Stop aiding an industry which just hurts humanity.

[posted to the full-disclosure mailing list]

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.” –Edward Gibbon

We stand at the cusp of a renaissance. A freely communicating humanity is closer to unity and harmony than ever before. Never before have ideas and knowledge traveled so rapidly. If not for the Internet, little would be known about the atrocities our government attempts to commit in secret. All the American people would be able to read is the party line off of cable television. With a morally bankrupt media, the Internet is the key to any sort of democratic resistance. Thanks to the Internet, we may view photos of American caskets, wounded Iraqis, and internal government memos. The priveledge of viewing and knowing these things is easily lost.

We approach the final hour of the free Internet. As I write, forces within our society are beginning to impose control and restriction onto it. If these forces are not turned back, I know that within a decade that the free world’s Internet will be a mix of cable television and the supressed Chinese Internet. As a beggar, I present myself with the humility that my lowly position deserves. My plea is simple: stop publishing your vulnerabilities. We will need them.

I want my children and their children to have access to truth. Not just my truth, or my government’s truth, but all the other truths in the world as well.

I want us to be able to communicate easily and safely about the actions of our government.

I want the merits of the Internet to progress in form and finesse until we are ready to cast the criminals, thugs, and mammonites out power all over the world.

A secure Internet is an Internet without freedom, without privacy, and without anonymity. The nature of security is control. Were we to be governed by the just, I would worry little about this situation. Sadly, the political systems of the first world have been perverted by an evil which ensures that none who do not share its nature hold office.

Submitting yourself to a secure system requires that we have a reasonable amount of trust for the system’s keepers. Does your current government have the ideal qualities needed to control the flow of information? We should be keeping everything which may allow us to circumvent the system guarded closely. The subversion of trusted resources will eventually be the only way to keep forbidden information in mass circulation and the primary means of resistance against tyranny.

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” –Samuel Adams

If you place any value on freedom, then stop working for the oligarchy and start working against it. I’ll admit, subversion does not pay well. It isn’t quite as cushy as the six figure job I passed up, but it has a great benefit: I can sleep at night. I’m not aiding a set of corporations and a government which used unethical means to corner vast amounts of wealth and proceeded to flagrantly abuse their power. The reward for doing what is right is better than any earthly reward that I could receive.

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

To the employees of the biggest security firms of the world, all American, I want you to stop and look at the government of your country. You have an administration which has gone and invaded countries on a whim, which authorizes torture that is conducted in secret, which has less transparency than any government in recent memory, that places extreme emphasis on executive power… the countless historical comparisons that could apply here are obvious so I need not make them. This administration is a perfect example of the type of systemic corruption that is inevitable due to the very nature of power, of control, and yes, of security. People like this will soon be deciding the fate of the Internet.

When engaging in reasonable political discourse is not allowed you are going to be wanting to take your freedom back.

It is time for the last stand. Our mission is to retain the right to freely think, code, and communicate. Stop helping the industry, stop publishing your 0day, start working to make a real difference. Save your arms for the time very soon in which we will need them. Have faith in your self and your God and good works will come. We need not be slaves to a master that despises us!

Non-disclosure is a heroic endeavor. Be a hero.

Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help… – Gandhi

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