Thanks to the keen eyes of the interweb along with a little follow-up research I discovered today that Rob Ford’s nephew Michael Ford (currently running for mayor), recently changed his name from Michael Stirpe To Michael Ford (with the name Douglas A. Ford thrown in there for good measure).

Much like the Fords of yesteryear, it appears young Michael has adopted the Ford name to disassociate from a shady past acquired via his father Ennio (the Heroin addict who shot his mother in the face). Because the name Ford is so much better.

You ever get those existential pangs in your stomach? You know, the kind that make you question why you do things?

I look over at the side bar here on TCL and notice that I’ve been doing this, on and off, for almost six years now. At the beginning we were getting hits from all over the world, but now we’re seeing predominantly Canadian traffic. Just in time too.

As I’ve noted many times (and I’m not alone in this), most big-name media have little interest in really getting their hands dirty with really exposing what’s going on. When’s the last time you saw the front-page headline, “Government of Canada repeatedly violates the law and all of our Charter Rights“? — because it’s quite true. Or is the problem that this might cause people to start to ask too many uncomfortable questions? I can’t imagine that the government would allow such incendiary commentary about itself, no matter how true and urgent it is, so I suspect it’s a convoluted mix of pressures keeping media giants stupid and silent.

As with any large organization, of course it’s not true to say that everyone is in on keeping stark reality relegated to the OpEds, but by virtue of “I need that paycheque”, really, they kind of are.

Sometimes the media dissent is very public, as was the case at RT. While it’s absolutely true that RT — Russia Today– is deeply funded by, and works for Russia, it’s important to consider that this thinly-veiled propaganda network (as are all major news outlets, let’s be clear), is more free here than pretty much any western media outlet.

While RT is, understandably, free and open to criticize the west, we find that domestic big media openly rejects balanced discussion and trumpets western government propaganda while at the same time deriding critics and spreading even more misinformation and often just flat-out lies about their own country and rest of the world. Domestically, RT’s cousin is probably a lot like this too, so it’s not as if I’m saying that this sort of thing doesn’t happen elsewhere.

While it’s certainly reasonable if not accurate to say that a Russian-funded network is biased, it’s also true that it probably reports on way more, and in a far more balanced way than our so-called “balanced” domestic media. Even the word and subject of “propaganda”, most people are surprised to learn, was created by an American for the stated purpose of “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” — for corporate/government benefit.

Most people are equally surprised to learn that many ghastly Nazi war criminals were repatriated and handsomely rewarded by the American government after the Second World War. America’s late entry into the conflict was hardly about liberating the world from the “Nazi menace”, protecting America, or even helping to protect people against the barbarity of things like the Concentration camps. In fact, American Capitalism directly contributed in many ways to the Jewish Holocaust and to Nazi Germany itself.

That war, like any other, was about one side’s dominance over another — one government cabal demanding that its subjects die en masse against another for their personal ideologies, which are typically not mass opinions, and which are often strikingly similar. The fact that no American president has answered for any of their obvious international war crimes at the ICC, the modern Nuremberg (or any court, for that matter), proves it was and is merely a mock court where the United States owns and operates a public podium to vilify the opposition.

The problem isn’t that the Nazis didn’t necessarily deserve it, it’s that similar and numerous international crimes have been perpetrated by world leaders since then, and to date only America’s enemies (and anyone standing in the way of their plans), have ever been brought before this ridiculous, contemptuous court of The Hague. The fact that America defends its crimes at the highest levels further demonstrates that these were never “crimes” in their eyes.

So to expect honesty, fairness, justice, balance, or even correct information from either government, mega-corporations, or behemoth media is an exercise in abject futility. That’s not what they’re about.

Consider, for example, how loudly new Bitcoin-related legislation is being trumpeted, one that affects all Canadians directly and is in everyone’s best interest to at least be aware of. Oh, you haven’t heard?

The news itself is misrepresented (“Bitcoin is now money in Canada!”), and I have yet to see even a passing mention of it in any of Canada’s main dailies. There is plenty of news on something that all Canadians are engaged in though: legalized prostitution.

Apparently, between your ability to legally fuck hookers and your ability to get timely, accurate government information, the hookers win pretty much exclusively.

Okay, so you don’t own any Bitcoin and couldn’t give a toss. Fair? So is it fair to say you frequent prostitutes way more, thereby making this news of greater importance? The media seems to think so.

More often than not, I find that I have to rely on non-Canadian news sources to discover what my own government is up to, and even then it takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff. This assumes I can find any information at all — the government regularly violates its own citizens’ Charter rights to just be aware of what’s being done directly to them.

To make matters worse, information from agencies like the Canada Revenue Agency is unclear and unhelpful, ensuring that no matter how good and honest (and legal), your intentions may be, they (the government) will find some way to find you in violation of some law or another, and summarily destroy you five ways from Sunday before you’ve had a chance to blink.

For example, the CRA treats Bitcoin transactions as barter, and they completely fail to define this according to their official web page: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it490/it490-e.html

Notice that this page is “archived” (is it even valid?), is over 30 years old (has it been updated since?), makes no mention of any related documents or information, and lists no useful information for any taxpayer. Stuff like this:

 In arm’s length transactions, where an amount must be brought into income or treated as proceeds of disposition of capital property, that amount is the price which the taxpayer would normally have charged a stranger for his services or would normally have sold his goods or property to a stranger.

So if I say I would’ve charged someone $0 for my services, is that acceptable? Apparently I’m left to my own devices when determining any such amount, the CRA doesn’t think it’s important to include any detail, but this is legally binding and will be used against me at their earliest opportunity.

Besides this, depending on who you speak to in the (at best) dysfunctional government, you will be provided with something resembling either the truth or truthy misinformation. What, you think it’s up to the government to provide you with accurate, honest, timely information?

In effect, the Canada Revenue Agency (and, really, all of government), often resort to citing documents like their “policies” to justify whatever overt crap they’re engaged in now. Policy is not law, has never been through what are claimed to be the rigours of the legislative process, and so on.

Some document that some agency drafted up as a public document is no more a valid law than anything I write on this blog. Of course, they won’t tell you this, and they will use whatever law-violating policies, sideways nods of approval, and sticky note directives to justify their actions. Regardless, the ultimate result is always that you obey now and you can take up your complaint with some dispassionate dick that works for them at some later time. Your objection will be noted and filed in a special bin along with discarded pizza boxes, rotting vegetables, and yesterday’s cigarette butts.

These are the same for government and the mega-corps who regularly make absurd, ridiculously illegal demands which are often simply accepted as the status quo. Unless some concerned citizen complains (and even then it may be swept aside), few in the government-corporate cabal even thinks to bat an eyelash. After all, when it comes to mass fraud or mass murder, they are entirely exempt from even a stern glance while it’s you and me who are forced at government gunpoint to pay for their crimes. Our tax money is even used to provide proxy support for human slavery. If it’s depraved, you can be sure that government and its corporate buddies are engaged in it.

Okay, I know, this is all disjointed — I can link to examples here or there, and I have plenty to back up my own situation — but does this theory accurately model what corpo-government is?

I say yes. In fact, this model accurately explains most if not all of government’s decisions, corporate maneuverings, and so on. Others have made similar observations.

That’s why your cell phone costs so much. That’s why your cable service costs so much. That’s why the state demands that you must go through a bank (at your loss / their profit), to deal with government and why they refuse to accept their own legal tender. In other words, they have no interest in putting their obvious activities to scrutiny, they want to maintain them; they have no accountability to you or me, they work for the rich and powerful.

Why does the government claim “banks are too big to fail”? See above.

Why does the government claim that some drug use is so illegal that you should be locked up for engaging in it, that seat belts are legally mandatory “for your own good” while at the same time happily continuing to allow the sale of cigarettes, a product that exists for no other purpose than to bring about your untimely death along with a slew of awful health problems, massive costs to the healthcare system, etc.? See above.

Whatever argument they make about “protecting public health”, or trying to keep down “systemic healthcare costs”, etc. are all horrendously ridiculous — they’re there to protect the big-money people: tobacco, drug cartels, police enforcement, etc. Through the wonders of taxes, we pay for this obvious hypocrisy while they work to maintain it. You and I will barely benefit from what they take from us.

This seems nonsensical, the result of a broken and dysfunctional system or ineptitude, but the fact that example after example shows benefits and rights predominantly skewed toward them proves that this is not the case. This is purposeful, planned, and prepared, often over the course of many years or even decades. As murder, it would be in the first degree.

It explains why Harper is able to be so openly hypocritical about things like China’s human rights record while importing those very same abuses directly into Canada under the tired old lie of “economic prosperity”. If he’s a bit of a sociopath who genuinely doesn’t give a toss about his fellow human beings, it explains why he’s able to lie so easily, be publicly hypocritical by claiming he’s doing it for your benefit (when in reality, it’s really not), and so on. As messed up as that may seem, it not only makes complete sense but fits as a model for much of what comes out of the corpo-government establishment. Seriously, take any emotion out of it and weigh all of the available facts dispassionately — I believe you’ll come to the same conclusions I have. Then you can get upset again.

This model also explains pretty much any other form of government, including why they all seem to resemble each other so much. Whether state power is some form of National Socialism, Communism, or Capitalism, the end result is always the same: human misery, suffering, death, slavery, destruction, and everything else dark and evil. Some hang in there in an idealized form longer than others, but eventually the badness creeps in. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it mostly government that wages war? Isn’t it government that incarcerates people? Isn’t it government that claims the exclusive right to violence? That government may not always be legitimate, but it’s in power so…

Along the way they always have little golden moments, examples of how it all might’ve worked if yet again we didn’t have a system that could be usurped by corruption and evil. The utopian ideals weren’t bad, it’s practical government that’s the main problem. If it weren’t susceptible to corruption, it would probably work okay (still probably way too inefficient though).

Government is also natural and, in my opinion, unavoidable. Some sort of government will just happen, because I really believe that this is our natural idealized state. If it only worked as well as we imagine.

People will naturally organize and, yes, it makes sense to cede some responsibility over some things to others. Those others should ideally be good at those things for which they’re responsible, and equally ideally be civic-minded — working for the people under their care, not their jurisdiction. A view of dominance or superiority over those people is the wrong attitude; seeking to extend centralized power rather than distribute individual power is the wrong approach.

Of course, there will always be people who assume the wrong attitude and take the wrong approach.

The idea that corruption will ever truly be distinguished is childish. The belief that power such as that wielded by governments, mega-corps, or any large institution won’t be attractive to said corruption is equally childish. The answer must therefore be to put a democratic and unassailable clampdown on any such organizations, providing near-instant checks and balances by and for the people, not more corruptible agencies and organizations. The moment that power or influence start to amass, they should receive extra scrutiny. If such collectivized power is truly good for its democracy, it will be directly supported by that very democracy. If not, it will be ejected.

The voting systems involved are something I discussed earlier, but the part about people being in the dark is something I haven’t touched on yet, at least not directly.

That introduction at the beginning of this post where I mention how long TCL’s been online, that isn’t to boast, it’s intended to demonstrate that focus and perseverance can make a difference. That Canadian traffic I mentioned is regularly in the four-digit, sometimes five-digit casual-visits-per-day range (not taking into account any external feeds), and I have to believe that among those visitors has to be one or two who are now aware of something they weren’t before.

What I’m trying to get at is that independent media — the blogs, the community newsletters, the guys on the street corners handing out pamphlets — these are the new gatekeepers of information. Much as my own experiences with the Canada Revenue Agency mean that I’m probably more knowledgeable in the ways of the agency than many tax lawyers, I’m finding more and more that true subject matter experts are those who took it upon themselves to educate themselves. Sure as shit isn’t some of the morons the media parades around whenever they need a talking head to fill up some space.

I share my insights and advice for free right here and elsewhere on the web; lawyers charge you an arm and a leg for access to laws and regulations that you are legally required to understand yourself. It’s perverse.

Yeah, I sometimes change my opinions; and what’s wrong with that? That means that I continue to weigh the available evidence and I’m not closed to new information. Sometimes that information tips my opinion in a different direction, which is exactly what one wants from reasoned discussions. But when those discussions are entirely absent, as they are in government, big media, and mega-corps, we are left with – at best – one very biased side of the story.

You’ve probably already guessed at where I’m heading with this — I really believe we all need to be our own producers and distributors, specialists in one field or two, focused, determined, passionate, willing to listen to detractors (sometimes they make some really good points!), and dedicated to sharing with each other. The freedoms of information that are under siege by corpo-government, freedoms that are often a matter of life and death, must be something that we have to undertake for ourselves. There are, of course, some things that really should be kept secret; but for the rest, what corpo-government won’t share, professionals and knowledgeable individuals can (and should).

Edward Snowden went somewhat above and beyond, but considering that to date no harm has been proven (glassy-eyed government supporters simply gobbing off via propagandized media is not proof), except to the trust and reputation of a government agency, it seems that we can entrust such decisions to individuals.

If they transgress, they should have the opportunity to be judged fairly by as wide a base of people as possible. I’m not expecting any waving of magic wands, but this is the direction we should be heading, not away from it.

That government often publicly proclaims the triumph of profits over human life is, to me, reason enough to stand in public opposition. I may be misguided, I may have it all wrong, someone might school me something fierce tomorrow, but I know that no matter what I was standing up for the right things for the right reasons. I’m willing to make such mistakes again because I know that they’re the signs of strength not weakness, adaptivity not rigidity, increased clarity not opacity, and a willingness to get at the truth — not reject it.

Some people say the truth is malleable, that it’s a matter of perspective, that it’s all about context.

This is not correct.

Truth is obscured by these things. It is very real and very much in existence beneath all the bullshit and lies and garbage. Government & friends seek to bury inconvenient truths beneath their “context” and it’s up to us to unearth it again for everyone. But even if political discourse isn’t for you, and even if you find that all you have to share is a really effective method of getting red wine out of white clothing, that’s the kind of thing that empowers individuals — so it’s a good thing!

That lowercase Greek letter at the beginning is “Eta” (capital is “Η”), and it might seem like a vacuous headline but some of my recent posts should provide sufficient contrast to mega-corps and government, both of whom view innovation as something to be avoided. Contrast again with something like Toronto’s AeroVelo, a project-based company started by a couple of former University of Toronto propeller-heads.

AeroVelo’s innovation consists of finally turning interesting mechanical concepts into reality. For example, a while back this guy named Leonardo imagined human-powered flying machines.

Humanity got screwed on that idea for a few hundred years or so, no doubt due to government regulations.

Although they didn’t exactly follow the original blueprint, AeroVelo managed to get Leo’s vision aloft:

Before that they did a flappy-style flying craft, also powered by nothing more than gumption (and a guy pedalling):

And now that they’ve conquered the skies, they’ve just passed their goal on KickStarter to build the world’s fastest human-powered bicycle named “Eta”, of course.

To be specific:

Our goal is to build the world’s fastest human-powered vehicle, capable of surpassing the current level-ground speed record of 133.8 km/hr (83.1 mph)! This represents a mind-blowing leap in aerodynamic efficiency and vehicle technology. If your car looked like this, you could drive across Canada on a quarter tank of gas!

I’m not sure if I’d want my car to be this cramped, but I still think it’s neat that true innovation is happening at the individual level, in more ways than one. What’s more, while this all still looks pretty experimental, it seems perfectly reasonable to expect that AeroVelo’s ideas will trickle into the mainstream in a way that will reasonably be accessible to most people. It is, after all, just a very fancy bike.

Publicly-funded government and mega-corp “innovation”,  on the other hand, is not so people-friendly (more anti-people, pro-tyranny, with hints of treason, really).

Now, I have to stress, this is totally just a theory. I have no evidence of any of this — it is a pure flight of fancy.

But let’s consider this: how come Rob Ford is still roaming the halls of City Hall, locking reporters out, and basically being good old RoFo again? And anyone have a pool going on when he officially (documented) hits the pipe again? How far off can it be?

But he does look slimmer, I’ll give him that. His stay in unbelievably picturesque Bracebridge must’ve been good. And not too cheap neither. Bracebridge is one of the jewels in what is basically the Canadian Hamptons.

In any event, and for whatever reason, the Fords are either intimidating to Chief Blair and many others, or they’re (Fords + Blair + others) working together. Whatever the case, the top cop refuses to touch Ford with so much as a fifty-foot pole wielded by a lackey who is on concurrent traffic duty. I’ve already established this point a couple of times.

So instead, Blair decides to shuffle the investigation over to various parties, thereby washing his hands of the situation. Enforcement won’t be involved.

The courts decide that, for perhaps the same whatever reason, they don’t want to deal with this either, so they hang it out to dry like the crusty laundry it is.

The complicit media behemoths provide watered-down analysis to ensure the public that everything and anything in God’s creation that could have been done was done. We’ll simply have to accept that our Mayor is a hard-drug-smoking, prostitute-cavorting, extortion-associating, gun-and-drug-running-related, murder-linked guy; he’s just a regular multi-millionaire like the rest of us except that he’s got a disease! So obviously it would be discriminatory to even suggest that he leave City Hall at this point.

And, of course, it’s completely coincidental that the Ontario Human Rights Commission declared that addiction is a disease just before RoFo made his ignominious return. Right?

Not to put too fine a point on it, imagine going to your office after hours wasted (on multiple occasions), harassing the security, and inviting “unknown persons” in for late night parties. Not only does this not get you fired, but you threaten to sue your boss for discriminating against you because of your “disease” – the criminal excuse du jour that ends up making legitimate addicts (who purposefully hurt no one but themselves), seem like degenerates. Rob Ford is using a real medical condition to legitimize his open criminality, lies, and ongoing scumbaggery. Pretty slimy thing to do, huh? Well, that’s Rob Ford for you!

The cops might be chicken shit for whatever reason, or they may be deferential for whatever reason. The courts may have equal whatever reasons. The end result in either case is that the law was not applied equally and neither was the investigation.

So could they be working together?

Wait, no, that’s no possible. Remember when Rob and Doug chewed the chief out?

Let me offer another theory.

What if there were some secret meetings that took place in which exactly this scenario would be hatched? Rob and Doug would publicly vilify the chief (easy) who would put on a stoic face (easy) and hand the matter off to a less improprietous body, which itself would turn around and just make the whole thing public (easy). Rob and Doug gain fans because they’re under such furious attack, Bill looks like the proper police chief, and the wise court gives the people what they really want — titillating, salacious details.

The whole matter: under the rug, RoFo & Co. are pleased (as are their masters), and everyone looks like they’re just doing they’re job. Except they’re really not.

When I mentioned that I’d be releasing the BreakOutBox source code, I didn’t expect that I’d also be able to figure out how to create a portable version of the application, but I did. :) This means that you don’t necessarily have to install it, as you would do with a standard application, so it can run off of a USB stick or possibly even a DVD.

In a nutshell, BreakOutBox detects any browsers you may have installed and opens them in “Tor mode” — ready and set up to communicate through the Tor network via the included Tor binary. This is likely not as secure as something like the Tor Browse Bundle, but it still makes it so that you’re fairly anonymously browsing the web, seemingly from a whole other part of the world.

The source code is not something that a novice will want to be looking into at the moment; it’s currently poorly commented, comes with no documentation, and really not much in the way of explanation. At least for now. And it’s pretty buggy.

But if you’re still willing and able, head on over to the new GitHub repo I’ve set up:

https://github.com/Patrick-Bay/BreakOutBox

You’ll notice a folder in the project called “BreakOutBox_standalone” which is the actual portable app, as compiled by FlashDevelop. It is bulkier than it needs to be but, as with the other pieces, I haven’t yet had much chance to trim down or edit the files. If you want to use the portable version, I recommend just grabbing the whole folder for the time being. Open up the “BreakOutBox.exe” file to run the desktop application from wherever you’ve copied the folder.

Although I’ve included them already, you may also want to check out the supporting libraries that are used in BreakOutBox:

SwAG: https://code.google.com/p/swag-as/
as3crypto: http://as3crypto.googlecode.com/
WRASE: https://code.google.com/p/wrase/
TorAS: https://code.google.com/p/toras/

These are necessary for BoB to operate correctly — SwAG takes care of communicating between the modules, as3crypto provides HTTPS support, WRASE allows the application to work with the Windows Registry, and TorAS makes Tor happen.

As I mentioned, these are already included in the GitHub code so they’re included here simply as a reference. Other than grabbing yourself a copy of the latest FlashDevelop (and the BreakOutBox source code, of course), you should be ready to play around with the software.

Please enjoy.

Though there’s still no indication of this on their website, The Grid TO’s last issue will be tomorrow:

What makes this sad news is what appears between the lines:

“The media landscape continues to be impossible for a start up,” he said, calling The Grid a victim of timing.

Launched on May 12, 2011, three years after the Great Recession, Turnbull said, “nobody anticipated how dramatically print and online revenue would continue to decline after 2009. We all thought it would be a gentle landing. Instead, it’s been violent.

Some people seem to revel in apocalyptic scenarios.

Not me, as I’ve hopefully explained earlier.

I actually rather enjoy city life and, for the most part, my neighbourhood (and the city too). Toronto and its people can be pretty cool.

Worldpride 2014

As I stated earlier, I’m not against police or even government, per se. I’m just not happy with what they and their offspring have become.

If the government ever does something to benefit the people, that’s simply a side-effect of benefiting itself and its buddies first and foremost. Besides, they’ll get your benefits through all of their fraudulent means anyway, whether you like it or not, and they’ll publicize how they crushed you under their boot afterward (“for your benefit!”).

It’s Not All Bad

However, I’m not a “tear it all down” guy. For example, I think cities are the most environmentally sensible, as opposed to the vast wasted tracts of the suburban gated communities and sprawling strip malls (government planning). Cities take getting used to, but there are many benefits too.

And “progress”, in the old techno-oriented way, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s all in how it’s used, something that can can be said of any tool.

Government? Well, if this were a true democracy and the people had direct say into political affairs then I see no reason why government (or any other agency), can’t co-exist — as long as it’s actually selected by, and works for, the people. Same for the police, the military, etc., etc.

After all, there are some good politicians, and there are some good cops, so it’s not as if these institutions couldn’t be run effectively and in the interests of the citizens. It’s possible that no one would lose their jobs if they could justify their value to society. It’s conceivable, though doubtful, that things would stay exactly the same.

Yes, some communities might elect to have absolute government dictatorship. Others might be a bit more relaxed and vote to limit government influence. I imagine that probably there’d be a mix of the two, with a direct focus on the needs of the community (not the government).

This may also mean disparity between public works between communities (roads, water works, electricity, income, etc.), but could someone please explain how that is any different from what the government is imposing right now? I bet strong local advocacy, even direct government participation, would help to equalize the needs of all of Toronto’s disparate neighbourhoods (and way more efficiently).

Unworkable?

Give. Me. A. Break.

Electronic Voting

This is 2014!

Has anyone noticed that the internet is pretty much everywhere? And if not, it could/should be. Maybe not everywhere, yet, but in any major urban metropolis it seems doable (at least, I say, we shouldn’t let government failures dissuade us).

Online encryption-based voting systems have been well-studied over the past quarter-century, and numerous super-smart people are further exploring the field. Many of the comments against electronic voting include exactly the kinds of things a proper electronic voting system avoids (i.e. examples we’ve seen so far have been built by government, so…)

Because of the difficulty of breaking the underlying encryption, when properly deployed such a system would prevent even governments from being able to game it along with everyone else (which is a good indication of why government would never accept it).

The ownership of your decision would belong solely to you and could be verified as a valid, un-forgeable vote, along with being anonymous and inherently fraud-resistant (the “authority” would simply maintain the open-source voting software and public access points).

Perhaps a little prior testing might be nice too.

Here are some other stated goals:

1. Correctness:
   • Only authorized parties can vote, i.e. registered voters
   • No voter votes more than once
   • No voter can replace votes
   • The party in charge of tabulation cannot change the outcome
2. Verifiability: universal or private
3. User anonymity
4. Receipt-freeness

Consider how the current government system of paper-ballot voting compares:

1. Correctness: FAIL (Who verifies that the government’s count is accurate?)
2. Verifiability: FAIL (How do we verify what happens to our vote once in the box?)
3. User anonymity: FAIL (Voters must vote using real name, in person)
4. Receipt-freeness: PASS

The “receipt-freeness” part means that people don’t need to walk out with receipts to prove that they voted a certain way. This is a “PASS” for paper ballots, but overall the system gets a big “FAIL”.

While it’s true that electronic voting doesn’t necessarily prevent coercion, the current system in which government provides protection against your evil fellow man isn’t that great in preventing even itself from participating in the same problem.

The reliability concern is something that (in the “government doesn’t work for you” context), is something the state isn’t keen to deal with, and on a side-by-side basis it looks like electronic voting wins out anyways.

Also, let’s keep in mind which group has been tasked with bringing electronic voting into being: government. Would they really want to relinquish their monopoly? Seems unlikely. Would they promote its competition? Probably not. And who, exactly, is nay-saying electronic voting anyway? Yeah, the government, apparently comprised of no one who is able to read scientific literature.

Of course problems will exist, but with electronic voting the system can be verifiably fixed; with government voting we just have to trust them.

Again, the solution here really needs to be extra-systemic. It needs individuals to pool together and make it happen by slow insinuation.

And More

While government is keen to promote the negative uses of encryption (unless, of course, they’re doing it), what appears to be emerging from it is generally very positive — and it’s not all voting, privacy, and anonymity. It is, after all, a tool that can be wielded like any other.

As far as I’m concerned, evil intent regarding encryption as ascribed by government reveals more about the person (or organization) demonizing the tool rather than the tool itself.

The topics I’ve covered in this series aren’t as disparate as I might’ve implied, and individuals’ efforts are often broader than I may have hinted. And despite the negative aspects of this series, I think it’s always a good reminder that the insurmountable government systems of a not-too-long-ago yesterday are today the playthings of children, and that we can always depend on plenty of government incompetence, corruption, and old-fashioned red tape to get in the way of their own innovation.

The revolution will be hidden.

Sorry for the interruption.

Hopefully it’s at least revealing to know that even as I write these lines I’m in a precarious situation (whatever income I do have is entirely spoken for), so please don’t mistake me for some well-to-do bohemian philosopher. And I know I’m not getting that seized money back so now I have to decide which bills aren’t getting paid.

But let’s not dwell.

I’d like to explain what I was getting at earlier. Because I really do have faith in something, and that something is technology.

Oh, don’t get me wrong — I know my computer isn’t going to hug or feed me tomorrow. It’ll barely keep me warm in the winter. In the summer, it does a shitty job of keeping me cool. It never encourages me, and frankly, it barely acknowledges my presence. But it does provide access to something: digital privacy and anonymity.

Privacy

Of course government surveillance means that my expectations should be restrained, but based on everything I know about encryption, surveillance, and data collection, I believe that what governments are doing amounts to basically data warehousing — until they can figure out a way to crack some of the heavily encrypted stuff. And that’s proving very challenging.

So that’s a great place to start, for example, by learning how to encrypt your email. See if your friends can read them, just for shits and giggles. This took me a few moments to set up for the first time so I’d recommend giving yourself some time to absorb the instructions.

Don’t rush — misunderstanding is often as dangerous as sheer ignorance. The Khan Academy does a great job of explaining how you and another person can communicate privately when you’re constantly being listened in on (the ideas are initially explained using colours — no math!):

If you stuck around for the math in the second half, you may have noticed that this (the big number stuff), seems like something computers would be good at. Right? And the underlying concepts have many real-world analogues too.

One might opine that it’s almost as if God weaved these mathematical tidbits into the fabric of the universe for us to discover and use.

If you’re not really familiar with practical encryption, it’s a good idea to peruse the more general material. Take your time because encryption by itself isn’t enough. There are many ways that you can inadvertently reveal your personal information (stuff like writing your password on a sticky on your work PC), so an education in encryption is 50% technology and 50% human. Keep in mind that security is often also compromised via “rubber-hose cryptanalysis“.

So we’re also aiming for is anonymity. With everything now living in “the cloud” (a fancy term for “somebody else’s computer”), our anonymity can be ephemeral. If we can be both private and anonymous (eavesdroppers know neither what’s being said nor who’s saying it), then maybe there’s a chance that private exchanges between individuals (outside of the government’s gaze), are possible.

The privacy is done through encryption. Anonymity is provided by something like the Tor network.

Anonymity

Tor is the current crème de la crème of what is lovingly called “The Dark Net”. You know…

Yup, this stuff is out there. Big shock. I mean, don’t we know by now that when something is illegal, a black market will spring up? So law helps to stoke the fires, and government swoops in with a leaky, overpriced, corrupt bucket of water. And that such a market should exist online is equally as un-shocking. That doesn’t mean Tor is all bad — it’s all in how you use it. All it’s designed to do is to keep you anonymous.

How qualified am I to be dolling out Tor advice? Well, I wrote the library for controlling and communicating through Tor using Adobe Flash and AIR, so I’d say I’m fairly well qualified.

On this topic, I’ve written a pretty buggy and totally not-ready-for-public Tor application that you can play with (it launches whatever version of IE, Chrome, or FireFox that you may have installed in “Tor mode”): http://www.torontocitylife.com/downloads/BreakOutBox.exe

I’ll be releasing this as open-source as soon I’ve cleaned it up a bit. Feel free to write me to get your hands on it earlier, or with any of the obvious (or not so obvious) problems you encounter.

Update (July 1): I urge caution when using BreakOutBox at this point — it doesn’t correctly reset your browser’s proxy settings so you’ll probably have to reset them yourself after closing the program. I’ll try to have this fixed in the next version. Also, if you downloaded BreakOutBox before July 1st, it won’t work (I forgot to include the Tor binary!). Download and install again to fix.

Open-Source

What I’ve discussed so far is not that new. They’ve actually been around for a while, and they’ve been open-sourced for nearly as long.

That “open-source” thing is tossed around a lot, and often in totally bullshit ways.

All that “open-source” means is that the author has released the source code, the instructions they wrote to produce the software, for anyone and everyone to look at, use, adapt, and enjoy.

You have to teach yourself that particular programming language to use it, true, but you don’t have to depend on them telling you what their finished software does — you can build (and change) that software for yourself. Naturally, for any popular piece of open-source software there’s a community picking it apart to see if it breaks.

Proprietary or “closed-source” software, on the other hand, depends on you trusting the organization’s motives because they’re not about to share their “trade secrets” with you.

So it’s a choice between someone eager to share their work (in detail), and having equally eager people openly test it for stability and security — or what the corporation tells you is good for you. That’s how come open-source is so popular. It can be quirky — sometimes it takes a while to get used to a unique user interface and shortcuts — but it is, after all, made by individuals.

So what’s with open-source licenses? If you dig in, you realize that they actually turn the standard software licenses on their heads:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without imitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Translation: Our software MUST remain free  for you to do with as you damn well please with one exception; we will sic copyright law on you if you try to claim exclusive ownership over it or its derivatives. If you want to sell this software, even as-is, then as long as you include the copyright notice we’re cool!

Sounds a little strange, even contradictory, but what it actually means is that while you’re free to profit off of open-source work (in most cases), you agree that it is open-source and that you will not violate other’s access to the same open-source material. What you do with that material, as long as you give a little nod via the license, is up to you — just as it is for others.

Now that’s a software license I can get behind.

Such licenses are all pretty much the same, more or less, and that same philosophy applies to non-software too (that little Creative Commons tag at the bottom of this site, for example).

And this model (giving stuff away for absolutely nothing), runs directly counter to every inbred economic instinct, and yet has proven to be profitable in very standard economic ways.

So now you have privacy, anonymity, and a some discretion in software (etc.) choices.

Now it starts to get interesting.

Cryptocurrrency

Many people have problems with this concept, so don’t feel bad if you have been labouring under the same misunderstandings.

When we talk about Cryptocurrencies, we often talk about one big example: Bitcoin, but there are quite a few more out there.

The “coin” part of the name is unfortunate because there are really no coins involved, electronic or otherwise. Bitcoin is more of a massive, peer-to-peer, public ledger into which transactions between individuals can be placed and verified. The BTC (Bitcoin) unit is simply a representation of worth to the parties involved, and the Bitcoin network makes it possible for these transactions to be done securely and honestly using strong cryptographic techniques.

Sounds kind of arbitrary, but it’s really not. Let’s say I decide that 1 BTC is $1. Do you agree with that? Great — when I want to send you payment for something, and we both agree that that something is worth $20, I’d send you 20 BTC. As long as I honour the BTC’s worth, you can then use it to exchange for another $20-worth of goods or services. Think of it as an IOU (which is basically what money used to be).

That’s fine for the both of us, but what if Bob down the street wants in on the action? Well, we can agree that $1 is 1 BTC, or maybe we can re-jigger our values to make it more accurate for all of us. So Bitcoin — the unit representation of community-derived worth — is more or less what people make of it. The Bitcoin network enables them to do that, and then use that agreed-upon “currency” for exchange.

This is a bit of a simplification, but that’s the gist of it.

Ultimately, using Bitcoin isn’t much more different than using money, and there are plenty of places where you can do exactly that. The transaction isn’t unlike using a debit or credit card in many ways, but the big difference is that you own your own account (usually stored on your device). If you lose access to it or someone hacks it, tough titties; it’s very much like cash in that way.

Bitcoin is pretty easy to integrate with Tor but needs a little help to be safely anonymous. Your Bitcoin wallet address might look like random data (and it mostly is), but without Tor and some additional protections, transactions may still be traced directly back to you, and with enough such information it’s feasible that you could be discovered. You may not think that selling good old-fashioned lemonade would bring the wrath of government down on you, but yeah, it will — they’ll fuck your life over good.

So protect yourself from these criminals as best as you can.

You may have read about some large Bitcoin and Tor-related site busts which, despite the rhetoric, were done using old-fashioned detective work — the technology remains pretty solid. Just don’t forget about the human part of the security and anonymity equation.

Keeping It Real

Having the ability to purchase physical goods and services using a cryptocurrency is great, but most likely those are going to be delivered via the government-owned post office. “And why exactly do you need all these lemons, Mister Bay?”

Unfortunately, it’s not looking like I’ll be able to replicate a bushel of lemons at home any time soon, but there are many real-world, physical objects which can be transferred digitally (and privately and anonymously), and reconstructed on increasingly cheap devices like 3D printers (and they’re not just for plastic trinkets). Star Trek-style gizmos, it turns out, aren’t that far-fetched.

Now do you suppose that with these nifty new 3D printers people will just stop everything and say, “Done! No more innovation!”? I doubt it.

Of course, this technology also has questionable applications, but these come with the territory.

We shouldn’t minimize the import of such uses, but we also shouldn’t focus unduly on what amounts to a drop in an ocean. We also can’t become complacent because the state is constantly working to put us under their thumb, but at the same time we shouldn’t get too paranoid about their capabilities.

There are many good people working hard to make all of this a reality. Some of those evil hackers that the teleprompter readers warn you about are some of the same people building these systems — you’ll need to discern for yourself what their true intentions are.

And that, ultimately, is what it comes down to … freedom. Conscious freedom to choose who you talk to, who you do business with, and to do what you want to do. Of course, with freedom comes responsibility, though most of us probably know that. If only government & friends could get a hint. But forget those fools because there are even more interesting things out there…

What’s to be done?

I truly believe that if change must be made, it must be extra-systemic. While I like to believe that the system is not irredeemable, much like the other “isms” that bowed to Capitalism, I’m sure that with this entire system as well as the underlying misnomer of democracy, neither of which are either the US (a Constitutional Republic), or Canada (a Constitutional Monarchy), we are finally seeing the flaws in its utopian vision. Just like the other isms, our system is susceptible to infiltration by corruption, and I truly believe we have reached the saturation point.

Again, not sure if Wikipedia is the best source for this but if one looks at the various analyses of the Fall of Rome, we find some startling parallels:

• Loss of civic virtue  — A contentious idea but one that with a lot of modern weight.
• Decline of military might due to influx of mercenaries — A concept that’s not so outrageous.
• Rome was declining from day one — Those watching can probably point to a similar pattern both yesterday and today (with similar results).
• Unsound economic policies — That seems to be self-evident.
• Depletion of local resources — Also another self-evident point.
• Endless wars — Getting there.
• Disease — There are stark correlations between poverty and increasing disease. And there’s plenty of poverty. I’m sure you can do the math.
• Environmental degradation — Many people are convinced that we’re well into this one.
• Lead poisoning — There’s some debate about how much lead pipes contributed to the problem, but few people since the ancient Romans believed that ingesting lead was a good idea.
• Barbarian invasions — We have seen some incursions that would fall into this category. In a similar way, the modern-day “Barbarians” are being made synonymous with evil (I’m pretty sure the Barbarians didn’t see themselves that way).

Did I miss anything? Probably, but this seems sufficient to make my point. And this oft-heard refrain is not uncommon, so it’s not as if I’m alone in this, but the usual adjunct is “yeah, but what can we do?”

Well, for starters, let’s cross violence off the list right away. In fact, let’s also take out extortion, intimidation, threats, abduction, imprisonment, corporal punishment, fraud, destruction, theft, covert manipulation, deception, fear, and hypocrisy. These are the tools of government & friends, and the only logical conclusion must be to reject them wholly (especially with that hypocrisy bit).

Violence used in self-defense is probably the only time I would relent, and then only when applied in quid pro quo fashion. This is not in any way illegal under any current laws, though all levels of the regime have adopted the stance that if it’s defense against them, that’s a crime. And so, defending yourself against open aggression by the state is a de facto crime (they certainly aren’t going to be held responsible!)

Not sure if slapping my tormentors upside the head would qualify under these categories, but at least it’s safe to say that it probably wouldn’t change anything. In fact, maybe that’s how they got that way in the first place. It’d feel good though…

Voting is a bad joke and, in fact, some people argue that participating in it is itself a sort of crime. The argument: by choosing the winning candidate, you are forcing others who did not vote in the same way to support your socio-economic-political views via the unchecked extortion of the state. By voting for a non-winner, you are implicitly condoning this extortion (though this is never explicitly true). And even winning candidates often embark on courses of action that are not part of their stated agenda, thereby directly violating their contract with their supporters.

And how are elections kept “fair”? Oh yeah, the government maintains an exclusive monopoly in dictating the results to you (the same government openly committing fraud to maintain their power). If elections are merely the switching up of one figurehead for another, which appears to be the very case (frauds come from one supposed side as easily as the other, etc.), then it’s reasonable to conclude that sticking your little piece of paper into a flimsy and easily tampered-with cardboard box is a waste of time (even if just to mark the ballot in protest).

Further, this idea can be extended to representative voting systems where leaders like Harper and Obama are, in fact, voted in by a vast minority of voters, if at all. Instead, candidates are party-elected leaders, and these leaders are then the titular heads of government. How many people actually, directly voted for Harper and Obama? Were they even actually on the ballot somewhere? (I think they have their own ridings so probably yes, but still…)

So voted in by a majority they were not. Not in any real sense. Rob Ford’s “majority” was 47% of voters (25% of Toronto). Harper achieved a complete, unchallengeable “majority” of 40%. Obama won by a very slim 51%, but was actually chosen by the Electoral College and not directly by voters, similar to Harper. Really, only Rob was actually directly voted in, but reliably by only 25% of Toronto’s citizens.

And much like Rob Ford, the obvious crimes perpetrated by the excluded class go unpunished because of the systemic collusion I keep pointing out. So politics is also not really a solution — it’s a big part of the problem. As are the courts, cops, and many of the people mindlessly (or otherwise) pushing oppression on the masses. Not all, of course, but it seems that these days there are far too many.

So I have to conclude that working within the system is a losing proposition. Not that I want to dissuade anyone from trying to implement positive systemic changes, I just don’t see much chance for success.

Even under optimistic conditions, the system will barely satisfy the needs of any single group as it seeks to balance conflicting interests. Those interests needn’t be in conflict if they were relegated to individual communities, so it’s accurate to say that government is the source of conflict and inequality. And that’s if you don’t ascribe any nefarious aspects to it.

So what is to be done?

I think the answer can be summed up in one word: individualism

Now let’s be very clear about this because there have been many infamous cases of “individualists”  or “sovereign citizens” in the news — widely discussed and regurgitated to remind you of what happens when individuals take matters into their own hands. And I admit, some bad stuff can happen. But compared to the rare lone gunman (one out of how many tens or hundreds of millions?), the government is far more destructive and murderous, so individualism wins by sheer virtue of the numbers.

Simply put, I don’t buy the government-created line of thinking that has us all turning into murderous, criminal brutes the moment that government stops intervening. I just don’t see it. In fact, I see the state as being the primary instigator of violence in most cases (no wonder that we have no domestic police murder statistics).

Whatever individuals decide on, however, is ultimately their choice. I can even understand the feeling that violence may be the only choice. But just because a bunch of be-suited liars decree that it’s now okay to kill and torture in order to support their corrupt junta doesn’t make it any less murder and torture, whether your name is Stephen Harper, Barack Obama, or Elliot Rogers.

Note that individualism doesn’t mean no government, it means voluntary government. It doesn’t mean no police, it means a direct voluntary contract between an individual and the police. Anarchy, despite the incessant attempts to pollute its original meaning, doesn’t mean chaos, it means individual choice, freedom, and responsibility. Community and individualism need not be mutually exclusive.

Individualism begins right where you are now — with you. It begins with a solemn oath to yourself that you will no longer willingly support the corrupt, murderous regime of the state. Doing so with a clear conscience requires an extended oath rejecting violence, extortion, intimidation, etc. In my view, any action taken on such a basis, with due consideration for the rights of your fellow man, is justified and right. The corrupt courts, bleating politicians, and thuggish police can stuff their disgusting laws and declarations back to the last days of Rome where they below — I know I’m not hurting anyone or doing anything wrong!

Individualism requires you to be brave in the face of the machine. It requires you to know that you are not a criminal, no matter what the system’s laws demand. It requires you to know that you don’t willingly harm or defraud your fellow man because you respect their sovereignty in the same way that you expect yours to be (but are also subject to repercussions when that sovereignty is violated). It requires you to know, above all else, that the corrupt state does not grant you these freedoms — you are born with them and anyone who tries to take them away from you without your consent are criminals. By extension, the fact that the Canadian government ensnared without consent the population of Canada (Did you ever consent to be taxed? Were you assigned your SIN before your age of majority? etc.), absolutely makes them criminals — one and all. Those involved in the periphery are accessories, just as with any standard crime. If that doesn’t sit well, there’s also the War Crimes angle, the massive defrauding angle, etc.

I know for a fact that TCL, and perhaps other outlets, are being monitored. Most likely by government organizations working together with private “reputation management” firms.

That’s okay — it’s a public blog! So why is it so wrong for the government to scour these pages when, really, anyone can openly do so? Because:

1. I know they’re not doing it for good or beneficial reasons (i.e. the only possible purpose to collect this is to use it against me or someone else).
2. They’re using my (and your) tax money to do so, and they’re doing it without our consent.

That’s why government surveillance of public sites is equally as despicable — we all know full well they are not doing it to benefit us (and are lying to us about it). Plus, there’s all the illegal stuff they’re doing for our “benefit” too.

I’m particularly conscious of the technological aspects of this because I’m a longtime developer, now software architect (a title I recently acquired), something that I like to believe stems from reasonable competence and experience (20-ish years, give or take). I also run a meager Google Plus group tracking the implications of technology as progressing or regressing individual freedoms. I don’t comment much, just post links and let the context tell the story — and that story is usually bleak and dark. All that stuff I rant about, like the fact that we’re heading for an Orwellian nightmare, that’s based on years of deeper-than-average research in a field in which I specialize. If my qualifications don’t match up to your liking, there are plenty of voices out there in an ever growing chorus saying the same things; you don’t need to believe just me.

But I do hope that you believe me because in among the darkness of systemic oppression I can see slivers of blinding light. The walls are showing cracks, the armour exhibits chinks, and through these cavities I can see a way through. I’m sure that it’s not the only way (getting bogged down by a dogged ideology is not productive), but there is something  — some things, actually — that can be done.

If you’re religiously inclined, this is probably the part where God steps in. If you’re all scientific-like, ditto.

Shall I explain?