groente's blog

Privacy is not terrorism

groente — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 15:42:07 +0000

On Tuesday 16th December, a large police operation took place in the Spanish State. Fourteen houses and social centres were raided in Barcelona, Sabadell, Manresa and Madrid; books, leaflets and IT material were seized; and eleven people were arrested and sent to the Audiència Nacional, a special court handling issues of "national interest", in Madrid. They are accused of incorporation, promotion, management and membership of a terrorist organisation. However, lawyers for the defence denounce a lack of transparency, saying that their clients have had to make statements without knowing what they are accused of [2]. "[They] speak of terrorism without specifying concrete criminal acts, or concrete individualised facts attributed to each of them.” [1] When challenged on this, Judge Bermúdez responded: "I am not investigating specific acts, I am investigating the organization, and the threat they might pose in the future" [1]; making this yet another case of apparently preventative arrests. Four of the detainees have been released, but the remaining seven have been jailed pending trial. The reasons given by the judge for their continued detention include the posession of certain books, "the production of publications and forms of communication”, and the fact that the defendants “used emails with extreme security measures, such as the server RISE UP.”[2]

There were several cases in the last decade where people were accused because of "conspiratorial behaviour". In Germany, in 2007, 4 people were arrested. One of them because he met with another suspect twice more than in the previous five months, leaving mobile phones at home for some meetings, and so on. [3]
Nearly the same thing happened in Austria in 2008 when 13 people were arrested. One reason was: they were using encrypted e-mail.
In both cases and in several others this kind of "conspiratorial behaviour" has been used as a reason to keep people in jail during the investigation period. In the eyes of investigators, every meeting/email/phonecall of which the contents are not known, is “conspiratorial.” The legitimate protection of the private sphere is criminalised and - in the eyes of state prosecutors - constitutes proof of terrorist organisation.

We are appalled that the use of our services - and privacy measures in general - is considered tantamount to terrorism. No one is a terrorist because of protecting ones privacy. In a world where our every move is monitored by state and corporate interests, the use of encryption is an essential self-defense towards maintaining personal integrity. As such, every email provider should enable "extreme security measures". We as hosting provider commit ourselves to protecting the data of our users in every way possible for us. We will not sell or hand out the data of our users. The state may thus think of us as supporting terrorism, but the only terror we see connecting the aforementioned cases is that of arbitrary repression aimed at those who do not want to voluntarily expose their private lives.

[1]: https://directa.cat/actualitat/pandora-empresonada
[2]: https://directa.cat/jutge-gomez-bermudez-envia-preso-set-de-onze-persone...
[3]: http://einstellung.so36.net/en/1363
[4]: http://antirep2008.org/?p=14&lang=en

First sessions for interference.io announced

groente — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 12:49:03 +0000

The Interference event that is going to take place August 15th-17th in Amsterdam is starting to take shape. Still lacking a complete program, today the first sessions were announced. Quoting from interference.io:

Tincuta Heinzel and Lasse Scherffig will set up their radio-based sound installation "Signal to Noise", dealing with the concreteness of ideological discourses and imaginary of the "Other". A volatile acoustic space is created in which two concurring voices and ideologies compete by broadcasting on the same frequency.
Johan Söderberg will present us with a reflection on the limitations of instituted, sovereign power by means of a comparison between hackers and psychonauts. Both assert their autonomy vis-à-vis the State through the no-mans-land of the ever-evasive near future. Yet this legal greyzone is concurrently being turned into an incubator for corporate innovation.
Strike Now Collective will show and discuss their tool Universal Automation, an hacktivist intervention against the destruction of the social safety net in the UK referred to as the austerity programme, and the use of digital technologies by the government to enact it.
Visy and Viznut from the demogroup Pers' Wastaiset Produktiot will screen some of their work and share their insights - gained through coding on archaic systems - in the chaotic, uncontrollable, and profoundly non-modular areas of the possibility space within computing.
The people from Critisticuffs will host a workshop in which the notion of free software as a critique of capitalism is challenged. The argument that information wants to be free as these "goods" can be copied almost infinitely often begs the question: what is it about material wealth that makes it right, without alternative even, to treat it as private property?

Apart from those, you can expect a wide range of talks, workshops, performances and discussions. It would be impossible to summarize them adequately, but topics will include human-machine interfacing, liquid surveillance, cryptocoins, and many others.

If that has triggered your curiosity and you are planning to attend, please register and keep an eye on interference.io for further updates.

Call for Papers: Interference

groente — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 12:51:24 +0000

Interference, n:

preventing (a process or activity) from continuing or being carried out properly.
the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or cancelled.

Interference is a gathering of people, perspectives, theories, and actions that share a critical approach to society and technology. It will take place at the Binnenpret in Amsterdam, NL from 15th to the 17th of August 2014. It will be a space where we can meet, debate, share, learn, and find our affinities and oppositions. The event comes as a response to the lack of a common ground for confrontation and discussion over themes like hacking, technology, art and politics that could break out of the existing containers and roles for such concepts and practices.

Interference is not a hacker conference. From a threat to the so-called national security, hacking has become an instrument for reinforcing the status quo. Fed up with yet another recuperation, the aim is to re/contextualize hacking as a conflictual praxis and release it from its technofetishist boundaries. Bypassing the cultural filters, Interference wants to take the technical expertise of the hacking scene out of its isolation to place it within the broader perspective of the societal structures it shapes and is part of.

Interference tries not to define itself. Interference challenges hacker's identity, the internal dynamics of hackerculture and its ethical values. It undermines given identities and rejects given definitions. Interference is a hacking event from an anarchist perspective: it doesn't seek for uniformity on the level of skills or interests, but rather focuses on a shared basis of intuitive resistance and critical attitude towards the techno-social apparatus.

Interference is three days of exploring modes of combining theory and practice, breaking and (re)inventing systems and networks, and playing with the art and politics of everyday life. Topics may or may not include philosophy of technology, spectacle, communication guerrilla, temporary autonomous zones, cybernetics, bureaucratic exploits, the illusions of liberating technologies, speculative software, the creative capitalism joke, the maker society and its enemies, hidden- & self- censorship, and the refusal of the binarity of gender, life, and logic.

Interference welcomes discordians, intervention artists, artificial lifeforms, digital alchemists, oppressed droids, luddite hackers and critical engineers to diverge from the existent, dance with fire-spitting robots, hack the urban environment, break locks, perform ternary voodoo, decentralise and disconnect networks, explore the potential of noise, build botnets, and party all night.

The event is intended to be as self-organised as possible which means you are invited to contribute on your own initiative with your skills and interests. Bring your talk, workshop, debate, performance, opinion, installation, project, critique, the things you're interested in, the things you want to discuss. Especially those not listed above.

Please let us know how you would like to interefere by sending a (brief) abstract of your proposal before June 15 to interference [at] puscii.nl.

Updates and more information can be found on http://interference.io

1 maart: Puscii Privacy Party @ RooieRat

groente — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 17:39:28 +0000

1 maart, 14.00h - Rooie Rat, Oudegracht 65, Utrecht

cctv.png

Het zal niemand zijn ontgaan dat ons internet- en telefoonverkeer gretig wordt afgeluisterd. Met name activisten zijn hiervoor een geliefd doelwit. Maar de online privacyschendingen gaan verder dan alleen aftappende inlichtingendiensten. Ook het grootkapitaal - google, facebook, u kent ze wel - weet ons driftig te volgen en vaak onopgemerkt te profileren. Gelukkig zijn de technieken die hierbij gebruikt worden vaak met enige kennis en de juiste tools redelijk te omzeilen.

Daarom organiseren wij zaterdag 1 maart de Puscii Privacy Party: een dag voor kennisuitwisseling op het gebied van versleuteling, anonimiteit en privacy. Er is geen vooropgezet programma: de bedoeling is om kennis en vragen bij elkaar te brengen, te kijken wat er beschikbaar is, waar interesse in is en daar dan praktisch mee aan de slag te gaan.

Toegang is gratis en iedereen is welkom, ongeacht technische voorkennis.

Waar: Rooie Rat, Oudegracht 65, Utrecht
Wanneer: 1 maart, 14.00h
Meenemen: vragen, kennis, nieuwsgierigheid, laptop, (not-so-)smart phone, snacks
Toegang: gratis
Trefwoorden: versleuteling, anonimiteit, privacy, tor, pgp/gpg, otr, tails, gnunet, i2p, otr, diy hosting, ostn, redphone, textsecure, ssl/tls, browser-beveiliging, google-alternatieven, etc.

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Philosophy of hacking

groente — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 23:15:28 +0000

The definition of hacking is controversial at best. Anyone familiar with the hacking scene probably has some intuitive feelings towards what is meant by hacking. Connotations of creativity, subversiveness and tinkering with highly complex technology are quite broadly accepted. Nevertheless, hacker groups and individuals have had furious discussions over its definition, ranging from cybercrime to kernel development. This goes to show that hacking is not rooted in or defined by one specific subculture, there is no one coherent hackerscene. It has been described as a community of communities, sharing a relation to technology that has digressed from the normative approach. We can thus with relative safety describe hacking as 'an approach to technology'. This begs two questions:

What is technology?
What is the hacking approach?

Technology

Technology comes from the Greek techne: art, skill, craftmanship. It shares the same fate as hacking in not having one clear concisive definition, but let us examine two common ones:

The practical application of knowledge or science
The making or using of tools or systems to accomplish a task

From these we can derive three aspects of technology.

It is based on human knowledge
It involves creation
It is a means to an end.

These aspects may form the basis for finding, or at least getting closer to, the essence of technology. The aspect of being a means to an end implies instrumentality, which in term implies causality. Owing much to the analysis of Heidegger, we will take a classical approach to unraveling causality, how it connects with the other aspects and what light it may shed on the essence of technology.

Dating back to Aristotle, we can identify 4 causes: (1) the causa materialis, the material to which the result is indebted; (2) the causa formalis, the shape or form into which the material enters; (3) the causa finalis, its telic end and (4) the causa efficiens, which brings about the effect that is the end result.

According to Heidegger these four causes are "the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of being responsible for something else". "They let what is not yet present arrive into presencing" [1]. Plato: "Every occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing from that which is not presencing is poiesis" [2]. The aspect of creation we identified earlier was understood by the Greeks as an act of poiesis, a bringing-forth. This bringing-forth is to be understood as the ''coming into unconcealment of something that before was concealed'' [1]. It is an act of revealing and what is revealed is Truth.
Technology is thus not mere manufacturing of means to ends, not merely applying knowledge, it is a way of revealing, of finding Truth.

Modern technology

One of the most characteristic aspects of modern technology is its highly complex nature, owing to scientific progress. Modern technology depends on science and vice versa, modern science with its multitude of complex tools for gathering empirical data depends on modern technology (it theorizes over what the application of this technology reveals about nature). Together they form a circle of reciprocal dependence and progress out of which knowledge of nature is produced. So let us have a brief look at the development of human understanding of nature from the ancient towards modern scientific paradigms. Particularly relevant is the change in our understanding of causality:

A rejection of the causa finalis, in particular by Bacon: "But of these the causa finalis, far from being beneficial, that it even corrupts the sciences, ..." [3]
Hume's first definition of causality focussing purely on objects: "An object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the latter" [4]*
Kant's explanation through natural law "everything that happens, that is, begins to be, presupposes something upon which it follows by rule" [5].
Into a deterministic view of the world, as illustrated by Laplace: "We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future." [6]

This 'progress' in understanding causality is examplary for the development of human understanding of nature. Since the enlightenment we have seen an increasing positivist tendency towards explaining the world around us in terms of empirical data combined with and induced into laws of nature expressed in formal logic.
With this advancement of science and technology, how we understand what is being revealed in the process of creation is narrowed down to what can be objectified. The truth we are faced with needs to be enframed in terms of physical objects and formal logic. We have become blind to the full scope of Being with all its potential revealing itself to us and instead build up our predetermined framework around it. Only what is calculable in advance counts.
Linked to this objectification, modern science has a tendency to either suspend judgement on metaphysical questions regarding the nature of Being or simply cast them aside as nonsense. Methodologically the metaphysical question of 'What is?' has been replaced with the functional question 'How?'. Giving (relative) certainty on how the objects around us can be manipulated according to the laws of nature, "Being-as-such gives way to Being-instrument" [7]. Nature becomes projected as potential instrumentality. This potential instrumentality is actualized in technological development, narrowing technology down from skills, crafts and arts to pure instrumentality.
Having lost track of its telic end, this instrumentality becomes constrained in its own framework, serving no purpose other then to objectify and further instrumentalize Being. Technological development becomes methodologically entrapped in a cycle of instrumentalization. In constructing the materializations of this instrumental understanding of Being, it builds entities of control over nature, revealing how nature can further be controlled. This "technological understanding of Being produces a calculative thinking which quantifies all qualitative relations, reducing all entities to booleans, programmable information, digitized data." [8] It creates its own self-reenforcing rationality aimed at total control over nature and establishes a technological apparatus that understands only the logic of utility, control and domination.
The apparent neutrality of science and technology means little more then it being devoided of all value, it is neutral only insofar that it appears fully amoral. This may hold in the case of science in-and-of-itself, insofar as it remains strictly in the realm of the theoretical, but technology materializes this theory, gives it an agency and thereby places it in the realm of the practical, a concern of ethics. Yet it can only grasp that which is of the mind insofar as it is strictly rational, as it can be expressed in logical/mathematical terms, it has no knowledge of human feelings, of happiness, appreciation for beauty, etcetera. On all this which it cannot grasp it 'suspends judgement', a polite term for dismissal als nonsense or falsehood. With this dismissal, the technological apparatus has to a large degree cast aside humanity, depending on it solely to provide labour for the further development of its ability to control. Where once technology was aimed at liberating humanity from the toils of nature, it has now grown to be part of an apparatus aimed at controling all of nature, humanity included. Its logic is that of control and domination, leaving no space for human reason or intervention outside of the processing of streams of data that are the objectified and quantified observations regarding the world around us.

Digital technology

This space for intervention is where digital technology comes in. The computer, a material realization of calculative abilities that used to belong solely to the mind, has to a large degree taken over the abovementioned processing of streams of data. Armies of burocrats and accountants who used to hold a position of power within the technological apparatus have now been obsoleted. They have been replaced with a much smaller army of engineers and computer scientists who tell the computer how to process said data. Digital technology hence further narrows down the space for human intervention. Yet does digital technology intrinsically fall under the same logic of control and domination? This may be somewhat harder to assess as software poses a large number of ontological questions. Lingering somewhere between materiality, theory and language it remains a philosophically largely unexplored territory.
Regarding the computer as a fully deterministic logical framework, one may be tempted to conclude that there is nothing that can be revealed through the creation of software that was not already calculable in advance, that there is no difference between the revealing and the enframing and that the metaphysical 'What is' is essentially the same question as the functional 'How'.
Such a conclusion rests on the false equation of the computer being deterministic and it being predictable. Even for a theoretical perfect Turing machine, the exponential increase in complexity makes predicting its output for all possible states impossible. Real life computers may not have infinite tape length, but their memory sizes are large enough to ensure that full predictability is practically impossible. Adding to that, real life computers suffer from interventions through hardware malfunction or random number generators, further falsifying their predictability.
Computer science aims at controlling the unpredictability of the computer. The nature of the computer becomes enframed as pieces of code and datastructures are turned into objects, ready to be utilized. With the possible exception of cryptography, anything that was revealed in the creation of software that did not match the precalculated results is cast aside as bug to be fixed. In doing so, digital technology becomes subjected to the same logic of control and domination that is prevalent throughout the entire technological apparatus.

The hacking approach

Now that we have explored the problematic nature of the normative, scientific approach to technology, it is time to ask how is hacking any different? To give a short answer, hacking is irrational. It is irrational in the sense that in the eyes of scientific reason, hackers are a bit mad. Perhaps the most illustrating example is the hackers' fascination with bugs. Making technological devices do something they weren't meant to do is a large part of what hacking is all about. Be it through exploiting buffer overflows or cleverly using bugs in the commodore 64's video chip to perform visual tricks thought to be impossible in the original design, to the hacker bugs are filled with potential.
This illustrates an approach that is radically different from the methods of computer science. To the hacker, the computer is not something to impose precalculated routines on. It is something to be explored. What is revealed in the creation of software is not enframed in a predetermined vision of what software is supposed to look like, but is taken in to its full extent. In that sense, hacking is a form of poiesis, it is an act of seeing what nature has in store for you rather than bending it to your will.
This poietic aspect comes to light even further when we examine the role of aesthetics in hacking. The ideal code of a hacker is not merely functional, it is poetry, which may well be its only function. Where a computer scientist may describe the clever use of a couple of goto statements as an ugly hack, to the hacker the ingenuity of finding potential in unconventional methods has an appeal to beauty. It displays an understanding of the nature of the computer outside of the logic of computer science. The hacker's playful curiosity and desire to express creativity within the computer-imposed framework of formal logic transcends code into poetry. The rational, objective understanding of software development through the methods and mechanisms of computer science are replaced by the subjective interpretations of what has been revealed in the process of creation. As for the purpose of hacking, ask a hacker why or to what end she does what she does and chances are the answer will be 'because I can'. Though clearly a case of false (or lack of) conciousness, it does negate the rational utility prevalent in modern technology. It has a sense of ambiguity to it that comes with exploring the unknown rather then forcing it into predetermined structures. It sets a path of self-determination in the finding of Truth through the application and development of technology.

Conclusion

In conclusion, hacking can be seen as an approach to technology which is radically different from the normative scientific approach and is more akin to the ancient understanding of techne, including the realm of the arts, yet different in connecting theoretical with poietic knowledge, transcending their oppositions. Though operating in the same realm of formal logic, it defies the rationality of control and domination and replaces it with a sensibility aimed at a subjective understanding of the world around us, opening up the possibility of self-determination in our interaction with technology. Because it operates within the realm of digital technology, it has the potential of intervening in the technological apparatus, imposing on it more human sensibilities.
Note that this potential does not make hacking an instant recipe for liberation or revolution. There is a dialectic link between hacking and the modern scientific approach to technology. On the one hand, as scientific and technological progress creates more complex devices and software, the hacker gets more to play with, more to explore and subvert. On the other hand, the moment a hack is discovered, it is subject to being enframed, either by 'fixing' the bug from which it was spawn or by incorporating the technique into the normative engineering practices by adding it to the set of predetermined methods by which software is to be developed. All potentiality that is revealed in the hackers' explorations can and will, once actualized, be objectified. The time inbetween discovery and enframing provides us with a margin of play, a temporary autonomous zone if you will, in which we can freely adjust the technological apparatus. But to move beyond these ever-shifting margins it is necessary to challenge the hegemony of positivism both in the sciences and in engineering practices. Hacking needs to be disruptive so we may create a more wide-spread understanding of technology that goes beyond utility, control and domination.

[1] Martin Heidegger - The question concerning technology
[2] Plato - Symposium
[3] Francis Bacon - Novum Organum
[4] David Hume - A Treatise of Human Nature
[5] Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason
[6] Pierre-Simon Laplace - A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
[7] Herbert Marcuse - One-dimensional Man
[8] Iain Thompson - Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education

TA3M recordings

groente — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 23:32:17 +0000

Better late then never and we didn't manage to catch everything, but here are some files that may give you an impression of the last TA3M evening in the ACU, Utrecht:

Newsflash
Slides

Jeroen van der Ham on The Internet Society Netherlands' app for testing net neutrality
Slides
Audio: download

Nadim Kobeissi on activism against surveillance
Audio: download

Don't forget, upcoming monday is the next TA3M in de Vondelbunker (am*dam): https://wiki.openitp.org/events:techno-activism_3rd_mondays:amsterdam, RSVP: https://dudle.inf.tu-dresden.de/TA3MNovember/

TA3M - October 21st, 19.00 - Voorstraat 71, Utrecht

groente — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 21:29:54 +0000

ta3m.png

Techno-Activism Third Mondays (TA3M) is an informal meetup to connect activists and technologists who are interested in the challenges of surveillance and censorship, and anyone interested in free and open technology. The event takes place in different cities around the globe every third Monday of the month.

This month PUSCII will host the meeting in the ACU (Utrecht); join us for talks, drinks, discussions and feel free to contribute!

Date: Monday, October 21st, 2013 - 19.00
Location: Voorstraat 71, Utrecht

Program:

Newsflash: a quick update on what happened in the world of privacy and surveillance over the last two months
The GNUnet peer-to-peer framework: technical solutions towards a secure and fully decentralized future Internet. Presenting the GNU Name System and the future of social networking with GNUnet.
The Internet Society Netherlands has a working group which is looking at the transparency of the Internet and has created an app to test the openness of your Internet connection. In this talk Jeroen van der Ham will describe how we further confirmed results from the app. The code is online and you can test this for yourself too!
Nadim Kobeissi giving tips for activism against surveillance
Discussion on activist campaigns against the surveillance state by the Kritische Studenten Utrecht
Open stage

TA3M is an OpenITP initiative. For more information, see www.openitp.org, https://wiki.openitp.org/doku.php?id=events:techno-activism_3rd_mondays, www.ta3m.nl and/or www.puscii.nl

The limits of inclusion

groente — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 19:08:07 +0000

The post-OHM silence after the storm brings a time for reflection and analysis. What follows is an edited collection of thoughts from several indivuals written before, during and after the camp. Its aim is to provide a more theoretical basis for discussion, to release the conflicts we endured during OHM out of the personal sphere and abstract them so we may learn from them, challenge our identities and prevent future mistakes. Hackercamps Our community is extremely diverse and is made up of a rich variety of people. It is often referred to as an intergalactic hacking community with more than a little bit of seriousness. Camps such as the OHM2013 are representative of our community and are generally radically inclusive, while focusing on sharing knowledge through discussions ranging from society and art to Free, Libre Open Source (FLOSS) software or hardware reverse engineering. The topics and participants are from all walks of life and of all levels of education. The camps have a magical touch that evokes feelings of a highly technical, extremely egalitarian temporary autonomous zone filled with peers. In these camps there is an open feeling where people of any gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or nationality are welcome. They come together as peers and they meet on equal ground to share, to grow, to build, to break, and friendships that last a lifetime are commonly formed. Liminal spaces like those provided at the Chaos Computer Club's camps or the series of Dutch camps are extremely rare and these social spaces are precious. It is generally in these spaces that national identities are not hidden but are generally cast aside as variations on a larger theme. It is a place where people come as part of an international, even intergalactic, some might say, community. Everyone is welcome, as long as they commit to some very basic ground rules, and transgression of these rules is generally resolved entirely within peer-created conflict resolution processes. Sexism, homophobia, racism, classism and violence are things we as a community directly reject, even if it isn't always perfectly. We aspire to create a safe space for all walks of life and to open lines of communication. Outright action to transgress these boundaries is completely rejected. This sometimes causes controversy but generally, we do not tolerate the judgement of people based on their gender, faith, lack of faith, sexual preferences or orientation. We are a community that looks at the merit of each person in a way that accepts that hackers, artists, thinkers, creators and other members of our community will come from every walk of life. Meeting as equals, even if some have built the network, some have designed the websites, and others have contributed through purchasing a ticket and participating at the camp as a peer and so on; participation as peers on equal footing is part of the grounding of these events. There are unique concerns about such a place for visitors and while we are very free, we tend to change some of the normative societal expectations. As an example, photography is generally an ask first, take pictures secondly, social exchange. There are exceptions to most of the camp's social expectations, of course. Hackers tend to play with any rule or system. It is our nature and such a nature is what makes these camps an unparalleled experience. They are often referred to as "magical" when experienced for the first time by someone who has never discovered such a group of peers. Empire Now why is intelligence and law enforcement so interested in our community and the larger hacker scene? The main duty of intelligence agencies and law enforcement within society can be summarized as allegedly preserving national stability, upholding the law and keeping order. Within a knowledge economy, such as the Dutch, the manageability of science and technological development by the state is deemed crucial to its stability. The hacker scene takes a rather peculiar position in this. On the one hand, we provide an enormous pool of talent and resources, yet at the same time we are a notoriously unmanageable force which poses a possible threat. We have gained our knowledge independently and have developed our own technology through our own means. We know why and for which goal we have developed these technologies: we wish for them to be free - as in beer- and to be free- as in freedom. These goals form the intrinsic value of our technology; they are not merely tools to accomplish a technical task, but tools to further the combined knowledge of the intergalactic community. In order for the state to catch up with these events and to prevent the subversion of its authority, the state has very little choice but to try and find itself a place right in the middle of our scene, a position where it can exert control and make our scene manageable and direct it towards national stability. Such a process of co-optation is what we can see happening right in front of our eyes today. This might not even have been such a bad thing if state interest was in line with hacker ethics, but despite claims of wanting to use our technology for good, history has shown that states, intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the military are not the most reliable institutions for the noble appliance of science and technology. Law enforcement officers follow the rule of law while having to accept that other entities in the governmental environment, such as the intelligence community, have the freedom of so called extra-legal acting in the "higher" interest of the state. There are well established mechanisms to ensure that law enforcement does not interfere with intelligence activities in almost every country-specific legal system. This appears to be the case in both so-called "democratic" and "non-democratic" environments. Ethics Hacker ethics promote values such as decentralisation and freedom of information. However, such values are not always compatible with the legal framework. The intelligence community is - from a philosophical point of view - the natural enemy of anyone promoting freedom of information, as intelligence work is based on the principle of secret-keeping or secret-releasing when it benefits their generally centralized control of processes. Freedom of Information allows anyone - the public at large - to understand and interfere in the processes. But this is not in the interest of the intelligence community. Members of the hacking community who work for law enforcement or intelligence contractors are insofar outside of the value-system of the hacker-community, as their job brings explicit obligations to accept the "rules" of the customer and the legal framework. These rules are brought to the actors in the form of Non-Disclosure Agreements, as well as through civil and criminal law punishment conditions in some cases, which forbid the disclosure of information about details of the work, often as well as of procedures on technical details. Hackers need an atmosphere of openness and freedom to share thoughts, ideas, experiences and values. Quid pro quo exchanges, reporting on people, documentation of those at the camp, as well as the use of legal privilege in service of compromising targets at the camp could all be the norm while having police and intelligence actors based in our community. While it is unavoidable that members of law enforcement and intelligence are sent to hacker meetings to track people´s appearance and activities and to try to infiltrate groups of interest with snitches and influential agents, there are more or less well established procedures within the hacker community to prevent these actors from becoming a part of the community. One of the key components is to share with others that such an actor is present. Another is to reject meeting such actors as friends when they clearly seek to dominate, influence or otherwise disrupt our community. Inclusion It may appear as if there is a contradiction between the open, inclusive, tolerant nature of the hacker communities and avoiding certain actors from becoming part of the scene. However, when considering this it is important to realise that there is a mutual dependency between these values of openness and tolerance and the egalitarian nature of our scene. We cannot meet as equals if we do not set aside our differences in race, gender, sexual orientation and which nation or galaxy we are from. Vice versa, if we are not all equal, if one part is allowed to dominate over the other, we can no longer be as open, inclusive and tolerant as we want to be. Being able to come together within this fragile balance is what gives our camps their magical touch. Now it should be clear that law enforcement and intelligence are not our equal peers; it is in their very essence to be an authority. It is not debatable that they would like to learn from us and it is also not debatable that they're willing to share some information with us personally. This is however the opening salvo in a larger Faustian pact - one that may start with Non-Disclosure agreements and end in legal or other kinds of trouble including extra-legal harassment. Granting such authority a space within our camps and spaces gravely threatens the fragile balance which makes them so special. When we keep in mind that hacker ethics go against the interests of the intelligence community in terms of control and the values we promote are not always compatible with the law - often by being ahead of the law- it seems that conflict is inevitable. The main problem here is not so much the conflict itself, but our unequal stand in it. When dealing with an authority, our peer created conflict resolution processes lose their power. We are less able to resolve matters as peers and we can no longer be open and inclusive to those who stand in conflict with authority. In short, if we value the magic touch of being able to come together in all openness and fully inclusive towards our peers, it is essential that we preserve the balance of equality and avoid authoritarian influence. While the natural solution would be the separation of entities as it was arranged in the past, the debate has the potential to split the scene. Indeed the scene is plagued with false dichotomies and the basis for such a split can already be found in the careless adoption of terms coined by the security industry like white hat vs. black hat and 'ethical' hacker vs. cybercriminal or the pejorative use of script kiddies vs. 'real' hackers. This plays directly into the hands of people wishing to control, suppress and influence our communities. Such an impact is the general goal of some of these state actors, employing the 'good' hackers whilst criminalizing the supposedly 'bad' guys. The acceptance of law enforcement and intelligence institutions in our midst begins a process which normalizes the power relations that prevail in mainstream society within our community. Mixing the hacker-scene with intelligence and law enforcement should be considered harmful and actively limits our ability to create a world based on our values.

12 september: Info-avond "Big Brother is Back"

groente — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 16:07:14 +0000

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De Kritische Studenten Utrecht organiseren een info-avond over NSA, privacy, veiligheid en internetvrijheid.

Datum: do 12 sep, 2013
Tijd: 19:30 - 22:00
Waar: De Kargadoor, Oudegracht 36, Utrecht

Sinds de onthullingen van Edward Snowden is het duidelijk geworden dat overheden op grote schaal het internetverkeer van burgers in de gaten houden. Zo is gebleken dat bedrijven als Microsoft, Google en Facebook door de Amerikaanse inlichtingdienst NSA gedwongen worden toegang te verlenen tot de gegevens van miljoenen gebruikers. Big Brother is terug.

Op deze informatieavond vragen we: hoe en waarom volgen overheden het internetverkeer van burgers? Wat is de rol van het bedrijfsleven hierin? Wat zijn de gevolgen voor internetprivacy en (pers)vrijheid? En op welke manier kunnen we ons tegen dit toezicht beschermen?

Sprekers:

Douwe Schmidt (Bits of Freedom, TA3M, NoisySquare)
Jurre van Bergen (UseOTR, TA3M, Hack in the Box, NoisySquare, Stichting Hart voor Internetvrijheid)

Meer info: http://www.kritischestudenten.nl/agenda/big-brother-is-back-info-avond-over-nsa-privacy-veiligheid-en-internetvrijheid/

Ubica evicted :(

groente — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:33:47 +0000

Fridaynight Ubica, the squat that has kindly given a physical space to PUSCII, got evicted. With the eviction, an end has come to one of the last autonomous spaces in Utrecht. When it was squatted in 1992, the building had suffered from a fire that had ravaged most of the inside. With a lot of hard work and investment, the squatters have managed to renovate the building in a DIY spirit. During its 21 year squatted existence, Ubica became not only a home to many people, it has also offered space to a wide variety of social and political activities. There was PUSCII, vegan restaurant Black Lentil, infoshop Schism, swopshop Tranendal, anarchist library De Zwarte Wurm, Food not Bombs, art-expositions, concerts, film evenings, a free hostel for touring bands, a meetingspace for political groups, cargo-bikes to be borrowed, a workspace for motorized cargo-bikes, etc. etc. The eviction was preceded by a messy series of several courtcases between the owner, the aspiring new owner and the squatters. The current owner, Vloet, is a notorious realestate criminal, infamous and convicted for his abuse of tennants with bizarre extremes including the smearing of feces on the walls of their rooms. Last year, Vloet made an arrangement with Klaassen, who wishes to buy the Ubica and turn it into a fancy hotel. However, after Klaassen acquired all the necessary permits for the rebuilding, Vloet stated he no longer wanted to sell the Ubica. In the meantime, the sale was already used as a ground for eviction. Yet another courtcase, which is planned for next week, is to determine who will become or remain owner of the Ubica... The eviction itself was a fine display of burning streets, fireworks, paintbombs and barricades made of steel and concrete that kept the cops busy for over 15 hours. Excellent diy footage can be found on the Pinknoise website and there's a gallery with pictures here. Sadly, it has left us with 10 comrades imprisoned. Solidarity actions will be announced on indymedia. PUSCII will be organising its events in the ACU (Voorstraat 71) from now on.

groente's blog

Privacy is not terrorism

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1 maart: Puscii Privacy Party @ RooieRat

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12 september: Info-avond "Big Brother is Back"

ksu-bb.jpg

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Ubica evicted :(

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