[Mutant Fest] communications monitoring, etc.

[ian at spaz.org]

There are probably some things that should just not be talked about online 
openly. Of course, some things should never be talked about except in person 
with those whom you KNOW beyond knowing you can trust, and even then...maybe 
it's best not to, unless they are to be involved.  If you're not involved, you 
don't need to know.  Give those who would misuse information NOTHING.  Don't 
feed them lies, don't hurt them, don't thumb your nose at them and incur their 
wrath, just give them nothing and let them look elsewhere because there's 
nothing here even worth taking the time to examine or think about.  Not on the 
phone, not online, not in print.  

   Natives used to send messages in many ways.  Sometimes it would be a a 
scratch in a tree that looked like bearclaws, or some broken sticks, but 
placed a certain way, or a pile of rocks in a certain place meant one thing, 
but elsewhere and arranged differently meant something else.  Of course if you 
were walking through the woods, and didn't know what you were looking for, you 
saw animal signs and some rocks.  If you did, you knew where somebody was 
staying, where to meet and when, and how to get there.  

   If you've read Dune, you've read about "Finger-talk" a means of 
communicating using the hand while one is simultaneously saying something 
probably completely unrelated, so that multiple conversations take place under 
surveillance with no monitoriing of the unspoken message occuring, due to 
attention on the ambiguous one being paid.  

   The point being that there are many ways to communicate without giving 
anybody anything to look at.  One-time pads are still uncrackable, as long as 
both pads remain secure, but they leave tell-tale signs of jumbled garbage 
alphanumerics so that somebody knows a message is being passed, even if they 
don't know what it is, and that much info is more than one should be giving 
away.

   Realize then, that knowledge really is power and the more we give away, the 
less we have of our own, and while mone might think "Oh...whatever, we're just 
peaceful ______s trying to have a ______.  What do we care about power?"  We 
care about having the power to make that happen and keeping that power.  If we 
just tell those who don't want us to have it, or want to use it to gather info 
to screw some or all of us with later (and don't dream for a minute that they 
don't) everything then where does that leave some or all of us?  Screwed.  It 
would n't take too much for people looking for slave labor for private prisons 
too much to implicate any and all in attendance as some sort of criminals just 
because some folks show up who do what they believe in, regardless of current 
legalities, even though others might not support the same thing at all, or 
even know anything about it. 


   I know that for many of you, this knowledge is already second nature and 
common sense, but for some it is not, and for others it's just a reminder.  
Regardless, keep it in your thoughts ALL THE TIME.  KNOW that you have people 
out there that want to keep you enslaved and enslave you further, and if you 
think you're not already then you simply are blind to your own chains.  This 
is not paranoia, it's awareness.  Do you think communications are being 
monitored just for your own well-being?  That the moneys that are being taken 
out of everything that has a tax on it is for your own good and security?



I