When police ripped Hoffman’s shirt off his back they found he had a Viet Cong flag painted on his skin! pic from www.racked.com
You might have thought that an American wearing a shirt with the stars and stripes on it would be considered patriotic. Right?
Wrong! In 1968, Abbie Hoffman, co-founder of the Youth International Party was arrested in Washington for wearing a shirt that resembled the design of an American flag.
The prison authorities treated him badly for his “desecration” of the oh-so-blessed flag:
Authorities at the maximum security penitentiary did their worst to harass and humiliate him. They gave him a preventive de-lousing. They took a blood sample against his will, without affording him the sterile courtesy of a disposable syringe.
Two months later, Abbie was hospitalized in New York City for serum hepatitis. The recuperative process didn’t prevent him from helping doctors to organize themselves against some of the oppressive tactics of the medical profession.
In court, Hoffman’s lawyer asked how wearing a flag-shirt could be dishonouring the flag. “Does Uncle Sam, when he marches in the parade on July 4th, dishonor?”
The prosecutor shot down that line of reasoning. “Uncle Sam himself is a national symbol, just as the the flag is a national symbol, and one national symbol, recognized as such, cannot deface and defile and cast contempt upon another national symbol.”
Abbie Hoffman courted controversy and was fine with breaking the law. He wrote a book on how to survive with no money – he titled it Steal this Book. Plenty of would-be readers followed his sage advice and stole copies, leading to a number of book shops refusing to stock it.
In 1973 he was arrested and charged for possession and supply of cocaine when he made a drug deal with undercover police. So in 1974 he went on the run and the police failed to track him down – even though he was hardly keeping a low profile, helping coordinate an environmental movement seeking to protect the Saint Lawrence River, and writing as the “travel” columnist for Crawdaddy magazine under name pseudonym Barry Freed US Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, before whom Hoffman testified at a hearing about winter navigation, said he had no idea the environmental posing as Freed was Hoffman — “and no one else did either.”
He turned himself in eventually, in 1980, and ended up serving four months.
According to ABC News, “the Yippies were known for street theater pranks, and were once referred to as the ‘Groucho Marxists’.” Hoffman himself described his views like this:
You are talking to a leftist. I believe in the redistribution of wealth and power in the world. I believe in universal hospital care for everyone. I believe that we should not have a single homeless person in the richest country in the world. And I believe that we should not have a CIA that goes around overwhelming governments and assassinating political leaders, working for tight oligarchies around the world to protect the tight oligarchy here at home.
In 1989 Hoffman killed himself by taking 150 phenobarbital tablets and liquor. I’m sure he had his reasons – as he did for everything else he ever did.
“Free speech means the right to shout ‘Theater’ in a crowded fire.”
“The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast.”
Google has a new logo and updating its image – but under the surface it’s still that pre-2010 half-evil censor
Eight years after Google pulled out of the censored Chinese internet, they’re back. It’s been reported that the company is working on a mobile search app that would block certain search terms and allow it to reenter the Chinese market.
Google has engaged in the China-controlled internet space before: but in 2010 it pulled out, citing censorship and hacking as reasons. It didn’t pull out completely – it still offered a number of apps to Chinese users, including Google Translate and Files Go, and the company has offices in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai – But the largest of its services – search, email, and the Play app store – are all unavailable in the country.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the Guardian in 2010 that his opposition to enabling censorship was motivated to his being born in Soviet Russia. “It touches me more than other people having been born in a country that was totalitarian and having seen that for the first few years of my life,” he said as Google exited the Chinese market after 4 years of cooperating with the authorities.
But now they’re back, working on a mobile search app that would block certain search terms and black-listed material. The app is being designed for Android devices.
According to tech-based news site The Information, Google is also working on a censored news-aggregation app too. The news app would take its lead from popular algorithmically-curated apps such as Bytedance’s Toutiao – released for the Western market as “TopBuzz” – that eschew human editors in favour of personalised, highly viral content.
Patrick Poon, China Researcher at Amnesty International, called Google’s return to censorship “a gross attack on freedom of information and internet freedom.”
In putting profits before human rights, he said, Google would be setting a chilling precedent and handing the Chinese government a victory.
This is important because many computer users will set a search site as their homepage and even find content by entering key-words into the url bar of their browser. Because of Google’s ubiquity, it is frequently set as default search engine on browsers, meaning that millions of users will find that their experience of the internet is that delivered through the lens of Google. If that lens is smudged or cracked by censorship, all these users’ internet experience is skewed. So it is essential to highlight the fact that Google is not the neutral, trustworthy agent that many users think it to be.
GreatFire, an organisation that monitors internet censorship and enables circumvention of the “Great Firewall of China”, said the move “could be the final nail in the Chinese internet freedom coffin” and that “the ensuing crackdown on freedom of speech will be felt around the globe.”
Part 3 of an occasional series of videos about the Darkweb, hidden services, anonymity… all the good stuff that we need, and need to know about!
Excellent Defcon presentation by Adrian Crenshaw detailing how some Tor users got caught. TL;DR: it’s all down to faulty OpSec. Be careful all the time, use your common sense, and all well be well. So long as there aren’t 0days in Tor Browser that the Man knows about and the devs don’t…
But this isn’t too long to watch. So watch it! Even if you don’t use the darknet it is hugely informative and entertaining. And if you do use Tor or otherwise have an interest in anonymity (which means you!), it is doubly informative and entertaining… in fact it is essential for everyone to watch. So watch it!
I try to blog as often as I can. But I’m really depressed that only my poems get Likes. My political, cultural and other entries get next to no interest. I’m not going to stop posting stuph about politics, culture, privacy, security and the other subjects that get me riled. And the poetry of course (bread and circuses FFS). I’d just be happier if my “serious” posts got more attention.
Also, even the poems get next-to-no Comments. I need Comments so I can hopefully improve. Please please, poetry Likers, could you also Comment? I’d really appreciate it. Thanks for reading.
UPDATE: as of 18 April (day after posting) I’ve received two Likes: from anthonymize and Juansen Dizon. Just general, click-the-Like-button likes, and no comments. Likes please me, as I have an ego that enjoys beeing stroked; but the whole point of this post is that I want Comments too. If you’re too shy to make Comments readable by everyone who visits the blog post, there’s a Contact Form button at the top of the page. You can put your Comments there, abd if you want anonymity that’s what I’ll give you – your name etc will not be kept on record if that’s what you want.
Leave Comments, damn your eyes!
This blog isn’t an anthology of what I consider my best work. I put works-in-progress here, meh stuph that I’d love to be reviewed and love to get Comments on. So pleeeze! – if you have the time, write something in the Comments or Contact Form. Comment on my blog, I’ll come look at your blog, if you have a blog of course, and if I can create a window in my already bursting bag of commitments. That last bit is a joke of course. But in all serious, Comment on me and I’ll Comment on yours. Quid Pro Quo I think it’s called: washing each others’ backs.
If you’re at all interested in the case of NSA whistle-blower Ed Snowden, you may be interested in watching the excellent documentary film Citizen 4. You can download it from here. Well worth checking out.
If you want to contact the Conservative Party about anything, but didn’t want to buy a stamp for the letter (maybe because you don’t earn a living wage, or your benefits have been sanctioned…), fear not! On Facebook I found a Freepost address so you can send mail to the Tories without worrying about the cost of postage. You still have to provide writing paper and envelope yourself… but every little bit helps, doesn’t it?
The address is:
Freepost RTHS-TLXL-XKXK The Conservative Party 4 Matthew Parker Street LONDON SW1H 9HQ
I haven’t actually tried it myself, as I only just discovered it. I think it would be great if anyone who writes to the address reports the success or failure of their attempt; so if the Freepost no longer works I can edit this blog post accordingly. Similarly, if anyone knows of other Freepost addresses, or 0800 phone numbers so we can call them for free, I’ll gladly add them to this post. Information sets us free. And there’s something extra satisfying about sending an actual letter through the post rather than emails, don’t you think?
Please don’t use this address to send the government any offensive or hate mail. That would possibly be a crime, and in no way do I encourage you to do so! Thanks.
Send the prime minister a letter today! I’m sure Dave is looking forward to a robust conversation with the British electorate!
Nowadays, there’s a lot going around about online secrecy, security, anonymity, theft of bank details and personal info… and a whole lot more. For instance, did you know that you could decide to take advantage of McDonald’s free wifi while supping on a coffee… and someone else, with a gizmo like the Hak5 Pineapple, could snaffle all your data right out of the air. And if you’d engaged in online shopping or banking, or even just putting in a password, your economic and personal freedom could possibly be stolen!
Of course, these “man-in-the-middle” attacks are nothing new. But as tech like the pineapple gets more sophisticated, and cheaper, there are more and more evil computer-aided villains out there willing to sit near free hotspots waiting for a non-security-minded person to get tangled in their web of deceit. In fact, these crooks don’t necessarily need a laptop to carry out these attacks – a smart phone will do much of the time. And think about it, how many bods with smart phones do you see in McDonald’s, Burger King’s, Subway, etc etc? That’s a lot of potential crime… and as anyone who’s suffered this before will tell you, re-securing your bank and other details is no laughing matter!
One way round these criminals is with the use of a Virtual Private Network (or VPN). When you’re connected to the wev via a VPN, all your outgoing and incoming data is encrypted, meaning that a potential eacesdropper can’t make heads or tails out of anything you send or receive. An excellent VPN service provider is ibVPN (invisible browser VPN). You can get a free trial, it increases your online privacy and securely unblocks geo-restricted websites (eg you can watch BBC iPlayer even when you’re not in Britain, if you use a Brit-based server). You can choose from +95 VPN servers in 39 countries, 63 locations, including servers set up for p2p (bittorrent etc) traffic. You can surf the internet completely anonymously – hence the name “invisible browser”. And their online support is extremely good – they have helped me out in the past, figuring our the most baffling problems.
Despite what you may hear on the news, enccryption and secrecy is not just for perverts, crooks or the paranoid. In fact, that kind of thinking actually helps the crooks, putting you off using this technology to save you from criminals.
Believe me, sending an unencrypted email is like sening a letter on a postcard – easily read by anyone who can get his or her paws on it. And with the scanning tech available, just about anyone can get a look. Yes, you might not mind sending a “wish you were here” postcard to your mates when on holiday… but would you send sensitive info on the back of a postcard? I know I wouldn’t.
Don’t fall prey to the crooks. Use a service like a VPN. And if you choose to use a VPN, ibVPN is a very good option. They provide a very good service.
Go on, get a free trial from ibVPN. No commitment necessary, and it could save you from the robbers and scammers!
PS: Are you sick of crap mobile phone service? Join GiffGaff, the mobile network run by YOU! Get a free SIM card here.
I am a member of online campaign groups like 38 Degrees and Open Rights Group. These are groups that ask members what campaigns it should get involved with, then the group will call on its members to send to local MPs. ministers and other such, so our will is focused and targeted and helps ensure that the government and others can’t just ignore us. Divided we are nothing. United we can do anything… well, the government can’t just ignore us.
My local MP is the Tory Robin Walker. Incidentally, his late father Peter Walker (1932-2010) was MP for Worcester until 1992, when he resigned as MP and was sent to the House of Lords to do his masters’ work. Robin has been a pretty engaged MP – he has replied to every email I’ve sent him (he uses official House of Commons writing paper and envelopes – you would have thought that Parliament had discouraged use of snail mail) but only once has he expressed agreement with my point, about the Defamation Bill). Most recently he sent me a (probably form) letter telling me how important it was that the government keep my communication and other logs for all eternity just in case I were a terrorist or paedophile. He wrote:
Communications data is vital for the police in their fight against crime, including serious offences, such as child abuse, drug-dealing and terrorism.
Note the use of the “big 3″: child abuse, drug-dealing and terrorism”. The suggestion is that opposing the Data Communications Data Bill is, or supports, nonces, pushers and suicide bombers. Thanks Robin; yet another reason to avoid voting for him when the general election comes round.
Right now, I don’t have a clue who’ll get my vote: it won’t be the Conservatives, the Lib Dems are no longer a viable choice…if Ed Miliband can drag Labour back to the left I might put my mark by his name; but how likely will that happen?
Brits are wage-slaves, with mortgages and their children’s educations keeping the populace keeping their nose to the stone, while bankers, corporate directors and other vested interests keep their money in tax havens. But don’t worry: the Conservatives want your personal data, phone logs, emails, bowel movements, whatever, stored for all eternity in a massive computer system that probably fail (as do most government-contracted computer systems do). We’re stuck with this situation unless someone does something about it.
Who’s your MP? Does he care about you? I’d love to see along string of Comments to this post, telling us how our MPs act for our best interests. And my current voting advice regarding the next election: go to the voting station, spoil your ballot (I like to write at the bottom of the voting card “None of the above” and a X in a box next to it), put it in the black box, and be on your way. This is not apathy, this is showing the establishment that the status quo must end.
This case stemmed from a message to Louise Mensche after she said that sites like Twitter should be closed down if they were used to coordinate riots, as was alleged after last summer’s riots. Zimmermann sent her a message saying she was “the slut of Twitter” and went on:
We are Anonymous and we do not like rude cunts like you and your nouveau riche husband Peter Mensch. We are inside your computer, all your phones everywhere and inside your homes.
“So get off Twitter. We see you are still on Twitter. We have sent a camera crew to photograph you and your kids and we will post it over the net including Twitter, cuntface. You now have Sophie’s Choice: which kid is to go. One will. Count on it cunt. Have a nice day
Certainly a nasty message.But most regular internet users would probably shrug it off as the meaningless trolling it was. But not poor Louise. She called the police and arranged security for her family. In a victim impact statement she said she had taken the threats seriously. Personally I would advise her to grow a thicker skin if she wants to continue a career in politics. But her case went to court, Zimmermann was punished… and now the government is planning legislation that will force websites and ISPs to help identify anyone who is accused of alleged defamation and trolling. Where is the line that separates free speech and trolling? Who will get to decide that?
I don’t like the look of this. It is a clear attack on freedom of expression, all wrapped up in the Mensche case so we think of (idle) threats to children and are distracted from the fact that the government will be able to easily track down anyone who posts material that the government doesn’t like. This isn’t just ridiculous – it has very dark ramifications in a supposed democracy.
That’s one plus point to emerge from this case. The only plus point. Which is pretty well negated by the prospect of the government’s plans to take away our right to privacy and to freedom of expression. This is seriously bad news.
The Wikipedia-led “black Wednesday” seems to have done some good. SOPA and PIPA votes have been postponeded, seemingly because of the onine action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid said: “The decision to postpone the votes was made in light of “recent events,” – taken to be a reference to Wednesday’s day of action.
But remember, the votes have been postponed, not cancelled. The issue is bound to resurface at some point, probably while the world’s attention has been drawn elsewhere by a tsunami or something. So Watch This Space – and other spaces too, I’m not exactly the most regular of correspondents. SOPA and PIPA are hurt but not dead. We gotta be ready to administer the coup de grace.
Posted by Martin X 
I HATE HATE!!! 