'Megaupload is just the latest corporation to feel the brutality of early 21st century state-run justice. The point, of course, (in our view) is not actually to provide “justice” so much as to make people fearful of using the Internet and sharing information that may someday be deemed “criminal.” In fact, copyright laws were developed by royalty to counteract the spread of information (in books) after the invention of the Gutenberg Press. The same tactics that applied then are being applied now. But we have long argued that as entrenched as the dominant social theme is, it will come under increasing scrutiny as what we call the Internet Reformation proceeds. Just as the state’s other memes are coming under question – the fear-based promotions that frighten middle classes into giving wealth and power to global repositories – so the “state-justice” meme shall come under fire, sooner or later. In fact, we would argue the battle has already been joined on this issue of copyright infringement. We’ve also enunciated a practical perspective that we believe would resolve the issue in a pertinent and appropriate way. Let those who are OFFENDED by copyright infringement enforce their copyright themselves! Let them use their OWN assets to enforce their position.'

'What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.' -- "Government" is not your personal army.

'The crux of the matter here is that unlike the days of yore, where repressive regimes needed elaborate networks of secret police and informants to monitor communication, all they need now is control over the software and hardware we use. Our desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and all manner of devices play a role in virtually all of our communication. Think you're in the clear when communicating face-to-face? Think again. How did you arrange the meet-up? Over the phone? The web? And what do you have in your pocket or bag, always connected to the network? This is what Stallman has been warning us about all these years - and most of us, including myself, never really took him seriously. However, as the world changes, the importance of the ability to check what the code in your devices is doing - by someone else in case you lack the skills - becomes increasingly apparent. If we lose the ability to check what our own computers are doing, we're boned.'

'This program is a proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy. The program, implemented as a Firefox extension, simply contacts offshore domain name resolution services to obtain the IP address for any desired website, and accesses those websites directly via IP. Similar offshore resolution services will eventually maintain their own cache of websites, without blacklisting, in order to meet the demand created by SOPA.' -- A challenger appears.

'A Bitcoin exchange is where government fiat money is exchanged for the Bitcoin “free market” fiat money and vice versa. Regulatory compliance means reporting the details of each of these transactions, including the user identities linked to a Bitcoin address for each exchange transaction. ...the Bitcoin development team’s position that the network effect (wide-spread adoption) depends on “white-market” currency exchanges as entry points. Without regulatory compliance, these exchanges won’t exist and/or continue to exist. A grey-market exchange + “a bitcoin market trading in illegal services/goods” = criminal conspiracy that could land anyone associated with the project in jail. Compliant Bitcoin Exchanges [and] Snitch nodes obviously compromise your anonymity in terms of participating in the Bitcoin network, but whether this is sufficient, along with other techniques, to compromise your anonymity for any given transaction, is another matter.' -- Bitcoin is not your personal army?

'In what is being termed as pure Wall Street Gordon Gecko tactics, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has decided to make an offer of $150 billion to buy out Facebook. Inside sources within the kingdom suggest that the King is very upset with Mark Zukerberg for allowing the revolt to get out of control, Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported. In a personal meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and King Abdullah on Jan 25, 2011, Zuckerberg had promised that he would not allow any revolt pages to be formed on Facebook even while he allowed Egypt and Libya revolt pages to be formed. Left with no option, Abdullah advised by Goldman Sachs has decided to buy out Facebook and “clean out the weeds”. Most analysts believe that Zuckerberg will not take the offer and will wait for King Abdullah to up the offer to at least $500 billion.' -- [Spoof]

'The idea is to write a how-to on building mesh networks. The n00bs must understand it. Mesh networks are usefull, as they cannot be censored nor shut down. Later on that How-to can become part of Anonymous' uber-secret handbook regarding safety.' -- 'The first section of this article will focus on personal safety. Personal safety can be spoken of in two different spheres: Physical Safety and Internet Safety. It is important to remember that these two spheres overlap: a lapse of internet safety could lead to physical identification. However, by keeping in mind a few important rules you can drastically reduce the chance of being singled out and identified. The second section of this article will go into specifics regarding technology that can be used to communicate anonymously, maintain secrecy, and protest effectively.' -- http://goo.gl/SuY0f

'By becoming a regular NGO, WikiLeaks may still be able to score some scoops but it seems that its real talents lie elsewhere. It has now garnered the unprecedented support of thousands of geeks all around the world – and it would be silly not to capitalise on it. Finding a way to make online information resistant to censorship has always been an objective for WikiLeaks, even though only a secondary one. Given the high profile it has obtained with the geek community – with plenty of coders willing to work for free to help it stay online – what Assange should do is to make it his primary objective. This task looks particularly formidable and worthy after last week's internet shutdown in Egypt. This is an area where the WikiLeaks community can achieve progress relatively quickly, as many of the initiatives underway are technology projects that simply need an injection of new coders – and many of them will jump at the opportunity once Assange blesses it.'

'Here's a cool little phone app called Sukey to help people navigate during a protest/riot. Very useful in avoiding kettling (a slang term for police crowd containment). NOTE: A slight variant of this could be used to direct open source protests by select routes and targets/takedowns (using a reddit style upvote process for each)'

'AlphaSSL/GlobalSign refuse to issue us an SSL certificate as they do not wish to be associated with any organisation similar to wikileaks' -- Cowards

'The idea is to inculcate the perception that one is not qualified to make life decisions at any level. Human action must not be taken before the appropriate professional is consulted. As the cult of the expert erodes, society will change. It might be said that the only real expert is the individual himself – and the only determinant of expertise is the way a decision interacts with the market in a real-life context. In a sense, therefore, experts and expertise are a kind of dominant social theme – promoted by the elite. People are taught to defer their own "human action" to those who have advanced degrees and illusory authority. Doctors, scientists, lawyers and politicians – all are to be seen as experts, repositories of hard-won knowledge not available to the ordinary citizen. But in the end, the Invisible Hand will have the final say, not the "expert." The market is the final arbiter. The higher authority is natural law, not an advanced degree.'

'We think we can tell a sub dominant social theme when we see one. Social network companies get a lot of press and attention because they represent the controllable side of the Internet, in our view. Social networking is the "softer side" of the Internet from a power elite standpoint. A small intergenerational, familial elite has seen its secrecy ripped asunder by the Internet. But these sites, especially Facebook with some 500 million users, are far less challenging to elite plans for global centralization. If anything, one could argue that such networks offer the kind of naïve openness and frivolity that the elite is pleased to take advantage of. Social networking is perhaps a preferable Internet construct. It also provides a far more controllable template for manipulating public use of electronic communications. Outfits like the CIA never create ventures, but they do apparently encourage the growth of the ones that they deem most useful.'

'...from what might be called the Communications Security Administration (CSA), we can expect a 'no send' list. If you're on the list, you can't send or post messages, and no reasons will be given. They will be arbitrarily restricting your ability to connect with people remotely. Consider also the invasive screening process at airports. Everyone is treated as a potential terrorist, until they pass the invasive screening process. Similarly, every message anyone tries to send will be treated as a 'potential cyber threat', until it passes an invasive 'threat filter'. Google is already deploying such a filter, and calling it a spam filter. Air travel and the Internet have been the 'great global connectors', of people and of ideas. The thrust of 'security' measures has had little to do with terrorism, and everything to do with making 'connection' more and more difficult. WikiLeaks is indeed the 9/11 of the Internet.'