The links between freedom and technology go back to the dawn of time. Some of us are wary of technology for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the same autonomous streak in your personality that drove you toward the ideas of individual freedom engenders a preference for hands-on physical diy approaches rather than trusting some external device or service. Or perhaps the ease with which technology delivers good things is all too alarming as this same power can deliver bad things. Perhaps you would gladly trade the positive effects of technology in favour of eliminating the ill effects when technology is used for coercive purposes - tracking, monitoring, and logging for example.
An example of this justifiable wariness some freedom lovers exhibit toward technology can be summed up in these four letters - CCTV. When used by the state little cameras are evil little tools of oppression but when used by everyone else they are useful devices. for example the same spy cameras the state use for no end of oppressive purposes can also enable your grandmother to live a more independent life by seeing who's at the door without getting up. Or even enable me to explore the world from the comfort of my own fat arse.
Often this dichotomy in the application of technology between the pursuit of coercion or freedom is a competitive race. take speed cameras for example. We know from the GATSO story that they were developed by private individuals in the free market for entirely peaceful uses (a dutch rally driver wanted to measure his speed so he could go faster. the technology was later used to time swimming races). But the state realised the profit possible from applying this technology to coercively restricting free travel both in terms of direct profit from highway robbery with fines and also electoral profit in the form of appealing to puritanical emotive pressure groups. The backlash against this form of perversion was evident. But technology itself was also used in response to this state abuse of technology. speed camera warning systems, detectors and mapping systems became available and have descended in cost and improved in reliability ever since - to the point that some cars come as standard with speed camera warning sat nav systems.
However you feel about the relationship between technology and freedom I would like to argue that we are reaching a point where the balance between technology for freedom is beginning to outweigh the effects of technology for coercion.
Need i point out that right now we are able to spread awareness and share ideas almost entirely due to the technology that i am typing into. Sure the Libertarian Alliance used to have a postal mailing list or you could subscribe to a physical 'dead-tree' delivery of The Freeman or, going even further back, pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine, the Diggers, the Levellers and Cato's Letters printed and distributed ideas. Even these, less effective methods for communicating ideas and individual freedom were enabled by and dependent upon, what were then new technologies. Pamphleteers – the printing press, The Freeman and Libertarian Alliance – the photocopier and telephone. The immediacy and universality of the internet significantly lowers the opportunity costs for individuals to seek out and find information and now even accidentally stumble upon ideas that make sense to them. The difference between an individual seeing or hearing a reference to Rothbard and being able to instantaneously follow it up compared to pre internet times are as considerable as they were prohibitive. The opportunity costs of going to a library or finding an encylopedia to discover who this Rothbard was were too high. and thats before the additional costs of further pursuit such as finding a source of Rothbard's writings, phoning them and ordering a copy etc. In todays world a curious individual can satisfy their curiosity after seeing a 'Read Rothbard' T-shirt by hitting Wikipedia on their mobile device where they can follow links to the Mises Institute and download free materials in a variety of media that even further increase the accessibility and spread of these ideas.
Even this is considered too much effort by some people and so the ever ready market supplies this demand in the form of vocal and image based searches from mobile phones. You simply vocally ask your phone to search for "Rothbard" or point the phone's camera at some text or the cover of a Rothbard book and it searches out the details for you including the best price and directions to the shop if necessary.
All this sure beats trying to spread the ideas of freedom by running round shouting at people or handing out bits of paper.
Sounds wonderful doesnt it but obviously if the free market of voluntary exchange is doing good with technology then inevitably the coercive forces of the state are going to be bending it toward their own warped incentives.
So after stating the obvious that you already know - what news do i have to offer? Well technology is now reaching a point where anonymity, privacy and security are cheaper, easier and more attainable than ever before. If this doesn't sound significant then consider that as of right this very second, even if you are unaware of the possibility, you are able to communicate, trade and bank completely anonymously in complete privacy and security. Also consider that by private trade and banking i mean completely private – free from state manipulation of the money supply – NO inflation - a stateless currency. Also consider that by private trade i mean as completely private as to permit the free trade of any substance. Whether that be some material completely outlawed or merely something that attracts levies and taxes on the open market. You are able to trade TAX FREE with complete security.
This privacy also includes free speech. Totally free speech. Not restricted by the state in any way. Not directly nor even indirectly. No DNS URLs that can be shut down, no central storage server that can be shut down and now even no ISP that can be shutdown or forced to record and convey logs of your activities.
If this all sounds too good to be true then read on and i shall do my best to explain that this is not pie in the sky fantasy but something you should be able to achieve in a number of hours FOR FREE.
If this all sounds over the top and distinctly unnecessary, like some paranoid fantasy for people who think they are in some way subversive and special then look at what is actually happening in the real world around you today. Not a looming spectre on the horizon of tomorrow but actually now. wikileaks chased from server to server and indicted in criminal proceedings, Peaceful protesters pre-emptively arrested for thought-crimes as a result of public blogging, and self-defending british nationals seized for extradition to a foreign power without question. notice that these are not chinese dissidents, or egyptian bloggers but normal people like you or I getting arrested for victimless 'crimes'.
The Malum Prohibitum laws (yknow all the false 'statues' that go beyond laws against aggressive acts toward an actual victim) we suffer under are so numerous that you cannot possibly know if you are breaking them with your online activities. do you know each and every word of British libel laws? do you know the libel laws of each and every country with which our overlords have agreed extradition arrangements? could you be whisked away under a European arrest warrant to spend a few years in a foreign jail awaiting trial? in all likelihood there are probably laws prohibiting advocating the end of the state, laws against openly criticising the EU or for endorsing rival non state currencies.
In short do not rely on their law to protect you. With individual freedom comes individual responsibility in equal measure. if you want the freedom to say what you want then it is your responsibility to ensure that you can do so safely. as an aside this kind of victimisation is what makes me an angry anarchist. we all know that free speech is not a crime, that libel is not a crime, that death threats are just that - threats, mere words - that until an aggressive act has been committed there has been no crime. But we dont live in a world of objective ethics and rational law. We are forced to protect ourselves from their unnecessary coercion. you should not have to waste hours of your life investigating and self educating on topics of anonymity and encryption but because of their aggression and threats of aggression we must. it isnt right that the onus is on us to protect ourselves from them when we know that they have no right to even exist let alone threaten us for non-crimes but such is the way of the world at this stage.
so if you want to be free to rhetorically suggest that whichever Kommissar such and such of the EU or Komrade fotherington-smythe of the guardian would be best off swinging from a lamp post then dont sit there on an open web connection using Windows, Internet Explorer and broadcasting your IP address and real world location for all to see.
Ive written too much already and as I am not a technical expert nor a teacher it is best that you self educate. the links to similar mechanisms you will find beyond these will open your eyes to how the spread of freedom can and will continue and spread even when 'they' are trying to shut us down. Peer to peer is the answer.
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable non-inflationary encrypted currency with banking - Bitcoin
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable encrypted DNS - Namecoin
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable encrypted Network - Tor
Anonymous Encrypted Tor-based encrypted operating system - Tails
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable encrypted Network - I2P
Anonymous web proxy - Annonymizer
Anonymous email - Mixminion
Anonymous decentralised unstoppable market place - Silk Road
Unstoppable decentralised internet - no centralised, isps, severs or dns - mesh networks
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