The photo was later resent to newspapers by Barcroft Media with the words “URGENT CAPTION CORRECTION” plastered over it in white. The caption correction was: “*** THIS IS NOT EDWARD SNOWDEN IN THIS IMAGE***.”
Read moreMeanwhile, the HKSAR Government has formally written to the US Government requesting clarification on earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies. The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong.
Read moreLast month, a group of gentrification protesters unleashed their rage on a piñata of a Google Bus, an act that seemed at once sadly impotent and uncomfortably close to violence.
Read moreShe said the interpreter translating Welsh’s testimony for the defendants had identified the contraband publication to them as Esquire. That magazine describes its focus as “beautiful women, men’s fashion, best music, drink recipes.”
Inspire magazine bills itself as the publication of Yemeni-based group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and famously published an article titled, “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.” The United States considers it a propaganda and recruitment vehicle for the group, and killed its editor in a drone strike in Yemen last year.
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The ‘brand’ value of groups like GIMF and the al-Mahalem Media Foundation benefit from disseminating these tools. While the tools are less secure than their more popular, mainstream counterparts, actions like blatantly tagging all public keys with ‘#—Begin Al-Ekhlaas Network ASRAR El Moujahedeen V2.0 Public Key 2048 bit—’ and the group branding on the program itself promote the associated al-Qaeda media brands. Despite the fact that using these tools clearly increases the attack surface for these groups through easily identifiable and unique methods, the propaganda value seems to be worth it. In the online jihadist world there are continually competing tiers of forums, release groups, and actors, but less than a handful of encryption programs.
Taking the jihadist point of view, another reason for the development and use of these tools could be heightened mistrust. Anything outside the relatively small ecosystem of online jihadist circles is seen as suspect. Many take the ‘Leviathan’ view of the US and Israel, and continue to apply it towards the cynical views that any Western developed software could contain government backdoors. Even with the popularity of open source security programs, those less technically capable would have a much easier time trusting what’s known to be used by Anwar al-Awlaki, what’s promoted in Inspire, and by prominent jihadist hackers online.
Therefore, factors like attention and mistrust explain the divergence between indicators of technical expertise, like choosing AES finalists, and avoidance, like forgoing PGP or similar programs. These programs are less secure, but allow groups like GIMF to maintain their high profile and feed a confirmation bias of an all-powerful U.S. government. As for now, the programs may arguably protect against ‘backdoors’, but provide easily recognizable data to identify terrorist communications, organizations, and users online.
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Read moreFederal authorities say they’ve raided 7-Eleven stores across Long Island and in Virginia as part of a probe into human smuggling, identity theft and money laundering.
The investigation involves allegations that store owners helped smuggle workers into the U.S. from Pakistan.
Some store owners and managers were arrested Monday. More than a dozen workers have been taken into custody by immigration.
Read moreThe idea that cultural change is driven by lines of flight helps us redress a common misconception about the sixties counterculture. The counterculture was not fundamentally oriented against mainstream society. It is true that the counterculture was defined by the rejection of the society that existed at the time. It is also true that, in the 1970s, the militant end of the counterculture positioned itself against the state in an effort to create a popular movement to overthrow it. But the counterculture itself was oriented away from mainstream society rather than against it. It was driven by the desire for another world and way of life, and inspired by the belief that this world and life was possible. Having a ‘countercultural’ attitude does not necessarily involve hostility towards mainstream society. It signals a desire to leave the society that exists, to leave it to its own devices, and to grow creative (with new devices) with other like-minded people.
Read moreThe best expression of countercultural lines of flight, however, can be seen in the the back-to-land movement in the United States in the late 1960s. Drop City, in Colorado, was the first of many hippie communities that sought to create a new kind of society. Between 1965 and 1973, thousands of middle class kids, in flight from Mom and Dad, society, the draft, careers, and social conventions of all kinds, came to Drop City and other communes like it in search of freedom and alternative lifestyles. The culture got by with a minimum of rules. Everything was set up to enable free-wheeling, nomadic lifestyles, which could be recreated or escaped at a moment’s notice. Nomadism, as Deleuze and Guattari understand it, doesn’t require moving around. You can sit still and be a nomad. Nomadism is a way of being. It involves refusing to be tied down by set categories and definitions. It is driven by a desire to experiment and explore, to learn, grow, and boldly venture forth on creative lines of flight.
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Nomadism is a cultural norm. While there are plenty of people who simply want to ‘fit in’, the best and the brightest want to break out and head for the horizon.
When we look into the future, we dream of a world that is radically different from the one we know today. We may be stuck in offices, trapped in traffic, tied down by debt or shacked to unhappy relationships. Inside, we are nomads. We are already in flight. The mainland awaits.
The five panelists shared Moonraker clips, Pynchon quotes, and McLuhan-esque aphorisms: All our metaphors are broken. McNeil put the New Aesthetic in art-historical context. Bridle quoted Julian Assange: “We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.” They took no questions. When it was over, they paraded the drone back to the bungalow they’d rented for the week and jumped into the pool with it.
BR: Kuwait is a crazy mix: a super-affluent country, yet basically a welfare state, though with a super neo-liberal consumer economy.
FQ: We consume vast amounts of everything. Instagram businesses are a big thing in Kuwait.
BR: What’s an Instagram business?
FQ: If you have an Instagram account, you can slap a price tag on anything, take a picture of it, and sell it. For instance, you could take this can of San Pellegrino, paint it pink, put a heart on it, call it yours, and declare it for sale. Even my grandmother has an Instagram business! She sells dried fruit. A friend’s cousin is selling weird potted plants that use Astroturf. People are creating, you know, hacked products.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 