Freedom's Biggest Enemy

The (((mass media))) is very capable and very good at creating images that aren't really there or that perhaps only exist in their own narrow eyes.  Once this premise is accepted, the examples of how they do this can be found everywhere.

  

If you had been paying any attention to the mass media recently, you might have heard some reports that concluded that the hacker world has become quiet and subdued in the face of world events and all of the new laws that have been passed.  But for those of you who attended our H2K2 conference, it's obvious that this is the furthest thing from the truth.

The nasty thing about the truth is that it's rarely convenient.  In order for our administration to achieve certain objectives, it's important to convey the image that people are united and that internal dissent is negligible.  Were the masses to realize that it was a lot more complex than that, it would throw a crowbar into the agenda.  A thinking populace is always a danger to anyone in control.  And the mass media helps to keep that from happening.

  

What has this got to do with us?  Apparently, quite a bit.  The FBI, as we've already pointed out, now has three essential mandates.  The first two are tracking down terrorists and tracking down spies.  The third is tracking down those behind "cyber-based attacks and high technology crimes."  It's nebulous, to say the least.  And if the ignorance we've been subjected to over the years is any indication, harmless activity like logging onto an anonymous FTP server on a government site or port scanning a machine will now be categorized as something akin to terrorism.  Such demonization is further evidence of the shameless exploitation of tragic events to gain the kind of control that otherwise would never be allowed.  And once put into place, this control will never be rescinded.

Now imagine if it were to become known that the hacker spirit is still very much alive.  That people simply refused to back down and stop learning and sharing information.  Or that individuals everywhere were raising objections to the heavy-handed approach that will almost certainly victimize innocent people who are a bit too curious and create an aura of suspicion around anybody who knows too much about computers.  It might open up a lot of eyes to the fact that we're being led into a very unpleasant place where freedom, curiosity, and independent thought need to be carefully monitored and controlled.

You would be right to assume that people would never stand for such negative changes were they to happen.  But that's the point.  These kinds of things don't just occur - they develop slowly over time until one day the society you're in is vastly different than the one that existed a mere decade earlier.  And the greatest tragedy of this is that people who never knew what it was like before will simply assume this is the way things are supposed to be.  This is the risk we all face when freedoms are allowed to erode.  There's no reason that can justify their endangerment.

Were it not for the feedback we constantly receive from readers of our magazine, listeners of our radio show, and attendees of our meetings and conferences, we might have also reached the conclusion that these changes were inevitable and there wasn't much we could do about them.  Fortunately, we're all sharing this particular moment in history which is critical to our future.  That mere realization is inspirational.  And it's directly proportional to the feeling of resignation you're supposed to get when the mass media portrays it otherwise.

What came out at H2K2 was a continuation of what we saw at H2K in 2000.  People from all backgrounds, with many divergent interests, were all capable and eager to contribute to the knowledge base.  It wasn't just about technical issues, although they also played a large part in the conference.  So many people - attendees and speakers alike - didn't initially consider themselves to be part of the hacker world and yet they meshed so perfectly.  The language of freedom, curiosity, and independent thought is a universal one and its best hope of being preserved is for us to find and link up with people outside our immediate sphere of interest.  That will make it clear just how powerful a force we're all part of.  There is plenty of room to disagree and plenty of things to disagree about.  That will never change nor should it.  But it's completely irrelevant to what we all ultimately stand for.

So how do we recognize this great threat that we're all facing?  It takes on many forms but it always feeds on our fear and our willingness to cast aside doubt.  And no matter what the situation, there will always be those who attempt to manipulate it to their advantage.  In the last year, we've seen this happen again and again.  The PATRIOT Act opened the door and gave the government sweeping new powers to conduct surveillance without judicial oversight as well as greatly broaden the definition of terrorism and undermine due process.  We were told it would make us safer.  The aforementioned change in the FBI which now allows them to legally infiltrate and influence any group of people as well as spy online in ways never before achieved.  We were told it would add security.  And more recently, the absurd Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information and Protection System) which proposes having members of the general public spy on people they come in contact with, looking for anyone or anything out of the ordinary.  We were told it was what any good citizen would do.

All the while we're also being told that we can't let the bad guys win and change the way we live.  But in the next breath, we're being told to change everything about the way we live.

People around the world warn us that it will soon be illegal for us to even share information on the many topics we cover.  They say it's a mistake to even continue publishing out of the States.  We intend to prove them wrong - which is not to say that the threat isn't very real.  After all, a growing number of people are willing to accept limits to their freedoms in exchange for greater security - according to the mass media.  If something or someone is labeled a risk to national security, why let a little thing like freedom of speech or the right to due process get in the way of eliminating the threat?

Our response to this line of thinking cannot be to simply continue to exist.  Rather, we need to strengthen our resolve, share information, develop new and innovative tools, create an open dialogue, and join forces with as many people as we can find who haven't bought into the whole security through obscurity line of thinking.

Truer words were never spoken when we were told that there are people actively working to destroy everything that's truly free about our society.  What we may have missed is the realization of how close and how familiar these people are.