Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[pecunium]

We do, each and every one of us. Jefferson said the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed, from time to time with blood. The blood it takes is that of patriots and tyrants.

Ben Franklin, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had delivered said, "A republic madam, if you can keep it."

Abraham Lincoln, in the course of a struggle which we are still, in some ways, struggling, said Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are engaged today in just such a struggle. The powers of reaction, and authoritarianism will use whatever tools they can get away with.

One of the questions about the unrest in St. Paul is about the role of those who are instigating the reactions. Police forces, and others, have used agents provacateur in the past. There really is no reason to think the idea is part of the dim and dusty past.

We know, from the reports of the raids, that informants were inserted into the groups. What we don't know (and probably won't) is how many of the alleged plots were the result of those agents saying, "what if" and so sparking discussion.

For those who care... I have a link to the RNC Welcoming Committee Search Warrant

Read it, and think about your kitchen, your laundry room, your garage, your shed.

Comments

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You miss my point. I don't think hiding things is wrong.

But the other point... unless you do a clean wipe of the drives they took (or, better) just destroy them, never remounting them, the external drives will be vulnerable to the next search warrant.

Because they will install keyloggers, backdoors and lord know what all else. When they come back, and remove all your drives (again?), they will have access because they won't need you to tell them the passwords. They will have them, right there.

I don't know if they can intall a physical memory keylogger. I know there are such. It's why I never do any banking from internet cafe machines, but the ones I know of are all between external keyboards and the machine.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

This is where the unnecessarily long time that the police hold "evidence" like that would work in the citizen's favor -- how many of us who could possibly afford to replace our computers could possibly afford not to? By the time it got back with a keylogger, it would all be going into the parts closet anyway.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If they really wanted to, a keylogger (even on an encrypted machine) can be done in ten minutes.

Because a rootkit on a flashdrive will let them in, and put it on.

Then the next warrant is all they need. DHS has the ability to do covert warrants. Evidence from RICO trials of mobsters shows that such things (sneek and peek warrants) have been used to place such subterfuges.

Most people can't afford to replace/reconstruct all their data. Activists least among us (Food not Bombs, and RNC Welcoming Committee don't pay all that much. Most people are giving them money, not the other way round).

The long time isn't uneccessary. It's a specific tactic, meant to see to it the people affected can't do anything during the time the machines are gone. Unless they have a backup, which wasn't with the parent machine, they've lost the ability to use all the information they've collected/been using.

And they are out of easy communication with friends/allies.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that it's impossible, I'm saying that it's our duty to make it as close to impossible as we can. We should always encrypt everything, so that the encrypted machines and communications don't stand out as targets. We should never, under any circumstances talk to the police.