Security and the Price of Liberty

Most of us are familiar with some form of Benjamin Franklin's bon mot, "Those who would obtain a little temporary safety at the price of essential liberty, deserve neither."

It's a truism.  But not much thought is given to what it means in the lives of the citizen in the 21st century.

In May and June of 2013, Americans have been privy to the release of some disturbing state secrets:  The Federal government is collecting metadata on billions of phone calls by Verizon customers:  names of caller and callee, telephone numbers, dates, length of call.  The Federal government is collecting from all major Internet service providers complete text as well as metadata for millions of Americans who daily use gMail, Hotmail, Bing and Google, among other services.

Essentially, "All your digital are belong to us," says Barack Obama.

To a certain extent, the news is not shocking, because most sentient beings have heard rumours about this activity for some time.  The extent, and the blatant disregard for citizens' privacy -- those are shocking.

We citizens have only ourselves to thank.  We didn't have any say in the passage of the Patriot Act after the terrorist attacks in 2001.  But we certainly had a say in the continuing re-election of the legislators who passed that legislation and continued to reconfirm and even expand its scope in the subsequent twelve years.  Democrats and Republicans alike have voted carte blanche access to private activities of American citizens at home.  And voters have regularly given their approval of those votes at the polls.

Now that we're in that situation, what can we do about it?

We do have the technical, practical means to block government access to our information.  We have the technology.  We can make it better than it was.

• Hushmail.  For nearly 15 years, Hushmail has been providing encrypted email delivery and storage.  You get a respectable amount of service for free; for $50 a year you get the additional ability to plug your hushmail account into desktop clients like Outlook and Thunderbird.  The Hushmail servers are in British Columbia, Canada.  For the US gov't to get access to your mail, it has to go through the Canadian gov't.  And it has to present a valid, legal search warrant to Hushmail in order to get the encryption key needed to read your mail. (HM does not store your key, but on presentation of a valid court order, will implement a method to capture your key when you send a mail; and use it to decrypt any mail surrendered pursuant to the court order.)
• Silent Circle. Silent Circle provides a suite of encrypted services:  phone, text messaging, video chat, and email.  Within the circle, your communications are encrypted end-to-end.  For SC to work, both sender and receiver have to be "within the circle," i.e., members.
• Tor. The Tor project provides a secure, anonymous network to connect to the internet.  "Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet."  The Tor browser connects to web sites through the Tor network, thus completely masking the origin of your web traffic.  
• Orbot. The Guardian Project provides a set of applications and tools for secure data connections on smart phones.  "Orbot uses Tor to encrypt your Internet traffic and then hides it by bouncing through a series of computers around the world."  The Guardian Project also provides a secure browser, Orweb; and a secure chat tool, Gibberbot; both built around Orbot.
• CryptoHeaven. CryptoHeaven provides secure email and messaging with encrypted storage online.  CH provides the ability to send encrypted messages to contacts who are not in the CH security realm using a ask-and-response mechanism, a one-time "key" for an encrypted message.  
• Penango. Penango provides browser plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer that allow you to encrypt gMail.  Penango also plugs into desktop clients like Zimbra Desktop.
• WebPG. WebPG provides extensions for Chrome and Firefox to enable the use of GPG or PGP to encrypt/decrypt and sign emails.
• DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo is an anonymized, non-filtering, non-tracking search engine.  It is available as a Chrome or Firefox extension to override the filtering that is automatically done by Google and Bing and similar search sites.

This is a suggestive, not a comprehensive, list of options.  These tools, and others like them, provide American citizens with the the abilities to inhibit and and, in many cases, absolutely block government access to digital activities.  We do not have to acquiesce in these government intrusions.  In the event that you encrypt your email, chat, file storage, phone calls and searches; what is going to happen if the government really, really wants to know about you?  Its agents are going to show up on your porch and demand that you provide them with the keys to decrypt your data.  You have to be prepared for that unlikely but highly scarifying possibility.  If you're going to crumple like a cheap tent in a breeze at the sight of an FBI badge, all your efforts to keep secret your activities will have been useless posturing.

And this is the crux of the biscuit for citizens:  it's your responsibility to defend your liberty on your doorstep as aggressively as a soldier defends her life in a far-away combat zone.  We are in this mess because too many citizens think that liberty is defended by soldiers and the right to vote is just quaint.  We voted into office the people who are implementing these policies; the only way these policies will change is if those people are voted out.  In the interim, hundreds of thousands or even millions of citizens encrypting their data, anonymizing their digital activities and taking those activities off the grid present a huge road block to the data hungry NSA and associated agencies.

So ... What are you going to do?  Suck your thumb and complain about how "you shouldn't have to do this" -- or do it?  Because, in fact, you absolutely have to take charge of your own actions as citizen.  The government is an aggregation of human beings who will go as far as you, the citizen, let them go.  Bureaucrats and legislators alike will test the limits.  Don't kid yourself -- most of you would do the same, in that position.

Citizens and Liberty

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This is the text of what may be the most famous, or most popularly known, of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution.  Among a significant portion of American citizens, this amendment is considered the most important.  On it, the claim is made, all the others depend.  If you don't have a "well armed" populace, you can't protect liberty from overweening government.

This claim has no basis in history.  No original supporter of the Constitution endorsed this view -- not at the time of its writing, nor at the time of its ratification, nor at the time of ratification of the first ten amendments, sometimes known as the Bill of Rights.  That does not in itself invalidate the claim.  Times change, as does our understanding of the Constitution and of our rights as citizens.  

What invalidates the claim is its assumption that liberty can only be, or even finally be, defended with weapons.

Liberty is defended by citizens living free.  It is defended by citizens who refuse to yield.

Citizen	Job	Action
Raoul Wallenberg	diplomat	issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory saving tens of thousands of lives.
Oskar Schindler	businessman	saved over 1000 Polish Jews by employing them in his factories and warehouses and hiding their Jewish identities
Martin Luther King	minister	Marches, jail and magnificent speeches to inspire Americans to do what is right
Rosa Parks	secretary, civil rights activist	refused to give up her seat on segregated bus
March 7, 1965	protesters	"Bloody Sunday" marchers were beaten, gassed and jailed while attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery to register to vote
March 9, 1965	protesters	"Turnaround Tuesday" march ended with the KKK beating to death a Unitarian minister from Boston
Ron Kovic	Vietnam Vet, bronze star, purple heart, quadriplegic, antiwar protester	"I had been beaten by the police and arrested twelve times for protesting the war and I had spent many nights in jail in my wheelchair. I had been called a Communist and a traitor, simply for trying to tell the truth about what had happened in that war, but I refused to be intimidated."
Nancy Wake	journalist	Courier between Allies and French Resistance during WWII. Her husband, a businessman, was captured by the Gestapo. Although tortured, he refused to reveal her whereabouts and was executed.
Dietrich Boenhoffer	minister	German anti-Hitler pastor who took part in an assassination plot, imprisoned, tortured and hanged in 1945
Freedom Riders	civil rights activists	May 1961, attempted to desegregate interstate bus travel, beaten and in one incident, locked inside a burning bus

All these disparate incidents have one common element: citizens who refused to yield.  Citizens.  They did not wait for the guns to arrive, they did not want guns; they did not wait for the troops to arrive; they wanted liberty.  And liberty was "liberty for all," for "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."  By securing liberty for others, they secured it for themselves.  They understood that liberty is for those who take the risks, who act.  Liberty is not gained by killing those whom you find disagreeable nor even those who represent a real or imagined threat.  

Violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.  Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.  -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

In vain, the RTKBA'er fantasizes that crushing a couch cushion and banging down pounders is all that he needs to do -- because he has an arsenal of firearms in his basement.  All he has to do is kill that vague "someone" who "threatens to take away his guns."  And send more money to Glenn Beck, who will tell him who needs killing.  In the meantime, he can catch the game on TV.

"The notion of liberty amuses the people ... When a butcher tells you that his heart bleeds for his country he has, in fact, no uneasy feeling."  -- Samuel Johnson

The RTKBA'er already has agreed to warrantless and secret searches by the FBI.  He's agreed to Federal agents infiltrating and spying on local political activist organizations.  He's agreed to NSA listening posts in every telephone exchange CO.  He's agreed that protesters must be kept blocks away from delicate, sensitive politicians and multimillionaire corporate CEOs who bribe them.  He's agreed to militarized police squads, aka SWAT, that on a regular basis, break into the wrong homes and businesses, beating and even killing innocent citizens and inflicting millions of dollars of uncompensated property damage.  He's agreed to let local, state and Federal prosecutors seize and dispose of citizens' property before trial and often, even before charges.  He's agreed to indefinite imprisonment without trial, even for American citizens.  He's agreed to copyright laws that make it illegal for a shade-tree mechanic to fix the electronics on a car engine.  In fact, there's hardly any aspect of real liberty that the RTKBA'er is not willing to part with, so long as he maintains ownership of his firearms, to kill that deadly "someone" who "threatens to take away his guns."

Keep you doped with religion, and sex and TV,

And you think you're so clever and classless and free.

But you're still fucking peasants,

As far as I can see. -- John Lennon

No liberty without sacrifice.  And by "sacrifice," I mean being prepared to bear the brunt of unlawfully or immorally wielded state power: refusing to yield. Workers at lunch counters; marchers on the bridge to Montgomery; a man in a wheelchair leading a protest march; a female journalist carrying secret messages. These people didn't get up in the morning and say to themselves, "I'm going to do something heroic today, I'm going to defend liberty."  No, they just bore witness to injustice and refused to accept it, refused to yield.  Their actions came out of the moral imperative.

No sensible person is going to show up at a protest march armed with a semiautomatic rifle and engage in a firefight with police and National Guard troops.  But, you can join in and engage with your fellow citizens and put your own body on the line.  You may find yourself gassed, beaten, arrested.  For liberty.  No sensible person is going to pull out a gun and accost a group of police officers kicking and clubbing a suspect handcuffed and lying on the ground.  But, you can pull out your phone and start photographing -- you may find yourself arrested, beaten, your phone confiscated.  In extreme cases, citizens have lost their jobs.  But congratulations.  You've taken on the responsibility of a free citizen.  You refused to yield. 

Welcome to the free world.

Fun With Economics: Keynes v Hayek

Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I must be among the few to describe as a "page turner" a book comparing the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich August Hayek.  The two economists are stalking horses for the two competing conceptions of modern macroeconomics -- the top-down, fiscal policy theory of Keynes and the bottom-up, monetarist theory of Hayek.  Still, guilty:  this well-written, thoroughly researched book combines history, economics and character study.  The combination results in a readable and fascinating discovery of modern economics, how the characters of men shaped its development; and the politics of its development.  Most satisfyingly, we are left at the end with uncertainty -- neither the advocates of monetarism nor those of fiscal policy having produced wholly satisfying accounts of the national economy.  This is as it should be, since the real world has not provided the empirical answer.

No depth of background nor understanding of economics as a discipline is required to read and enjoy this book.  The focus of the book is on the interplay between character, events and politics, and not on the crunching of numbers.  Even a knowledgeable reader will likely come away from this book with a better understanding of the grounds of the arguments; and especially, how the arguments between monetarists and interventionists were more shaped by the political realities of any given time, than by the empirical evidence that could lead to sound judgement. 

I regret that the texts written by Keynes and Hayek themselves, are so frequently nearly impenetrable.  "Even for a trained economist with the benefit of decades of hindsight, the differences between the two men are often erudite to the point of impenetrability," notes Wapshott at one point.  So it is that, unless we are prepared to undertake a years-long education in "the dismal science," we must submit to the transliteration of their writings by others.  The Pure Theory of Capital may one day grace my shelves, but as a reference only; and will not likely be perused end to end.

The larger, political, divide between the two accounts of economics is clear enough.  In later years, Hayek retreated ever farther from any notion of gov't intervention in the economy. He believed in privatization of "all those [services] from education to transport and communications, including post, telegraph, telephone and broadcasting services, all the so-called 'public utilities,' the various 'social' insurances and, above all, the issue of money." (Hayek,Law, Legislation, And Liberty: A New Statement Of The Liberal Principles Of Justice And Political Economy,v.3, 1979)  In Hayek's vision, the liberal utopia would be a society in which nearly every aspect of life was governed by "quasi-commercial corporations competing for citizens." (Ibid.)  Representative democracy was a "tyranny of the majority" that unnecessarily limited individual liberty and led inevitably to political corruption.

So, the great irony of this debate may be that Keynes, broadly regarded as the "revolutionary" who trampled down classical economics and its monetarist basis, emerges as the "conservative."  "Conventional conservatives have regarded Keynes as a dark and evil influence bent on undermining the free economic system.  In fact, however, he helped save the free system at a time when much more radical changes in it were being seriously advocated." (Herb Stein, 1986)  Keynes saw as his mission the "rehabilitation" of capitalism so that it would continue to outperform alternative, socialist systems.  In that respect, we may conclude that he succeeded.




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The Life Unexamined Is Not Worth Living

I have to admit, I am stunned at the stubborn refusal of GOP party leaders to engage in any sort of self-examination after their defeat at the polls. In a very short time, the new electoral strategy for the Republican Party has emerged -- "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Gerrymander the electoral vote to reduce the Democratic share; repeal the Voting Rights Act, in order to deny voting rights to minorities without interference by annoying laws; implement Jim Crow laws again, targeted to prevent the poor from voting; restrict access to the polls by reducing the number of polling stations and the hours they are open.

 

THEY ARE ONLY DOING THESE THINGS BECAUSE REPUBLICAN VOTERS WANT THEM TO DO THEM.

 

Fundamentally, to vote Republican means supporting these tactics to deny the vote to as many citizens as it takes, in order to let Republican candidates win elections:  because they can't win on the issues. It's as plain as the face in the mirror: you voted for these leaders and you send them the money to pay the bills.

 

Your plans may work in the short term. Here's a big bite of reality sandwich: the number of Democrats is increasing every year; the number of Republicans is decreasing. The party of the white is inexorably becoming the minority party. Do you think that, when non-whites become the majority of citizens, they should treat you the way you treated them? Should they gerrymander your votes into insignificance, and deny you the rights and privileges of citizenship, the way you have done to them?

 

In politics, turn about is fair play. Your calendars are marked with a day of reckoning and keeping that appointment is not optional. I don't think you're going to have a good feeling, coming out of that meeting.

Who Are The Sheep?

President Obama: The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future. I’m asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country – goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security, and the deficit; a real, achievable plan that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity, and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation. That’s what we can do in the next four years, and that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States.

Candidate Romney: If I am elected President of these United States, I will work with all my energy and soul to restore that America, to lift our eyes to a better future.

What is the difference between these two pledges?  In the first, the President tells listeners that they are themselves responsible for the success or failure of the nation's economy and society.  The choice is with the people who live here.  In the second, the candidate tells listeners that he will do it -- he will "restore America."  Obama says "we," Romney says "I."

Voters next week have a choice between a President who is telling them that we have to work together to solve our country's problems and a President who will solve those problems for them.

Now, who are the sheep? The people stepping up, accepting their own responsibilities in the success of the enterprise, accepting the challenge to "choose that future;" or the people lounging on their couches, turning the project over to the candidate, letting him do the work "to restore that America"? The people who get out and solve problems, or the people who wait to be told what to do? The people who ask questions, or the people who just accept whatever the candidate tells them? The people who say, "What can I do to help?"; or the people who say, "What's in it for me?"

Who are the sheep?

Poverty

 The following is the text of a Mission Moment I gave at church on 23 September 2012.

The numbers have become numbing and meaningless. 1.29 billion people living in absolute poverty. Which is defined as “... the state of severe deprivation of basic human needs, which commonly includes food, water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, health care, Education and information.” Destitution. 15% of Americans live below the nationally defined poverty line. The poverty line in America is an income of $23,000 a year for a family of four. Which is an income of $1916/month.

Could you live on $1916 a month? What would you have to give up? Your car? Your house? Your cable TV sports package?

Poverty is a way of life. Poor people are not sitting at the kitchen table working out possible ways to get out of poverty. When you're dog-tired from working whatever job you can; and overwhelmed with figuring out how to find clothes for your kids or how to Pay the electricity bill; and putting catsup on your spaghetti for dinner; and feeling the shame of having holes in your clothes, clothes that you don't have the money to replace; you're not reading Atlas Shrugged and scheming how to make a million bucks.

Or, maybe you are. Because scheming is all you have – no job prospects, no future but the present. $5 worth of lottery tickets every week, to keep the dream alive. Because winning the lottery represents the only hope you have for getting out of this cesshole of a life.

I've been poor. I have lived that life. I've shared my room with cockroaches. I've walked through the snow to the food stamp office in shoes with my toes showing through and my “winter coat” out at elbows. I've stood in line at the Department of Agriculture food giveaways and been grateful for a 5-lb block of American cheese, even though I detest the taste of American cheese. And I've looked at the electricity bill in despair, with no money to pay it; and gone to a friend's house to use the phone, because I couldn't afford one. And tried unsuccessfully to persuade a prospective employer that my lack of a phone and lack of a car would not prevent me from being a reliable employee.

These days, that's all behind me and I live the life of Riley. Living in a comfortable house, driving a luxury car, buying subscriptions to expensive magazines, eating restaurant food several times a week, keeping the thermostat turned up in winter time. Dish Network. High-speed internet. A fancy-sounding job title and business cards to go with it. But, I remember.

It was the gov't that helped me when I needed help. I had nobody else to turn to. Now, in these heady days of wealth and comfort, I want to be the somebody that was not there when I needed them. And I am asking that all of you think about that $1916 a month, and think about the billion of people living on $1.25 a day and open your wallets and purses and look at their contents and remember. Remember that the money therein is a gift from God – and share that gift. Help me, and together, let's be the somebody who lifted someone, somewhere out of the stinking pit of poverty – even if only for a day, make somebody's present brighter than yesterday.

Gandhi said, “What you do is insignificant, but you must do it.” And somebody posted a photograph on Facebook, a photograph of a sign that reads “You have never really lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” Let's live – let's really live – as Christians.

Comparison of Tax Rates, 1967 and 2011

According to memory, my father was making around $10,000 salary in his job at Bell Aerospace in 1967.  I might be totally off in that recollection, but that year I was making 75¢ an hour working on a nearby farm, so ten grand would have been a goodly sum of money at the time.

Using the BLS's CPI Inflation Calculator, that salary today would be $68,800.

Let's compare tax rates for my Dad making $10,000 a year and someone making the corresponding $68,800 a year in 2011.

Using the Tax Foundation's Federal Income Tax Brackets 1913-2011, I can create the following simple table.

Year	Bracket	Marginal Tax Rate
1967	$8,000 - $12,000	22.0%
2011	$17,000 - $69,000	15.0%

So, if I were making the equivalent amount of money as my father was making 45 years ago, I would be paying a marginal tax rate 32% lower than what he was paying ((22-15)/22).

For the purposes of this thought experiment, I make the convenient assumption that this dollar is net.  I will make the observation that tax payers in 1967 had many more deductions available (e.g., credit card interest) than are available today.

The fundamental point is that taxpayers who are falling in the center of the curve ("Neither the tip of fortune's cap/ Nor the soles of her shoes") are paying a significantly smaller percentage of income for Federal tax today than they would have been paying for equivalent income 45 years ago.

TEA Party?  Too much whine with the cheese.