The Fappening, The Snappening and the End of Privacy

[The following post is by TDV Chief Editor, Jeff Berwick]

Many of my views, which just a few years ago were considered radical, have gone mainstream. I predict that my views on the Fappening and the Snappening, which right now might be unorthodox, will also be more accepted in the coming years. While a few years ago I was considered by many colleagues to be a tinfoil hat wearer, many of them come to me today to learn about ways around the ubiquitous, governmental spy networks. They all feel the same the way I do about it. 

In 2012 I proclaimed, “The Death of Privacy“, bringing up things like how the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) will massively increase capital controls and limit any financial privacy.  I was one of the first ringing the alarm bells on FATCA (and offering leading edge services to protect yourself from it). FATCA is now rolling into high gear worldwide… and I spoke about how the US government is recording nearly everything you do (to many catcalls and denunciations of myself being a crazy conspiracy theorist).  Both of those items are now just accepted as fact.

One of my points in that article was that I don’t mind if private companies are tracking my interests using digital technology.  If they are going to target advertising at me I’d much prefer it was for something that I am interested in rather than just my hourly spam offering viagra.

You won’t find me protesting new technologies like Google StreetView, Google glasses or any other sort of privacy compromising technologies unless of course they are in the hands of governments and their cronies.  Although, with Google, how connected it is to the US government is becoming a very valid question. As I wrote,

…The problem with privacy arises, as with almost all things, with government.  Governments are thieving, criminal organizations who falsely presume to have some right to own you and your property just because you had the misfortune to be born in the particular geographic area where they run rampant.  They are extortionists.  And it makes sense to avoid giving extortionists any more info than possible about yourself and your assets for fear of even further theft.

But, here is the bad news for all you privacy buffs.  Privacy is dead.

With the Fappening and the Snappening, this has never been more true. The infamous iCloud leak, known as the Fappening, caused costernation for celebrities. Then the so-called Snappening caused costernation for the general public. Photos of 13-17 year olds are expected to be found among the photos from the 200,000 pictures leaked from the message app Snapchat, which told users photos would be deleted within seconds.

In regards to photos you take somehow ending up on the internet for everyone to see I would suggest that in today’s technological age that if you take nude photos of yourself that you can pretty much expect someone will get their hands on them.  Furthermore, with the technological advances in the size and quality of digital cameras you can be almost assured that you are on video almost anywhere you go outside of your own home (and in many cases even inside your own home if you ever have workers, friends and even family members there).

So, in that sense, I think people should relax a little bit about it and become more comfortable with their own body.  It is, after all, just our physical self.  The world has too much taboo about our own natural bodies.  Especially in the US where one slip at a recent Super Bowl left Janet Jackson’s breast hanging out caused a massive uproar in the still puritan-style US.

PROTECTING YOURSELF

However, aside from just realizing that you are likely on camera, somewhere, somehow (including your own webcam which can easily be hacked) at almost all times it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to protect yourself from unwanted intrusions into your private life.

Edward Snowden just recently made this point very clearly.

Last week Snowden said that Dropbox and other services are “hostile to privacy,” imploring web users to cease using unencrypted communication.  Especially since war criminal, Condoleeza Rice, just recently joined their board of directors. He made it clear why we need to protect some of our communications. To put it simply, we are now slaves. 

“We are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We’re subjects, and we have rulers,” Snowden told The New Yorker magazine.

Snowden went on,“When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights – you don’t have to justify why you need freedom of speech,” Snowden said. “We’re talking about dropping programs that are hostile to privacy.” 

The good news is that people all around the globe are working on bringing new technologies to the table to protect our photos, videos texts and other data. 

A MENU OF ENCRYPTED OPTIONS

Some of the most influential people on the planet, alongisde Edward Snowden, are looking to put an end to government intrusion into our personal lives. Kim Dotcom was kidnapped and tortured by the US government, and this only made the MegaUpload founder stronger. After sitting in jail, he went on to found Mega 2.0. Within in the next three years Kim Dotcom has a personal goal of encrypting half of the internet.

Kim Dotcom has discussed a new type of internet, and many people are working on their own version of this idea, with the most intriguing utilizing bitcoin-centered blockchain technology.

The Maidsafe team is one group of people working towards a decentralized, uncontrollable internet. They have people like TechCrunch columnist Jon Evan supporting their notion that Bitcoin technology can save the internet.

“The blockchain technology that underlies Bitcoin is a major technical breakthrough that could, in time, revolutionize both the Internet and the financial industry as we know them,” writes Evans on TechCrunch, “and the first steps of that potential revolution are now under way.”

Evans explained how Bitcoin technology can change the net, “The ‘blockchain’ – the engine on which Bitcoin is built – is a new kind of distributed consensus system that allows transactions, or other data, to be securely stored and verified without any centralized authority at all, because (to grossly oversimplify) they are validated by the entire network. Those transactions don’t have to be financial; that data doesn’t have to be money. The engine that powers Bitcoin can be used for a whole array of other applications…”

Imagine a world in which websites don’t exist on central servers but are streamed by thousands and million (if not billions) of personal devices around the world.  Another TechCrunch reporter, Natasha Lomas, believes in a post-server internet.

She stated, “What that means in practice is a network that does away with an intermediary layer of servers and datacenters – replacing that with peer-to-peer infrastructure [...] the users of the network are also acting as the network infrastructure by donating a portion of their spare hard drive capacity – with built in incentives for them to do so in the form of a network specific cryptocurrency.”

We’ve been on the bleeding edge of covering this transition to de-centralized money, banking and even blockchain property titles and marriages as I covered in this recent interview with Matt McKibbin of BitNation (who is a sponsor of Anarchapulco this Feb 27-Mar 1).

Until the internet does become more encrypted or complete alter-internets that are encrypted and decentralized, like Maidsafe, come into being, look at making sure all your important info is encrypted now.

Instead of using Dropbox, Snowden recommends using SpiderOak. The storage startup takes more security measures than Dropbox, like not storing users’ passwords. SpiderOak also encrypts data on users machines, even before it is sent to the company’s servers. The company does not have any readable version of users’ passwords or stored data.

When the government asks SpiderOak for your data, all it gives them is a scramble of numbers and letters. Just don’t forget your password.  The Chicago startup has 1 million users about and 42 employees.

As well, PGP, a way of encrypting emails, has finally become a lot easier to use than in the past.  There is a new plug-in that you can put into your browser (Chrome and Firebox so far) called Mailvelope, which allows you to use many popular webmail interfaces like Gmail with full encrypted security.  It is the easiest one I’ve used to date and I implore you to begin using PGP in important emails. Mac mail has this capacity built in.

It’s a technological race right now between those who want to control people and those who want to be free from control.  The more that you can make changes in your personal life to encrypt your data the more that freedom wins.  As it is right now, most internet traffic is completely unencrypted, including your email, and can be read by anyone who has access (the NSA being topmost).  By encrypting your communications you limit their ability to monitor and cause their computers to process more data which is completely unusable by them. As far as I am concerned, if you don’t actively oppose the NSA, then you have no right to protest other hackers. It is a double-standard. Let’s keep in mind the NSA get plenty perverted, spying on their crushes, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends.

Unless or until we reach the point where all communications are decentralized and encrypted, including the transfer of value (bitcoin), those who want to control and extort us will be able to continue to do so.

In the meantime, if you don’t want naked photos of yourself on the internet you should probably just always remain clothed. 

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