Govt can make you unlock your phone

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Noting the arrival of "biometric" authentication methods on smartphones, Garrison Center Director Thomas L. Knapp argues it "comes with a cost".

The focus here is on using one's fingerprint to unlock one's phone. Considering rulings in Virginia and California that you can be "forced to put your finger on the phone to unlock it", the technology is being used as an excuse for US authorities to violate the Constitution in new ways.

As explained by Knapp, "Giving the police access to your phone is no different than telling them about every call you made". This goes against the strong components of the law that prevent you from "testifying against yourself, which you cannot constitutionally be required to do."

The state is normally limited in when and how it can coerce individuals to incriminate themselves. For example, "If the door is locked, they can break it down, but you don’t have to unlock it for them. If they find your hidden compartment full of evidence, they find it. But you don’t have to show them where it is, or even tell them that it exists."

What will you do about the increasing use of biometric data, when you know you can be coerced to unlock your property using it? For now, Knapp advises you need to "secure your phone with a long and complex pass code, not with your fingerprint."

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— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) May 3, 2016

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Anti-encryption to destroy Silicon Valley

The Blog

What will happen if a recent draft anti-encryption bill gets passed in the US? No less than the evisceration of America's tech industry.

Prepared by US Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the "bill to require the provision of data in an intelligible format..." demands US tech companies create vulnerabilities to allow encryption to be easily broken. Commenting that the idea seems to work off delusions that only law-abiding American companies could possibly encrypt anything, Garrison Center Director Thomas L. Knapp believes "this bill is custom-made to destroy the US tech industry".

According to the Garrison Center analysis of April 12, such efforts are doomed to relocate all credible companies specializing in encryption offshore. The law will stimulate foreign developers to race ahead in providing encryption services in other countries where they are safe from the authoritarian meddling of the US regime. Not only would this improve the standing of other countries and diminish the US regime in terms of liberty, but it would likely cause the US economy to tank.

It will get a lot worse for the US if this bill becomes a reality. As well as undermining the faith of US consumers in their own tech industry and forcing them to look to foreign companies for privacy protections, the bill is utterly useless as kind of defense against terrorism. Effective encryption is simply a mathematical certainty at this point, and will continue to be abundantly available to everyone from terrorists to essentially any regular citizen trying to avoid surveillance.

However, the US regime will never accept the reality that there is anything it can't control, the analysis continues. According to Knapp, "Nothing’s more important to a politician than believing he or she is in control".

The US regime is so infatuated with the idea of full-spectrum dominance over its own people that it will be unable to resist meddling in the tech industry. It will happen even if this bad course causes the US economy to tank, as industry flees abroad.

Warmonger scum (@HillaryClinton), not #libertarians, isolate + destroy US: @TheGarrisonCntr https://t.co/tWpkupqbsY pic.twitter.com/tRQdIoUJKJ

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) April 13, 2016

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FBI exposed as child pornographers

The Blog

Decrying the FBI's "law enforcement gone rogue", Garrison Center director Thomas L. Knapp points out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation broke the law by running an illegal website distributing child pornography.

Similar to other sting operations, in which a large amount of the harm is done by the FBI itself, (such as persuading extremists to commit acts of terror so they can then be arrested) this one involved the FBI taking it upon itself to run an illegal website - a type of cyber sting operation.

Choosing not to "cheer on the white knights who protect society from the scourge of child pornography" this time, considering their methods, the Garrison director sums up how the scandal transpired in a recent March 22 post, as follows:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, it seems, has been moonlighting as a provider of child pornography. After locating and seizing the servers of a child porn site on the “dark web,” known as Play Pen and reachable only via the Tor browser, the FBI decided not to shut the site down. Instead, they kept it running for two weeks, using it to spread malware that could identify and locate a handful of the site’s visitors. The vast majority of the 200,000 people downloading child porn from the site went on their way unmolested (pun intended). A few whose computers were mis-configured so as to be vulnerable to the FBI’s trick were arrested.

Whistle-blowers (this time Free Talk Live), as usual, came under attack by US law enforcement for exposing the government's tactics. Knapp deems the FBI, in light of these revelations, to be "child pornographers" while "their victims are journalists who exposed the FBI’s role" in the scandal.

Want a #Dragon? #synbio might eventually have them https://t.co/nUqLvBOj09 pic.twitter.com/9GW9U23lM3

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) March 23, 2016

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Encryption, anonymity as human rights

The Blog

In May of 2015, a UN report asserted that secure encryption and anonymity on the Internet are human rights.

From the UN report:

Encryption and anonymity, today’s leading vehicles for online security, provide individuals with a means to protect their privacy, empowering them to browse, read, develop and share opinions and information without interference and enabling journalists, civil society organizations, members of ethnic or religious groups, those persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, activists, scholars, artists and others to exercise the rights to freedom of opinion and expression. 

The US regime has vowed and sought to implement a so-called "golden key" that will allow it to break through all encryption, contrary to the UN's above recognition of encryption as a human right. As of Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013, they were making significant gains against such protection, but they had not yet succeeded.

Dan Froomkin at The Intercept had written on the month of the report's release:

Encryption is not the refuge of scoundrels, as Obama administration law-enforcement officials loudly proclaim – it is an essential tool needed to protect the right of freedom of opinion and expression in the digital age, a new United Nations report concludes.

More recently, at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) in September, Jason Farrell concluded, "Governments do not have a right to see every communication on the web", and dismissed the so-called national security arguments of the White House. He wrote that "Even if the battle against terrorism, drug cartels, hackers, spies or other criminals becomes more difficult, “going dark” remains the right of all human beings."

A "golden key" to thwart encryption will not just allow the US regime to aggressively monitor and follow its own citizens without any legal justification, but will allow repressive regimes all over the world to do the same once they get access to US government information. Therefore, what the US is doing has become an example of what Martin Luther King Jr called 'an injustice anywhere being a threat to justice everywhere', potentially allowing the entrenchment of dictatorships all over the world.

However, the US's development of the ultimate tools of dictatorship and the repression of opposition should not be surprising. In all international conflicts, the US has proven repeatedly that it is on the side of armed coups and repressive dictatorships, using their territory to extra-judicially torture and murder its opponents over decades.

US regime should stop killing kids if it doesn't want to be attacked by #terrorism: @cnels43 http://t.co/ofFfWfQxcl pic.twitter.com/YLRaeSk0Ec

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) September 16, 2015

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