Surveillance – Civilization’s Wretched Invention
It is so that we enter the unmasked era of exploitation, repression and control by the means of surveillance. The history of surveillance went back as old as the wreck of civilization. To define surveillance we must understand its relationship with hierarchy, and how it affect our every day’s life. Hierarchy could only function as long as someone willing to uphold it. Hierarchy, like all system that built upon it such as capitalism and feudalism, is a house of cards. Remove just one piece and everything falls apart. Civilization must require to develop something that they could maintain and prevent the fall of its tyrants. And thus surveillance was born. Surveillance is the art of conforming someone into belief that they are always being watched. Panopticon Tower was one of the development that led to creation of modern prison system. Panopticon was designed in such way that the prisoners always fear that they are being watched all the time, but they have no way seeing that in action, thus they fear for the invisible threat, that their revolt will be punished. All technology and culture across different groups of civilization were developed mainly on the basis of surveillance. It is the disease of our mind and our life.
No Targeted Surveillance – All Surveillance Is Targeting Our Lives
Lest us forget that surveillance is the ultimate intrusion to our freedom of association, and there must be absolutely no justification for any use of surveillance against the commons. The sickness of liberals and even elements of the Left attempt to divorce surveillance into targeted and mass in the most disgusting and moronic observation of this topic. There is no targeted nor mass, but only surveillance. All types of surveillance were developed at control and repress the population. Those whom from queer and trans, people of color, indigenous and radicals are most vulnerable to surveillance of any type. Surveillance was created to enforce and conform, repeat that in your mind. And to support it even with a glimpse idea of surveillance, is the absolute betrayal toward anything they supposed to stand for. To be an anarchist and supportive of any type of surveillance, is the equivalence of blowing your own brain with a cooked Molotov.
Capitalism’s Black Blood
As we mentioned previously, those who are most vulnerable to societal control and oppression, also the most vulnerable targets to surveillance. It is the founding formula for surveillance to target those populations, because how they are the most likely to revolt, due to the most brutal repression weight on them. Thus surveillance is built upon the foundation of racism, sexism, classism and other forms of discrimination, that power the machine. Surveillance get stronger when they feed off the failure of certain populations to revolt against it. As paradoxical as it seems, surveillance actually becomes more powerful every time an insurrection or revolution kick-started, whether failed or succeeded, but the former makes surveillance thrive better. Why is that? Let’s us remember that surveillance is the abstraction idea that built on real life enforced policies, such as laws, police, military, and obedience of any kind. It is humans themselves that enforce surveillance. Without those who voluntarily to sacrifice their worthless lives to the machine, the system would fall apart instantly. Surveillance only works as long as the slaves still fear the masters.
Low Tech No Life – Resistance to Technology
The high tech development could always be defeated by the simplest down-to-earth solution. No CCTV could withstand a full-power steel bat flying to it at 30 km/hr. No drone could beat a slingshot wielded by a toddler. No datacenter could stop a 50 kg ANFO blast outside their compound. Here lies the 10 examples of defeating high tech with the low tech solutions:
Burner vs. Stingray – During NYC Black Lives Matter protest against police murdering Eric Garner, the New York Pig Department rolled out Stingrays in attempt to capture and entrap activists. Stingray is North American’s flagship IMSI catcher, designed to track and intercept phone’s signal in its operational area. While burners are not immune against an IMSI catcher tracking it, due to each device carries unique number called the IMEI. However, that did not mean Stingray could track all devices at given time, there still the need of time to process all data and metadata. That gave the activists an open timeframe to exploit this weakness. What the BLM activists did was to use certain burners as bait for the Stingrays to track, then use other burners to communicate and distract the surveillance, disoriented the riot pigs. The BLM activists were so successful that they did not just evade the capture, but managed to surround and kettle the pigs, out of sheer irony. Score one for the resistance.
Firechat vs. Oriental Pigs – Faraway from another part of the world, the Umbrella Revolution where pro-democracy liberals, right wings and anarchists formed a united front against Mainland orientalists. While in the camp, the protesters discovered that the Chinese government blocked all their social media and local communication. Some of the camp’s techie found a meshnet app called Firechat. A meshnet is a peer-to-peer (p2p) network that is decentralized by having no centralized server to process information, each node acts as transmitter and receiver themselves. Examples of p2p technologies are Bittorent and blockchain. Firechat is a simple meshnet-based IM app, that has no encryption and transmit data in cleartext. However this did not stop the protesters from using it, and it certainly came as a shock to the Chinese government, due to completely decentralized organizing, meaning that there are no way for them to discover centralized cells in the movement.
Building an Airport to Capture a Drone – We include this for the sake of topic. Iran captured a seemingly high tech Predator drone by replicating an airport exactly the same as the US base nearby. The drone was fooled by recognition that was its base and forced to land into the hands of enemy.
Dial Up vs. Tyrant ISP – In Tunisian Revolution, Mubarak decided to cut the hard line on the country’s only ISP. Telecomix, a hacker collective came up with alternative solution to tunnel social media through dial-up network, after discovering that critical infrastructure in the country still connecting outside world using dial-up.
A Photo vs. Micro$oft Advanced Facial Recognition – At a Blackhat talk (security con), a security researcher showed that he can bypass the seemingly high tech recognition by putting up a photo of his face to the camera.
Rolljam – Sammy Kamkar developed a device exploiting RF wireless devices such as car’s key fob and automatic garage by using relay attack, capturing the unlock code, then jamming the rolling code to be able to send the unlock code. Car thieves developed similar device called a key grabber to steal modern cars.
Free Parking – Flea Market Socialist showed he could get free parking at automatic meter by attaching a coin to a Sbux stir stick, then inserted it into the coin slot and simulated the coin dropping, fooled the machine.
Tone to Launch Nuclear Weapon – Kevin Mitnick during his blackhat days discovered that he could launch nuclear missiles by replicating certain frequency of tones over a goddamn payphone.
Shim vs. high tech pad lock – our favorite’s B&E tool, the padlock shim, made from thin stainless steel sheet, could bypass any padlock of all type.
Leg vs. Electronic Key Pad – The movie Sneakers got this one right, kicking the door always defeat any kind of high tech lock.
The Mice Always Win – ARSE Guideline in the Techno-Authoritarian Era
Adaptation to the endless landscape of surveillance, is to show the the resiliency to your knowledge of utilizing technology, against technology. Resistance against surveillance and state, to defend your community and attack against the system where it hurt. Survival to carry on the resistance and educate other about such resistance, as an individual or as a collective. And finally, the stillness of existing under this brutal system, is the defiance against all system, and your existence is another rock that break the waves. With enough rocks, we build the shore.
Adapt. Resist. Survive. Exist. Let the fat cats eat your ARSE.