From the ashes of Heaven

Archangel / May 15, 2014 / Personal / 0 Comments

An idea…

So, based on my last post, I’m thinking of trying to start a project. I’d start out on Facebook to see if there is any traction for my idea and then see where it goes.

The Political Primary Challenge

The rules are simple and goal even simpler. Lets use the political process against our ruling political class and send a message that can’t be ignored or forgotten in our generation. There are two ways to go about the challenge.

1.) Easy Mode:

During the next Primary Election, get the ballot for what ever political party you normally lean toward and for every office on the ballot specifically vote for someone other than the current incumbent.

2.) Expert Mode:

For those that can take the time to do a little research, during the next Primary Election, get the ballot for what ever political party you normally lean toward and for every office on the ballot try to vote for someone who meets the following criteria:
– For local or county elections, vote for someone who has not previously held any political office.
– For state elections, vote for someone who has not previously held any state level political office.
– For federal elections, vote for someone who has not previously held any state or federal level political offices BUT is likely qualified to manage federal affairs given a substantial background in business or other administrative positions.
– If all else fails, vote for someone other than the current incumbent.

By voting this way during the primary election, we can craft a more unique and diverse general election guaranteed, so much as is possible, to be void of incumbent politicians who are or may be corrupt but the current political process. However, do not deceive yourselves, this campaign is not without its own problems. There is a risk that many offices could be filled by people who are blatantly incompetent and unqualified for the positions they hold. In addition, if we were even 50% successful with the U.S. Congress, we would throw the entire legislative process into complete turmoil especially if we hit the real goal of getting rid the entrenched political leadership (i.e. Boehner, Pelosi, etc). For me, I believe our government has stopped working for us and causing the legislature and even the government in general to stop functioning is a good thing.

Thoughts? Tweaks? Am I nuts?

Archangel / July 26, 2013 / Political / 0 Comments

I’m so out of my mind angry

The government wants access to private SSL keys.

For those of you who aren’t technical, please allow me to explain what this means. SSL and TLS are the basis for nearly all secured internet communications. Log into your bank? You used SSL. Buy a sexy toy from sexytoys.com? You used SSL. Log into Facebook to change your password? You used SSL. Rent a book online from your local library? You used SSL. Hell… google secures their searches with SSL. You can default all your Facebook, twitter, MySpace and virtually every other popular social network or experience with SSL. SSL hides your information from prying eyes. It keeps people who can see your traffic from being able to understand it.

With the private SSL certificate signing keys, the NSA/U.S. Government can do a couple things:
1.) If they have a system in place to intercept your traffic… something called PRISM perhaps… they wouldn’t need the cooperation of any corporation, their network or their server administrators to get, log, and monitor your information and traffic. They’d just need a data center, say in Utah, that has the computing power to analyze the traffic and trap and store salient information. For what its worth… they could also trap every password change ever made for what ever purpose they want.
2.) Since SSL is based on key signing authorities and public key cryptography, if the government gets access to the private key of an issuing authority (aka Root authorities/certificates), they could easily generate their own keys and completely impersonate a company or operate as a man in the middle. This is particularly important because if they have access to someone who signed the certificates for a company that refused to give the NSA access… they just need to impersonate the certificates and voila!

Mind you… I’m not using hyperbole. I used to do certificate authentication for IKE tunnels for IPSec VPN and tunnel encryption and authorization for SSL VPN for a living and some of these things were part of my test cases.

GET ANGRY. I’m normally happy enough that someone cares enough to click like on Facebook… but that simply not good enough now. The government wants every post, every purchase, every IM, every email, everything you do to be private between you, the person you sent it to, and them! AYFKM! GET ANGRY! DO SOMETHING! Post your own anger. Tell your other friends and everyone you know that apathy is not an option. The government can find something wrong with every person in this country. They’ve made an impossible web of contradictory laws and regulations and you are guaranteed to have done something illegal! GET ANGRY!

Edit:

I completely forgot the reason I wanted to post here instead of Facebook.

I’m thinking now is the time to begin an actual campaign to vote against and replace every incumbent, period. I don’t care if we’re replacing Republicans with Democrats or Libertarians with Socialists. I vehemently believe its time that we inform our legislature and executives, in the most obvious and painful way that we peacefully can, that the government works for us. Works on our whim and that our rights are not a negotiating point or a campaign strategy.

Anyone out there willing to try this? Anyone willing to figure out what it takes to change the government? To put your money into a cause and push blindly until you’re done?

Archangel / July 25, 2013 / Personal, Political / 0 Comments

What to think?

I’ve had a very hard time over the last 4-5 days with this whole spying thing. I’m angry… damn angry… but what makes me angriest isn’t what you might expect.

For those that are angry at the phone taping and the data mining… don’t be angry at Obama… or at least don’t direct your anger solely at him. Multiple Senators and Congressmen have come out saying that the full Senate was briefed on these programs and various Congressional committees. If people like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz knew about this… these people who claim to be champions of civil rights and defenders of the Constitution… if they were briefed on this as the reports say… where the hell is their outrage? Not just today, but from the moment they learned about the programs? IT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO SAY “IT’S CLASSIFIED”. If you believe at your core that something is unconstitutional, you betray everything you’ve ever said about that document, everything you’ve ever said about civil liberties by remaining silent. I want to go to jail about as much as the next guy… but this is far more important than getting the AG to say that the president doesn’t have the power to drone Joe Blow at Starbucks.

For those that aren’t angry at what the government is doing… I think I’m more angry at you. “Meh”… “Doesn’t bother me”…. “I’ve got nothing to hide”… The total lack of any depth of thought is breath taking. Let me give you a premise from which all of my political thoughts stem: Our government is not, has never been and will never be an altruistic entity the exists solely to serve the well being and best interests of The People. Our government was created as an adversarial system where various people try to get everything they want and in the process are forced to compromise and hopefully end up in the happy middle. The state we are in is not a happy middle. The federal government has stripped away any facade of transparency and service to The People and left The People with exactly zero privacy. We haven’t, apparently, just sacrificed just “a little bit” of freedom for a little bit of security, we’ve sacrificed just about all of our freedom for nearly no security. For those who aren’t angry, I understand why the Second Amendment might not matter to you, but the Fourth Amendment exists to protect the innocent far more than it does the guilty. Without it, the government can merely use suspicion as justification for arrest and search. Without it, rules of evidence fall away and the burden of proof falls to the innocent instead of the prosecution. But then… you’ve got “nothing to hide”.

A poem written by Martin Niemöller over a century ago:

First they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

If you won’t defend me today… there may be no one to defend you tomorrow. Rights aren’t things. They’re not a default existence. You don’t have a right because you say you do and you don’t have a right because I say you do. Rights are rights only as long as you are willing to defend them. My next question is a bit extreme, and I don’t mean to imply the situation is dire and the “guberment is comin’ for me”, I mean it as way to think about the future and what it COULD bring: What are you willing to die for? Will you cower in fear when all rights are gone or will you die for freedom defending your, your family’s and my right to a righteous existence free of suspicion and fear?

Archangel / June 11, 2013 / Personal / 5 Comments

Archangel / May 22, 2013 / Personal / 0 Comments

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