iTerrorist
by Josh
Maybe I should be reluctant to post this.
Maybe this makes me more of a terrorist than I am already.
This has nothing to do with the usual content of this blog and I am sorry if it is a bit of a ramble.
But everyone who has access to an audience should feel obliged to talk about these things these days.
We all know that we live in the most individualistic time ever.
Every gadget these days seems to be individualized these days and even sugary water sells better just because someones name is printed on it.
People sit together in groups and every single one of them is far away, dreaming mechanized dreams.
More and more we become aware that this does not provide the great freedom we expected.
More and more we see, that it is not about us, expressing our personality but about other people gathering data and monetizing and prosecuting us.
Yes, we are free to talk to anyone. But not about anything.
Suddenly, we are all either an asset to collect data, or terrorists.
We use digital communication so much, for most of us it has become near impossible not to share extremely sensitive data with the secret services.
But what’s the problem?
Why shouldn’t we, if it serves our safety and the bad guys go to jail?
He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither
-Ben Franklin
The problem, most simply put is, that we are losing the most important principle in our modern system of justice. In dubio pro reo.
If in doubt, a person is always innocent.
We are not innocent anymore. We are terrorists.
And what is a terrorist anyway?
Anyone can be called a terrorist.
Heck, back in the days the Nazis could have called the jews terrorists.
The only difference is, that with our modern biometric ID cards, it would have been near impossible for them to flee the country with fake IDs.
We must not trust our states that much.
There is never a guarantee that our states do not turn back into murderous, totalitarian regimes.
When this happens (where does your confidence come from, only seventy-odd years after WWII??) our data will be used against us.
Even in the unlikely event that our present system of states is stable, our data is not safe with our governments and secret services.
The German “Einwohnermeldeamt” is already happily selling all they know (which is an awful lot) to anyone who is willing to pay.
There are 1.85 million surveillance cameras in the UK.
Hundreds of people will have their 12 year anniversary at Guantanamo bay soon, without a proper charge and in a constant state of torture. Being gay, or acting gay is a crime in Russia.
I’m sorry, but has the world gone fucking mad???
Only after a lifetime of immaculate citizenship after we die, we are redeemed.
In death we are free, in death we are innocent.
Maybe there will be a print for tombstones in a few years, like an organic seal,
“not a terrorist”.
Yeah, in death we will not be suspicious anymore.
They couldn’t even prevent two amateurs with heavy use of social media from blowing up the boston Marathon.
How are they supposed to find real terrorists, who would show much more creativity and NOT TALK ABOUT THEIR PLANS ONLINE??
I mean, for gods sake, how much effort does it take to invent some little code language?
None.
And so we’ve given up our freedom to talk about whatever we want for a security that is an illusion. For states that lie to us (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!) in order to justify bestowing war and terror on us and other people.
Never have I ever been more paranoid.
Edward Snowden is a hero, he’s thoroughly destroyed my ignorance.
Imagine, two generations from now the children might grow up not even knowing what complete freedom of speech means.
We have to do something about this.
Learn to code your messages.
Read 1984 by George Orwell
Vote for pirate parties, as ridiculous as they may seem.
Go to demonstrations.
Whatever it is, we have to start defending our freedom or it will be gone forever.
Dont whistle while you pee 
Nice entry!
Only one objection: I get the impression that you assume that privacy is always the same as freedom. In this entry it is maybe not so much a question of freedom being given up, but rather privacy.
Now, personally I still feel completely free in The Netherlands, while I of course realize that my online privacy is virtually non-existent. But I don’t consider that a restriction to my freedom.
Could you clarify why it might be?
(The same can obvioulsy not be said for Russia, where they intrude on everyone’s privacy, ánd use the resulting information to actively attack people’s freedom, for example in the case of gay people, indeed.)
Dear Thomas, thanks for your comment.
Of course, freedom is a very broad word. But freedom of expression is in my eyes the most important cornerstone of freedom. If you are not free to express your opinions, views and criticisms freely it is not called freedom.
Furthermore, it is not just your digital communication that is impaired. Your phone calls, your mail, everything that is not face to face communication is being intercepted and saved.
And as I said before, the fact that your freedom is not actively impacted at the moment does not mean that it will not be in the future.
Also, I forgot to mention an important sentence in this article:
“If you can read, you can write”
This means that if secret services can read your information, they can also change and save it. Thereby making you a terrorist/gay/communist/banker whatever.
No one should be granted so much power, let alone people who act secretly, outside governmental control.
Really nice article Josh!
„I mean, for gods sake, how much effort does it take to invent some little code language? None.“ If your „code“ isn’t damn well engineered, it will be pretty easy for them to encode it.
But there is a much more easy way to encrypt your messages; use the established encryption methods with an appropriate key size! I believe that terrorists aren’t that stupid and don’t use encryption if needed.
Messages encrypted today with an appropriate key size (2048bit), will be broken in 10-20 year (if we ignore quantum-computers). I also believe that this is no problem, especially not for “personal” users. One of my professors once said: “If you are afraid that your messages will be encoded by NSA in about 15 years, you maybe shouldn’t send them at all”.
For everything else, use established protocols and software which u can easily access for free, like PGP for Emails, OCR-Plugin for Pidgin to encrypt your messages send via MSN , ICQ, Facebook, etc. and so on. It’s not hard nor elaborate or expensive to use these methods, there is just one constraint: both parties of a communication have to use it!
I hope at least someone starts to realize the ease of using message encryption today. Your government or media will never advice you to use it, they profit from you not using it!
Hi Manuel,
Great to have a contribution from someone who is actually in the field of IT-security. Yes mate, I will have a look into these crypting tools asap.