A flash of understanding

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I suspect that many of you already know what I’m about to say and probably worked it out ages ok, but sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake. I’d like to claim that it’s because what I’ve finally realised is so insane is so bonkers that I haven’t previously been able to believe it. However this morning I suddenly had an insight into the mind of the statist (at least of the left wing kind). I was reading an article over on vice defending the Hypocrite Mr Brand when one of the comments suddenly made something make sense. Whilst I still find it hard to believe I’ve finally realised that all those statists we see campaigning against cuts and for more taxes do actually 100% believe that:
the state forcing people to help each other is a better thing that people voluntarily helping each other.

This still seems utterly insane to me, I could understand it if they felt the state was best placed to help other people and would make a better job of it – I’d think they were wrong and quite mad but I could understand it. I could even well understand that they think that people wouldn’t help each other unless forced to – I think that’s a very depressing view of the world but I could understand it and the champagne socialists do tend to support it. No both of those views would make some sort of sense, but that isn’t what they think they do actually honestly believe that it is better that the state force people to help each other (after taking it’s cut) than people just help each other.

This to me explains why they get so wound up about food banks or homeless charities and all the other voluntary ways people try to help each other out. Hell it may even explain why they thing people can’t be trusted, after all if the state is the best way to help each other then everyone just lending a hand directly is undermining the benevolence of the state. That is the difference and it’s what I could never understand before I think we should be asking why does the state do so much, why aren’t we demanding that charities do more that we’re left alone to help each other, that the state stop interfering and starts leaving us with the resources to help each other – they think if the state isn’t doing it then it’s a problem.

It may well be they’ve been taught this, that the state is father and mother and they can never let go of the apron strings. The state knows best and anyone that questions that is a danger, I’m sure I’ve read that in more than one bit of sci-fi and it’s a terrifying mind set, but at least I’ve finally realised they do actually think that way. Not sure if that makes me despair all the more or if it maybe gives me a way to understand them and thus talk to them to try to persuade them that they’re wrong. But at the very least I at least now have some inkling of the gulf of thought that lies between us.

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You can’t do that…

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You may well have noticed that the UK censors have finally noticed the internet and have decided following a quiet amendment to the law to make the depiction of all sorts of legal acts illegal in online porn. Of course with typical “logic” this only applies to porn made in the UK, porn made anywhere else can carry on as it was, just as well the internet pays so much attention to country borders.

LegIron has already written an excellent article on the matter to which I’ve very little to add. The few bits I might have added were taken care of by the Punk Rock Libertarians. So the only thing I’ll add is to join in the popular internet meme’s of “#ThingsNowBannedInUKPorn” and Cards against Humanity and give you this:
#ThingsNowBannedInUKPorn

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Well meaning but…

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I work in IT and I’m sure I’ve made decisions that have puzzled people or made them wonder what sort of special idiot I am. Fortunately for me most of what I’ve done hasn’t really had significant real world consequences. The same can not be said of the new surveillance detecting tool from Amnesty, Privacy International and the EFF. This new spyware detecting tool is called Deteckt and is aimed at people who fear they may be at risk of targeted surveillance. Now I’m sure that the people that wrote it are both very clever and well meaning, however if you’re subject to targeted surveillance and the sort of tools that government agencies might deploy then you’re up against people who are also very clever and not very well meaning. To be honest they quite probably down right hostile with no good intent towards you at all. Now if you think you’re or interest to such people you hopefully have reasonable security and are already running tools to detect the normal run of the mill spyware and malware programs and of course an anti-virus program. Detekt therefore we can I think assume is aimed to detect the kind of nastiness that those usual tools can’t spot.

Well except it isn’t, not really. According to their intentions the main aim is to “raise awareness“, actually detecting spyware is just the secondary aim. They are also according to their information mainly targeting known commercially available (well available to governments at least) software and they expect the people making it to start working to avoid Detekt really quickly.

So this awareness raising tool is expected to be actively worked against and yet the install instructions tell you to turn off your antivirus programs and then run it as Administrator!

How to shaft yourself

Now as it’s aimed to run on windows machines they don’t actually have much choice about this. But they are advising people who thing they are the target of serious hostile action to disable their existing security measures to run a bit of software downloaded from the internet as a privileged user. Yes they advise you to be disconnected from the internet at the time, but still this is not usually considered clever. Anti-virus and other anti-malware tools normally avoid this problem but having a digital signature that you can check and that the program itself can check. From the install instructions this is not the case with Detekt and the earlier releases didn’t even have a signature to verify if you new how to (well except for some unknown format digital signature)
What no checksum

This is really not following best practice, and it’s good to see that the latest release does come with checksums you can check, though the installation advice doesn’t so much as suggest you do such a thing. There are already a lot of very good tools and advice out there for whistle blowers and the like – which don’t generally advise you to turn off your security to run an unverified bit of software.

Whilst I’m sure that the “resistsurveillance.org” site is run by the people that it claims to be, that also can’t be verified as the domain registration registration information is all obfuscated. Of course if it was set up by a malicious actor I’m sure Amnesty and co would be shouting from the roof tops that it wasn’t them but really that’s hardly the point.

All of which means that the people behind Detekt (whoever they may actually be) are advising people at risk from serious and advanced surveillance threats to abandon good practice, download a bit of software from an open source site and run it as Administrator with all security turned off without first verifying it’s in anyway genuine. This strikes me as a rather counterproductive way to “raise awareness”. Unless of course having a few people disappeared is an acceptable awareness raising technique these days. I’m hoping that the software actually just puts up a big image which says “don’t be stupid next time”. However given the size of the program it could be doing almost anything and there’s plenty of space there for malicious parties to hide something nasty if they got the chance.

If they wanted to raise awareness in a way less likely to shaft the most at risk, they could have pointed to the vast amounts of good advice out there. Including any of the various portable secure Linux systems which let you start from a clean secure system every time. Hell they could even rebadge it with their funky awareness logo, as long as they also told people how to verify it was genuine, provided a method to verify that the people behind it were actually the people behind it and maybe provided multiple download paths so that it was at least slightly harder for the ungodly to target the download site.

It’s nice that they want to raise awareness, and unless you’re being paranoid the risks are really fairly small – except of course if you think you’re the subject of state sponsored targeted surveillance then paranoid is the very thing you need to be.

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