Brin’s The Transparent Society, the argument goes something like this: In a world of ubiquitous surveillance, you’ll know all about me, but I will also know all about you. The government will be watching us, but we’ll also be watching the government. This is different than before, but it’s not automatically worse. And because I know your secrets, you can’t use my secrets as a weapon against me… Except it doesn’t work, because it ignores the crucial dissimilarity of power. You cannot evaluate the value of privacy and disclosure unless you account for the relative power levels of the discloser and the disclosee.

See also: David Brin’s reply.

Had a great time this past weekend at the FOR conference, even though we didn’t do the workshop we ended up getting to discuss most of the issues in another workshop. For anyone visiting from that workshop the links to the programs we talked about are over to the right under #6.

But that’s not why I’m here today. I want to discuss the announcement from PETA about the fake meat challenge. Admittedly I’m not huge fan of PETA, they often have confusing and damaging media campaigns and a bit too much of the wild eyed fanatic in most of their rank and file. But still this is a big step in the right direction.

Even though they are using the logic of capitalism to foster innovation I think in some ways it short-circuits the larger flows of global capital. This isn’t going to be a prize that is chased after by big ag companies, but by smaller inventors and innovators, and it also boosts interest in biosciences among the lay public. So in that sense it’s a multiple good. I’d love to see more of these small Ansari X prizes for more scientific fields to spur innovation among garage inventors and basement chemists.

FYI to folks in the Midwest, the annual Finding Our Roots anarchist conference is going on in Chicago this weekend. This year’s focus is on anarchist organizing. The list of workshops can be found here.

Antisocialite and I may throw together an impromptu guerrilla workshop on Sunday to talk about issues relating to @ organizing and technology — stuff like:

– technology and security culture (surveillance, sousveillance, crypto, etc)

– internet organizing, open source models, new media, hacktivism

– organizing around tech issues, universal access to tech, subverting authoritarian tech for libertarian purposes

* Interview with Ursula LeGuin

My utopias are not blueprints. In fact, I distrust utopias that pretend to be blueprints. Fiction is not a good medium for preaching or for planning. It is really good, though, for what we used to call conscious-raising.

* Inside the Twisted Mind of the Security Professional
Just as important for subversive minds.

* Build Your Own War Bot
A wiki resource for the hacktivists working on the future anarchist air force.

* How to Make Your Phone Untappable
Interview with Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP, about his new Zfone software for encrypting VOIP calls.

So unencrypted VoIP is vulnerable not just to government wiretapping but also to cyber-criminal spying.

With traditional telephony, our threat model was mostly government wiretapping. With VoIP, anyone can wiretap us: the Russian mafia, foreign governments, hackers, disgruntled former employees. Anyone.

Historically, there’s been an asymmetry between government wiretapping and everyone else wiretapping that’s been in the government’s favor. As we migrate to VoIP, that differential collapses. The government itself is just as vulnerable.

* Zfone Project Start/Download Page

* Fake Anarchist Sites
Details on how http://anarchy.net and related sites are not really anarchist at all.

In the off chance that you happen to be in the Chicago area, there’s going to be a transhumanist meetup this weekend:

Date: Saturday March 22nd
When: 3pm until ?
Location: Mercury Cafe, 1505 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago

It’s an open gathering, with the purpose of meeting each other, talking about H+-related issues, and possible setting this up as a monthly event.

As a quick follow-up to Antisocialite’s post about Anonymous vs. Scientology (he tells me part 2 is coming soon), this brief over at Global Guerrillas summarizes Project Chanology in the context of an open source insurgency. Even more interesting, however, is this reply from a member of Anonymous:

Firstly, Anonymous is an example of viral organisation - there is no centralised leadership, and although there are nodes of organisation, these are dynamic - if one goes down or is taken down, others compensate with little damage done to the utility of the network as a whole. Organisation and decisions are made through what I would term “viral consensus” - the facts, questions and opinions are disseminated throughout the network by it’s users, the most successful or popular of these possible courses of action are therefore repeated more often and gain traction - mutations to the idea occur and those that are popular flourish. As such, there are no leaders to attack - whilst there may be some individuals who are more visible (such as Mark Bunker) they are not essential-, no easily-accisble points of failure. Indeed, the only thing that would severely disrupt the insurgency as a whole is internal factional problems - which are near-impossible for an outsider to predict or cause due to the shibboleths John mentions; or a total disruption of the internet as a whole.

Secondly, the initial campaign of DDOS and internet insurgency can be seen as an example of the internet as an enabling force - most members of anonymous are not hackers or computer security experts, but the information available on how to conduct operations such as DDOS attacks etc is readily available on the internet, and can be spread concisely and practically throughout the group itself through other networking tools (IRC, message boards, forums, p2p). However, the interesting thing in particular about the methodology of anonymous is that it is intensely adaptable - when the opinions of Mark Bunker that the illegal aspects of anonymous actions (DDOS etc) were tactically efficient but strategically detrimental entered the viral consciousness, the methodology drastically changed - to real life protests organised over a number of countries, and to information dissemination tactics aimed at the public.

I’ve been telling Infomorph that I was going to write something about the planned 2/10 protests for something like three weeks now to the point where the protests have come and gone and I’m only now sitting down to hammer this out. At this point I think my thoughts fall into two separate entries so this is the first focusing on how what Anon has done and how it gives hope to radicals and anarchists of all types, but particularly those of us of a more pro-tech orientation.

Sometime in mid-January a video was pulled from YouTube and other video hosting websites. The video depicted Tom Cruise talking about how Scientology changed his life and featured a manic, giggling Cruise extolling the virtues of CoS. The videos were apparently pulled at the behest of the Church and in the wake of their pulling several mirror sites of the video went up. The Church acted to have these taken down too and the denizens of /b/, those known as Anonymous, who had been enjoying mocking the video as well as each other with the video, decided that the response of the church made it a prime victim for lulz. In this case, lulz initially took the form of flooding CoS websites with spam comments, DoS attacks against CoS sites, hacking CoS sites to display obscene images or redirect to pornographic websites, and ordering taxis, pizzas, and fire department call outs to CoS facilities.

This kind of merry pranksterism is not unheard of with /b/ and they usually do this to a victim for a few days until the novelty wears off. But the CoS didn’t react like most of their victims, by getting first angry and then resigned to their teasing until it went away. Instead, the church actively pursued Anon, trying to shut down /b/ and threatening several people with lawsuits whom they suspected as being involved (most were not, they had merely had their IPs used by Anon to conduct the attacks on CoS). This continued back and forth until a series of YouTube videos were released by Anon declaring war on CoS. The legal response of CoS to these videos, as well as the hysterical response of several CoS members in YouTube videos of their own, led the Anon members of /b/ to suggest ‘IRL trolling’ by way of actual protests. So a date and time were suggested on /b/ and spread through YouTube video and viral marketing. Ideas were kicked around on /b/ and elsewhere and the idea gained steam. Finally on 2/10/08 protests started popping up around the world, starting in Australia but making their way all the way around, finally drawing over 400 people in Los Angeles. Not too bad for a campaign that never held a single planning meeting, that has no membership list, and whose members more than likely have never met another member.

Simply put, this represents the promise of a new way of protesting, or organizing, and of tactically advancing towards a goal. And the best part is that it uses almost totally non-heirarchical structures to do it. If you look at how the protest was initiated, advanced, and executed, what you see is a process where there were no leaders, no physical organizations, and no ego trips. Literally everyone was Anonymous, and this continued on through the protests. Most of the protesters were masked and even though it was apparent that some knew each other outside of the protest, they all referred to each other as “Anonymous”.

But this is nothing short of an organizational miracle. What you have is, in some ways, a technology-fueled grail for future actions. It was the development of a consensus in an identity-free environment where opinions were aired, options considered, and plans laid without individual ego coming into it. Watching the 2/10 protests come together was like watching anarchy in action, as it should be. Decisions were arrived at by consensus with little pressure being exerted to conform (there was an underlying injunction to avoid violence, but this was just as often challenged as it was accepted).

Anonymous, and the CoS protests, have laid the groundwork for how the internet, SMS/mobile technologies, and grassroots hacktivist tactics can be used to build a global movement that lacks leaders, that lacks structure, but that still is able to work towards a goal and pull off a rather stunning showing (400-600 in Los Angeles, lesser numbers elsewhere). Anon should be applauded and admired for being the first to use these tools to pull off such an audacious undertaking. You may hate what anon stands for, you may find them personally repellent and politically wrongheaded (more about this in part 2) but I’d still ask that you consider what they have accomplished aside from the why.

For those interested here are some of the videos posted by Anonymous:

The original declaration

The Call to Action

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth discussion on the anarchists LJ community lately concerning technology and urbanization. I don’t loiter on LJ enough to get involved in these threads (they seem to explode very rapidly into 100+ posts), but it’s nice to see the level of debate taking a step up. Of particular interest is this post on Land Mass, Crop Production, and Urbanization with some math worth thinking about.