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Libre Solutions Network

Freedom in the digital age

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Pushing Back against Surveillance and Control with Hrvoje Morić

Feb 16 2024 Gabriel

Early this month, Hrvoje and I had a conversation about how governments and corporations are tightening their grip over the information landscape. We discussed some of my latest work, and it was an excellent opportunity to add some finer detail to points that come up often. Near the end, we talk about the war on dissent in Germany. It’s important to note that the acquittal of CJ Hopkins is being appealed by the German government.

Data Shedding

Jan 11 2024 Gabriel

The following video is a summary of a report on how programmatic advertising can be weaponized for mass real-time surveillance. This report is highly troubling but not particularly surprising. If you want to learn how it’s being used, read up on the mastodon thread made by one of the report’s authors. Links: Mastodon Thread Europe’s Hidden Security Crisis Report Further Reading: The Military Origins of Facebook How Palantir Conquered the WOrld Total Information Awareness Understanding Malicious ads

Why The Perfect Messaging App Doesn't Exist

Dec 10 2023 Gabriel

Surveillance of peoples communications is a severe overreach. Especially the act of monitoring people’s sensitive discussions with their most trusted contacts. Large institutions like corporations and governments are wrestling over control of and insight from people’s private chats. This is largely because there are limitations to only data-mining public communications. All the money and effort spent on propaganda and censorship can be for naught if people are still allowed to make their own minds in private.

Papers Please: The Attack on Online Privacy

Nov 18 2023 Gabriel

Leaping at Shadows Calls to end anonymity on social media are not new, but every once in a while they return as tensions rise. These renewed calls will suggest more extreme measures against platforms that allow even mere pseudonymity, much less complete anonymity. These proposals aim to ensure that the cost of communication with others, or even the public will be privacy. The argument presumes that if everyone was forced to have everything recorded in their real name, then interactions online would always be more civil and productive.

DIY Cyber Audit

Sep 30 2023 Gabriel

It’s good for people to take their own cybersecurity seriously. It’s a huge topic, and it can be difficult to decide what’s worth starting with, or expending a lot of effort on. This guide is intended to walk you through some of the basic “bare-minimum” steps one would want to take in improving their online security. In addition to pure security goals, this piece aims to emphasize how to reduce your dependency on systems that seize control of your information and workflows.

Operation: Shadow

Sep 12 2023 Gabriel

Navigating Hostile Cyberspace Many people are outright victims of virtual imprisonment. Social media addiction is just the surface of a panopticon of data-mining and manipulation. If this wasn’t bad enough, governments and public-private partnerships alike are further working to analyze, contain, and restrict dissent. This asymmetric use of technology enables innumerable abuses and consolidates power in terrifying ways. Almost everyone recognizes that people’s behavior has changed drastically due to online pressures, very few imagine the sum total effects this has on society.

Tools: the Good and the Bad

Jun 27 2023 Gabriel

If all you have is a hammer, suddenly every single thing starts to look like a nail. Hardly and tool itself is wholly evil or entirely good. Not only are the tools themselves important, how we use them matters quite a bit as well. This applies all the way from the entire software ecosystem, down to the hardware components themselves. The fundamental attributes of the tool will set the incentives for how they can be used, and how they are used creates incentives for how future tools will be made.

A Non-Combattant's Guide to Cyberwar

Jun 16 2023 Gabriel

We live in interesting times. In addition to the many boots-on-the-ground conflicts going on, cyberspace is a theatre of war with hardly any distinction between military and civilian targets. Nothing is off-limits and combatants can be anything from creative individuals to well-funded state level actors like governments and multi-national corporations. There’s no way to be perfectly out-of-the-way. Any significant cluster of data, storage, computing power, or bandwidth can become a strategic resource to be sought after.

Has the technocracy already assimilated you?

May 29 2023 Gabriel

The technocracy is a managerialist top-down system of control with no accountability towards it’s subjects. From the perspective of the system’s owners, the subjects are at best livestock to be harvested and the worst is far too horrible to imagine. Such a cruel and deranged system seems quite alien to most people, despite often living it out in their own daily lives. Regardless of what disagreements divide people, far more are united under subservience to technological tyranny.

The Protocol Wars are Here

May 08 2023 Gabriel

The Protocol Wars Battle lines are being drawn. The stakes could never be higher, the very future of how we all interact online is in our hands. It was so simple when everyone was silo’d onto a few corporate controlled platforms. Now, there are new platforms that aren’t merely controlled by a single entity, they are interoperable with each other, meaning that each system is composed of compatible units. Will one system entirely dominate the others?

The Coordinated Attack on Cyberspace

Apr 13 2023 Gabriel

For tyrants and dissidents alike, the Covid Crisis was a defining moment in the history of censorship. Top-down information control leapt out of the shadows into an overt campaign of propaganda, suppression and manipulation. One of the defining aspects of the crisis is that it exemplified an arms race between those who want complete top-down control, and those who would dare to seek their own path. Despite the best efforts of Big Tech corporations, governments and NGOs, people who took a stand against creeping totalitarianism were able to meet, organize, and share information.

In defense of anonymity

Jan 08 2023 Gabriel

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men. I will find something in them which will hang him” Cardinal Richelieu In a time where so much data about people is being constantly harvested in increasingly invasive ways, there is a lot of material to work with. As I’m sure we have all seen, there innumerable ways in which people’s own beliefs, mistakes or decisions land them in serious trouble.

Digital ID: The basics

Sep 02 2022 Gabriel

101: What is Digital ID? The rise of technocratic control has justifiably motivated people into taking action and resist the foundational tools of the technocracy. Many of these tools are well positioned to leverage any form of digital ID against you. What forms can Digital ID take? A biometric implant? A smartphone app? Your face? A microchip in your passport? Any and all of these can be used in such a system.

Simple Tips: Tracking Links

Aug 23 2022 Gabriel

You can clean your links by removing extra parameters or making sure to only send perma-linked content to people.

Is the Internet safe for children?

Jul 23 2022 Gabriel

Nope. Just as playing in traffic isn’t safe for children, all people need to be properly mentally, and emotionally equipped to navigate the chaotic environment of the Internet. Sometimes it’s market forces, other times it’s algorithms, but nearly everywhere there are pitfalls designed to rob people of all ages their time, attention, and resources. Gaming gets a lot of flak for doing this to children, but it’s far from the only place.

IoT: The "Eye-on-Thee"

Jul 12 2022 Gabriel

The Internet of things (IoT) is not so much an agenda, but a consequence of cheap, ubiquitous technology. Much of the engineering, investment, and application has gone directly into making devices better at gathering information. This information is then fed to machine learning algorithms to further “optimize” society. This constant data-collection is not benign. There is an agenda to constantly push the boundaries of centralization and control. Most of the opportunities provided by the internet of things are asymmetrically advantageous to the technocracy.

Tools of the Technocracy: #4 Online Identity

Mar 22 2022 Gabriel

Tools of the Technocracy: #4 Online Identity There are some good reasons to attach your identity to online interactions, there are just as many (if not more) good reasons not to. It is important to understand how your actions ripple across the Internet and wider data-landscape. One of the greatest challenges in keeping your data secure is the fact that the Internet almost never forgets. It’s so difficult to be aware of all the data-points that have built over time.

The most valuable asset for the coming decade

Jan 04 2022 Gabriel

Trust Over the last decade individuals and institutions have shifted from covertly selling out their trust to overtly abusing that trust. Trust is essential to have in a civilization. So much of our society is built on assumed trust, or worse trust only maintained by illusion. By abusing the trust of their clients, partners, and the general public they are supplanting their own existence and in turn tainting those who rely on them.

Account security best practices

Dec 19 2021 Gabriel

The best way to protect data is not to record it Almost everyone has at least a dozen accounts and it can be quite a disaster if your password gets published in yet another data breach. Passwords aren’t the only information worth stealing and the best way to protect important information is never to collect it. In general, it’s best to avoid making an account with a service if you don’t need to.

You have a right to remain silent, but your data doesn't!

Dec 03 2021 Gabriel

Where is the data? Data-driven services are ubiquitous. They all feed into machine learning algorithms who’s purpose is to decode the human psyche. E-mail providers scan your e-mails to learn about your interests & online purchases Entertainment services gather all kinds of information about what catches your attention and stimulates specific emotions Every time you spend money financial institutions and retailers are analyzing your explicit and implicit voting with your wallet.