Martial Law is Here: Here’s How to Protect Yourself

Yesterday, with the help of Free Code Camp’s Quincy Larson, we showed you how to encrypt your entire life in an hour or less

If you haven’t already, it’d be a wise choice to follow the step-by-step instructions in Quincy’s great guide.

We’re placing an emphasis on privacy this week because we know, down the pike, things aren’t going to be very pretty for the unprotected. Black-hat hackers are getting smarter, savvier and bolder. Moreover, we are living in what Paul Rosenberg calls the “new martial law.”

In a moment, Mr. Rosenberg will talk about the new martial law, what it looks like, why it’s accelerating, and why, when it comes to online privacy, “free” is the most dangerous word in the English language.

Before we bring Rosenberg onto the stage, though, let me ask you a simple question: How far are you willing to take it to protect your online privacy? It’s an important question. If you’re dealing with sensitive stuff (and we all, to some extent, are), I suggest you take it to the next level.

For that, we turn to Paul Rosenberg of Freeman’s Perspective and his privacy guide. Click the image below or here to open up your own copy…

I’m only beginning to get my black belt in privacy jiu-jitsu. (Meaning, I’ve only taken about half of the steps you’ll see immediately below.)

So, don’t worry.

Yes, trust me, I know this tech stuff can get overwhelming. It’s OK.

Breathe.

Baby steps.

Just keep Rosenberg’s guide in a memorable place and refer back to it when you’re reminded. And, yes, there will be events in the future which will remind you — again and again — why laying the levels of protection on REAL thick is important. (One of these events will undoubtedly be reading Rosenberg’s article below.)

The low-hanging fruit always gets picked first. Never be a low-hanging fruit.

Here’s the quick overview of what you’ll find in the guide. Just, for now, keep it in mind.

Accept Software Updates:As much as there is reason to be leery of updates, it is necessary to take them. Every time a new security exploit comes along, operating systems (and some other programs) are upgraded to seal the hole. This is important.

Have a firewall:Your local machine needs to be guarded from local attacks.

You don’t have to pay big money for the “fix everything forever” firewalls, but you do need something. ZoneAlarm makes a nice free firewall (including an outgoing firewall) and their upgrades provide anti-virus and protection for a very reasonable cost.

Have an outgoing firewall: If your regular firewall doesn’t stop all outgoing data, get one. Little Snitch is an excellent outgoing firewall for Macs.

Have an anti-virus program: This is usually built into your firewall program, as it is in Zone Alarm.

Browser: Use Firefox as your browser.

[More detailed instructions for making Firefox as anonymous as possible in Rosenberg’s guide, here.]

STOP using webmail. Close your Google and Yahoo accounts. (Just do it.)

Get a privacy-centered email provider. That means that they have no web interface (the one exception for webmail is Sciphered). They should not store or use your data, and they should clean your mail’s headers. Use Cryptogroup, JumpShipMail, or Riseup.net.

You must also: • Turn off Geolocation: Get to Advanced settings (either via Tools > Options or Preferences), click the Config Editor button, ignore the warning, scroll down to geo.enabled, double-click to change the default value to False. • Do not load remote content. (Thunderbird will ask.) • Don’t allow add-ons. • Do not allow delivery notifications. • Don’t let JavaScript run in your mail program: No plugins, no Java.

Hide your IP address: This requires: • Tor, I2P or a good VPN. • Multiple hops. (Not a cheap, single-hop VPN.) • Out of band authentication. • No single point of failure.

Full Disk encryption: If you run a Mac, use its File Vault disk encryption. If you run Windows you are are caught between a rock and a hard place. You could use Truecrypt version 7.1a, but there are serious doubts about its security. You could also use Bitlocker (which is included in most newer Windows versions), but it is unsure how secure it is, even against small institutional attackers. Instead of not using any fulldisk encryption, use one of these two. But please consider switching to Linux or BSD if your data is valuable and/or sensitive

Get text encryption: You can get PGP. It costs a bit, and you’ll want to turn off all the extras, but it comes with support. Or you can get GPG (for Windows); it’s free, and you can find install videos on YouTube. Start using GPG and Enigmail: Thunderbird has a nice extension called Enigmail, that works with GPG to encrypt your emails, more or less automatically.

Chat: Stop using standard chat clients and use Pidgin. Enable OTR for chat, or chat inside of an anonymity network. Change your machine address for mobile computing: Get Mac Changer to change your laptop’s Mac address. For Windows. Certificates: Firefox will handle these for you. Be careful, but not everything that gets flagged as an unknown certificate is dangerous. Read the warnings carefully; they usually explain the situation.

Voice: Ditch Skype, get Jitsi and sign-up with a free VoIP provider or with a provider that accepts anonymous payments.

Block Facebook and Twitter: Use the Priv3 extension to Firefox mentioned above. Get ready to ditch Windows and even Apple: Both mega-corps are moving to the “walled garden” model. Move to Linux. It’s not hard anymore.

Identity: Start using pseudonyms. You can get very detailed pseudonyms from Fake Name Generator.

Backing up: If you use an online backup, encrypt the data before you upload it. Lots of them say “we’re encrypted,” but that’s only for transmission; they store your data in plain text.

Storage: Be careful where you leave your data. If it isn’t under your control, encrypt it. DO NOT use Facebook, Google or Twitter.

Smartphones: Throw away your apps; their primary purpose is to spy on you. If think you can’t, read their privacy statements. Stop doing everything from your Smartphones – they ALWAYS give the network your location. Cell phone are tracking devices that also allow you to make phone calls.

Stay up-to-date: Find a computer security forum and check in regularly. Understand the threats and stay current. (Shadowlife.cc is a good general privacy source.)

Commerce: Start paying for things with Bitcoin, cash and metals. All other methods double as a tracking tools.

Mesh networks: Learn how to build them and use them. It’s cheap and easy, and may be very important one of these days. (PDF.) Think about packet radio afterward.

Educate yourself: Read and learn about liberty, that your life matters, and that you have a right to live it as you wish.

Now, without further ado, let’s get to why, now more than ever, privacy protection is mega-important.

Here’s Paul Rosenberg to rap about the “new martial law” and why “free” is the most dangerous word in the English language.

Read on…

Paul Rosenberg

When a military boss is installed as the head of government, displacing civilian leadership, we call it martial law. In the 20^th century we expected to see this as the general of an army kicking out a president and taking over.

The 21^st century has brought us a variation on that theme, but it still involves military organizations ruling over everyone else.

Right now, we’re living under groups that have inserted themselves into the most intimate parts of our lives and stand ready to order force down upon us. The people doing this are a variety of intelligence agencies, and I’d like you to remember that the NSA is the military. So are the Defense Intelligence Agency and half a dozen other spy units.

Here’s a passage from Julian Assange in Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet that makes my point well:

When you communicate over the internet, when you communicate using mobile phones… your communications are being intercepted by military intelligence organizations… It’s a soldier between you and your wife as you’re SMSing. We are all living under martial law as far as our communications are concerned, we just can’t see the tanks – but they are there.

But it’s not just the military that has displaced traditional power. It’s Google (partnership with the Department of State, long-standing CIA ties), Facebook (FBI, CIA, who knows), and a host of other “free” services.

As for bringing force down upon us via new processes, consider these cases:

• Marine Brandon Raub tossed into a psych ward for his Facebook posts.
• Stupidity on Facebook triggers a hotel raid.
• Facebook is building censorship tools to keep the Chinese government happy.
• A mom in California is arrested for selling food on Facebook.
• A gay couple in Indonesia are arrested after posting an “incriminating” photo to Facebook.
• Facebook users are arrested in Thailand for mocking the boss.
• Facebook develops yet more surveillance systems.

Perhaps a few of these didn’t involve Facebook corporate or American enforcers, but the point stands: Facebook is the evidence gatherer, with a direct, automated connection to their enforcement partners.

Everyone Is Targeted

We’re used to thinking of policemen working backward from the crime: Get some clues, follow them, then target an individual or two for closer scrutiny. But that’s not the way it’s done now.

Now, under the new enforcement regime, everyone is targeted… in advance.

This has been done in the name of efficiency and safety of course… because that’s what sells. Targeting individuals after the fact “might allow something bad to happen,” and so the aforementioned outfits simply suck it all up – every website you visit, every mouse click, every email, every text… from everyone.

And by the way, there are probably a dozen projects that want to use that data to predict crime. In fact, that’s already being done. Lampposts are now installed with hidden microphones. Again, they are gathering evidence on everyone, in advance. And this on top of cameras everywhere.

So, almost everything you do is already organized to be “held against you in a court of law.” The evidence has been gathered and is available at all times. The new martial law is already here.

And It Gets Worse

All that data is not used merely for enforcement – not by a long stretch. A far more efficient use of it is to manipulate you. But whether they’re nudging you to a more socially useful opinion or to buy a different pair of shoes, that’s how Google, Facebook, and the rest make their money.

Their users don’t pay them.

Simply as a means of increasing profit, once these outfits already have all the data, why not use it for three things, or twenty, or a hundred?

Someone said to me the other day: Free is the most dangerous word in the English language. And indeed it is, because free has brought a new kind of martial law upon us all. And what’s worse, millions are addicted to it and many more millions don’t want to know.

And if you’re tempted to think that this doesn’t involve the military, remember that the NSA and GCHQ were teaching military operatives to manipulate people on the internet years ago. Are we really to assume that they haven’t automated this?

New Laws Will Accomplish Nothing

Please don’t let yourself think that new laws will fix this, because they won’t. Laws take long periods of time to write and still longer to implement. By the time they have any effect, technology has moved along and new ways to gather and abuse data have replaced the old ones… then it’ll be years before those are outlawed, presuming that enough pressure is applied.

And pressure is no guarantee either, since the data-grabbers throw a lot more money around Washington than you do.

What Should We Do?

I’ve explained what to do several times already, so I won’t repeat it here. But the essential step is to recognize what’s going on. Without that, nothing else matters.

The truth is that we’re already living under a new kind of martial law. Either we face it or we don’t.

Regards,

Paul Rosenberg
Founder, Freeman’s Perspective

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