The Internet Police by Nate Anderson

The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed, Nate Anderson. New York: Norton, W.W. & Company, Ince., 2013. e-book, 269 pps.

     The Internet Police starts off with a recounting of Ryan Lackey and HavenCo living in a rusty old ocean fort called Sealand. [At one time, Sealand was listed as a micro-nation but I do not know how accurate that description was. It appears from this book that it never was up for squatters' rights]. Stories about John Perry Barlow, stolen laptops, a hacking stalker, e-mail bomb threats, various and sundry F.B.I. spy programs, Smilin' Bob ads on television and the promise of larger penises with pills, the viciousness of RIAA prosecution, spam, and the darknet.

sapphoq reviews says: For those who have an inadequate grasp on why the rest of us are so angry at the United States government and the actions of Big Hollywood, The Internet Police is as good a place as any to start. Notably lacking was information about Anonymous, the phone phreaks, and a resolution to the conflicts.
     Nate Anderson is correct that if the Internet winds up with a set of laws, those laws will be designed to placate the countries with the most money and biggest mouths-- the United States for sure, and probably the U.K., and maybe Germany-- and a certain amount of random chaos will be lost. This I think is rather unfortunate because we need makers and creators and hackers in order for society to thrive.
     The assumption that anonymity on the internet is "bad" is an unfortunate one that some percentage of the population continue to believe. I've seen vicious attacks on Fake Book where [it is assumed] that [cough, cough] folks who hang there are doing so under their wallet names and wallet info.
     Until the United States dismantles or revamps the N.S.A., I cannot condone any call for Internet i.d. numbers or registration before using a computer on-line. I don't trust the gatherers of information and at this point I certainly do not trust my government. 
     In spite of my personal misgivings, The Internet Police is an interesting read. Recommended.

We Are Anonymous (a remix) by Miso Susanowa

In skating through blogs on my reading list, I found Miso Susanowa's remix called "We Are Anonymous."


I listened to it here at     http://inworld.sl/mp3/We_Are_Anonymous.mp3

My So-called Virtual Life blog at    http://gomiso.blogspot.com/2012/02/we-are-anonymous-new-music.html   lists several other places where you can listen to it.

This is excellent tunage replete with a pounding drive reminiscent of Axel the Crazy Frog music but much deeper.  I love the Anonymous voice overs in it, which I was first introduced to via YouTube®, things like "We Are Anonymous. We Are The Internet," and "You should have expected us."

I have to tell you that the RIAA and some other folks have gone drunken silly over things like a little girl singing along with a female vocalist in a vid which was subjected to a takedown; a fervor over both the Happy Birthday song written by Mildred J. Hill and her sister Patty S. Hill in Kentucky back in the 1800s and an old scout standby New Friends and Old Friends © Joseph Parry; the recent attempt by the good ol' U.S.A. to imprison a young man from England for LINKING to a file sharing site-- an act which in and of itself is NOT illegal in Great Britain.  Give a bureaucrat an important sounding title and that bureaucrat will scream piracy until the sun burns out of the sky.  Stealing is claiming someone else's work as one's own.  Sharing is keeping the creator's name and credits intact.  Singing is singing.  I'm pretty sure that the little kid who was singing along with a female vocalist in a vid was not in any way wanting to steal the song.  People, can we stop going nuts now please?

The Internet is what it is today in a large part because of some folks who were willing to experiment, folks who were in on ARPANET and the first BBS boards, folks who wanted to push their little Commodores to the limit.  Those folks are my heroes.  The drive to make criminals out of ordinary people who are just a bit more curious than the average sell out is based on fear.  Fear of profit losses.  Fear of the phreaks, the hacktivists, the file sharers.  Fear of people who think differently than the rest of us.  

We need Anonymous.  We need the phreaks, the hackers, the coders, the mavericks.  We need folks who are willing to think.  And so with these thoughts threatening to turn into a full scale rant, I leave you dear reader.

Do take a listen to the song if you wish.  Learn some coding.  Learn something about how your computer works.  Don't be a push button ninny willing to believe the Corporate Lie.

sapphoq reviews says:  The remix "We Are Anonymous" is full of win.

From CyberCrime Fighters: Tales from the Trenches by Felicia Donovan and Kristyn Bernier

From CyberCrime Fighters: Tales from the Trenches, by Felicia Donovan and Kristyn Bernier.  Indianapolis: Pearson/ Que, 2009.  paperback, 308 pps., including index.

I picked up this "gem" while browsing at a bookstore.  The title caught my eye.  I went through it and basically found a bit of sensational writing and nothing new.  The information contained in the book about how to be safe on the internet is already out there in abundance.  The authors come out as against P3P (peer-to-peer file-sharing) and also against the use of temporary and anonymous e-mailers.  The former stance is no surprise.  The latter stance is incongruent with the message to be safe from the bad cybercrime folks and stalkers on the web.  There was one item of interest to the aspiring hacker: the authors include the urls of several businesses that sell surveillance equipment.

Felicia Donovan and Kristyn Bernier use seventeen chapters and two appendices to tell us how to be safe on the Internet and how cybercriminals allegedly operate.  The chapters include ones on spam, sexual predators, online dating, identity theft, cyberstalking, and social networking.

Chapter Three devotes itself to "Cyber Crime Tools You Won't Believe."  The subtitles are: Wi-Fi Tracking, Packet Sniffing, Bluetooth Locating, What is an I.P. Address? [oh, the LULZ], Anonymizers and Anonymous Remailers, Fake Name Generators, and False Caller I.D.  Notably missing is information on social engineering.  That might have been a really helpful thing to include in a book which assumes that the public know nothing.  But alas, not there.  Not anywhere.

I was amused to find that folks who visit sites to do some "anonymous" searching or who use temporary e-mail addys are viewed as suspicious by law enforcement personnel, (pps 40-41).  Donovan and Bernier take for granted that people who use those services are visiting kiddie porn sites or generating hateful e-mails.  No mention is made of privacy denizens who view that where they go on the web is none of the business of their I.S.P. providers and perhaps are trying out the idea of obtaining a Virtual Private Network.  [Newsflash: many of the sites offering cloaking are hoping for return business as a subscriber to their VPN service].  And I've used temporary e-mail myself in order to temporarily access sites that require e-mail addys in order to sell the addys to spammers as a way to make money or wish to target me for ads based on my consumer profile ala Google Is Evil.  And there are folks who use temporary e-mail addys for reasons of safety e.g. they are being stalked by their exes.

The chapter on P2P mentions the RIAA as being the "piracy police" for audio recordings.  The authors tell us that in 1983, the RIAA began targeting college kids using P2P to share music files.  The RIAA folks log into the P2P networks and look around.  Once they locate evidence of sharing of music files, they obtain the IPs of the computer users who are involved in such activities.  If the IPs happen to be traced to university computers, the schools co-operate by [using logs of who was using the computers at the given time probably] locating the offending students and delivering the DMCA letters to them.

As of 2008, the book says, students in receipt of a DMCA letter could opt to settle out of court to the tune of $750 dollars USD per downloaded song or face court action via an RIAA lawsuit.  The authors admit to a judicial ruling that created a setback in the lawsuits still left standing at the time of the ruling.  In Atlantic vs. Howell, it was ruled that creating a file of music to share in itself is not a copyright violation.  Besides the obvious problem of downloading viruses and malware along with the coveted files, the authors say that the P2P networks can be confounding to the average legitimate user who then risks sharing more than s/he intended to.  An example is given of a hapless business employee who did just that.   
[see:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/big-victory-atlantic-v-howell-court-rejects-making for more if you are interested in the ruling].

sapphoq reviews says: All of the chapters are similar to the two that I cited in terms of sensational writing and highly biased stances.  There is nothing new to be had in "From CyberCrime Fighters: Tales from the Trenches".  If you must read this book, then borrow it from the library or read it at the bookstore [like I did for this review].  Better education can be had by reading true crime books and by visiting security sites and privacy sites on the Internet.
                                   A partial list of websites which advocate for the ability for folks to use pseudonyms and why they have chosen to do so will be included in my next post.