JED, NPD and *some* ARA comments (Was: AKA)

[Flint Jones <flint@nsa.secret.org>]

[: hacktivism :]

> Kind of puts Jam Echelon Day, essentially a useless waste of bandwidth, to
> complete shame. Why is it even going forward when we all know that they 
> are not searching for keywords so much as patterns? 

To clarify, I believe the cgi scripts on the "Jam Echelon Day" website
actually create several patterns instead of just keywords.  Whether these
are the patterns that Echelon searches for, is a good question.  Also,
undoubtly if Echelon does exist then the people involved are quite aware
of JED, have seen all the information on it and played with all the code
to edit out phrases that would be generated by it... atleast for JED.
Its pretty doubtful even if you had a decentralized mass attack on
echelon, whether it would do any good... and it certainly wouldn't be
sustainable.  We'd all be better off if we just started sending all our
email encrypted.

But, the media bought into the idea completely and promoted the idea of
illegal government surveillance.  Perhaps thats in their interest to
inspire paranoia, or whatver... perhaps it plays into the idea of a
omniscient police state; but popularly I think people will be unwilling to
allow their privacy to be destroyed on the possiblity of perhaps catching
a few "bad guys".  Ofcourse, maybe its just ammunition for the Electronic
Pearl Harbor/Cyber War nuts in the military-industrial complex and
security software firms... who'll want to further enclose and control what
little democratic and activist work can be done on the net.

If your involved with criminal justice issues, I'm sure you appreciate
what limited protections most people have against wire-tapping,
eavesdropping... but also how easily governments ignore those protections
and the increasing surveillance of the populace.

JED is about as useful as the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), it
encourage mass partcipation so that people will "Do Something!", its a
symbol of protest, and it catches a lot of headlines.  It probably
qualifies as art, or something. "This is not a JED".  I don't know, to
post modern for me.  

> Are you, the organizers,
> prepared for the blood spilling on your hands if the disinformation you've
> created causes an unknowing Police Brutality Day activist to be arrested
> or worse?

So, don't spread disinformation because pigs might beat up an anti-pig
activist?  If echelon exists, I pretty much doubt that they are sharing at
all their collected information with local police.  

I think, the point of Jam Echelon Day (in addition to whatver medicore
benefit it has to confusing law enforcement authorities who are monitoring
activists in conjunction with Police Brutality Day) is to raise awareness
about how governments could be involved in electronic wire tapping, etc...
if you choose to measure it that way, they've already succeeded and
gathered quite alot of press.  

Likewise, the emphasis on linking it up with PBD promoted the event in
venues that would otherwise never mention it.  The organizers felt so
strongly about promoting PBD that they made extra effort to stop
disinformation about their disinformation campaign with a hijack it by
certain elements which wished to delink the events for a more reactionary
agenda.

Its basically asking if someone at a PBD event throws a rock, if they hold
the whole wait of the ensuing riot because of it?  And, undoubtly... some
rocks somwhere will be thrown.  Maybe it'll be after the cops start
beating activists up... maybe before, but it'll happen.

PBD and JED are probably more similar in what they accomplish and do, than
the particular specifics of how they are carried out.  Personally, I think
we should protest the authority of the growing security forces, rahter
than not for fear that we'll be beaten because of it.

Perhaps we'd all be better off if we stop using phrases like "so-called
hacktivists", each claiming an exclusive definition of the term, or lame
flames about actions.  This is not to stifle debate on hacktivism or
hacks, rather that those criticisms have a bit more constructiveness in
them.  Scriptkiddies are going to hack, no matter what we say or do... and
some of them out of political reasons... we should try and work towards
working with this phenomenon (I hesitate to call it a movment, is a tatic
a movement?) in the best way we can.

No Pasaran!

Solid,
	Flint

P.S.  Nazis in Sweden just assassinated a syndicalist activist in the SAC
http://www.ainfos.ca/ainfos01746.html



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