Out of the Matrix. Out of myself. I don't want to be tracked all the time. I don't want a profile being compiled of everything I buy, everywhere I go, every website I visit...
So I get a new laptop. One not connected to my name. I buy it in a different city. But then does that mean I can only use it in the city I bought it? I bring it back to my home city. I want to go online at one of my favorite cafes, but I realize that would make it easier to deduce whose laptop it is. Especially with how often I use it. I start to mix it up. I frequent cafes I've never been to. I spend more time in cities I would never want to be in. Yeah, that'll throw them off...
I never make a new account with my real name. Pseudonyms only. I never refer to accounts I've used before. I never log back in to Facebook. I tread lightly when it comes to looking up stuff I used to look up so it's not too obvious who I am, based on what types of searches I make. Then, one day, I make a mistake... Damn! I just visited a part of a little known website that only I would go to. Or I searched for a hashtag that only I used before. Too obvious. Start over.
I get an old used laptop from a homeless homie. Not sure if that's secure enough, since he's not a stranger - there's still a breadcrumb trail back to me. Not really, though. What am I so worried about? That they'll corner him in an interrogation center to find out who he gave the laptop to? For what it's worth, our friendship is off the record. We were never friends on Facebook. He doesn't know my last name. It's hard to know what's irrationally paranoid and what's just rational paranoia in an age of totalitarian surveillance.
I can't risk making the same mistake again if I have to buy a new laptop every time, just to feel secure in my anonymity. I start looking into how I can better cover my tracks. I wipe the computer and install a secure Linux operating system. Not the most popular one, though... you never know when a big mainstream project could get infiltrated and compromised. Of course, all these precautions are pointless if everything I'm doing is still being tracked online. Even without making any new accounts to be tracked, all my browsing history is probably passing through the N$As servers. Even if it's not tied to my irl identity, they could still build a profile of all my pseudonyms and browsing history. A statistical analysis of what YouTube videos I'm watching could be enough to make an educated guess at who I am just based on my music tastes...
So I started using TOR-browser whenever possible, for almost all my browsing needs. Again, I avoid old accounts. All new accounts. All new pseudonyms. All new hashtags. Damn, it's like I have to erase my whole existence and start over every time I mess up. New projects. New websites. I forget what projects I was working on two identities ago. How long have I been doing this? How many people have I been? Am I getting anywhere? Isn't this fruitless run-around exactly what the N$A wants? I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels..
The more I learn about security, the less secure I feel. The more you know, the more you know you don't know. The TOR-browser is sweet, but it has been compromised in the past. But it's fine now, right? But it could always happen again... But it's pretty safe, it gets audited by third parties, right? But anything can be compromised, so how can I trust the audit? But no, I'm being too paranoid again. My digital footprint is so small... It's not like I'm running the next silk road. Besides, bit torrents are still going strong, despite the fact it's hard/impossible to avoid being tracked when you use them (as a function of how bit-torrent works).
I remind myself that all I really need to do is stick to best practices and forget about being perfect. I'm not doing anything illegal, anyways... TOR-browser on a secure Linux system should be enough...
But I can't help it, and I start to pick up superstitions from the Swarm. The government can open their own TOR exit nodes, and if they open enough of them, they can start to get a sense of who is doing what in the TOR network. Theoretically. So I start double-checking where my first three connection hops are. The rumor is that if all your TOR hops keep coming out of the USA then the network could be compromised. But that doesn't even make sense... you really think the same N$A who tramples on everyone's constitutional rights is going to be too inundated with legal beaurocracy to just open exit nodes out of foreign countries when they need to? You really think that's above and beyond their capacity? But that doesn't help, now I just feel less sure of my anonymity even if the connections aren't from the USA.
As I learn more about TOR, I realize my footprint isn't nearly as small as I thought. There are holes in my security everywhere. Since anyone can open an exit node, and your connection must go out an exit node any time you access a website that doesn't end in ".onion", I might be giving up my passwords every time I log in. Well, at least I'm using accounts that are relatively unrelated to my irl identity. These are mostly throwaway accounts, anyways. Then I learn about the potential of an attack using end-to-end statistical analysis of bandwidth. Although IP addresses and internet traffic are masked, you can see when someone is using TOR, and you can see how much bandwidth they use. Enough to deduce which TOR connection is connected to which websites if the bandwidth at both ends are closely monitored. (Again, ".onion" websites are safer because your connection won't go through an exit node, so there is no "other end" to match your bandwidth).
On top of it all, my MAC address is probably attached to everything I'm doing... TOR hides the internet traffic, but I bet the N$A still builds bandwidth profiles for every MAC address just in case they can connect the dots at a later date. (That's the address embedded in your hardware, the physical address).
At this point, I start to regret knowing so much about how these technologies work. I know plenty of people who continue to speak freely online, as if there were no surveillance at all. Of course, they also don't question the status quo as much, or as directly. My argument is usually that the surveillance could be influencing them on a subconscious level. It's not that they are so confident and enlightened that it doesn't bother them. Rather, they are simply unaware of the extent to which they are being silenced. But I have to admit, at times, I wonder how much more I could be getting done if I was naive to all of this.
Sometimes I even wonder if Edward Snowden was actually a part of this whole subconscious silencing agenda. A critical component of imposing this so-called chilling effect is to let people know they're being watched. Otherwise we could just continue organizing and resisting as if we weren't being watched. No wonder that news story managed to get paraded around mainstream media outlets, when so many bigger stories get completely censored out of existence. Perhaps it was all part of the plan to implement a panopticon-type of atmosphere where everyone watches themselves. (Note: whether Snowden played into this agenda on purpose or by accident is irrelevant.)
Finally, I start using Tails OS. Something tells me whonix/qubes would be even more secure, and less likely to get compromised, but I settled for Tails for now. It uses MAC spoofing by default, masking the MAC address with a fake MAC address. And the OS is hardened to the point that I don't have to worry so much about viruses and glitches on my own OS. Finally, I feel like I've got a decent setup. I use email addresses that I can access through a ".onion" website. I start frequenting more ".onion" websites to communicate with others, and recede even deeper into the world of the darkweb...
So then, with such a solid OS, I stop worrying about whether or not JavaScript is on... bad move! There's still so much more to uncover. For one thing, I realize that Tails is mostly funded by the government - which doesn't necessarily mean it has backdoors, because they use it themselves and wouldn't want to plant backdoors for their own enemies to use against them, but it is something to consider. Then I learned about "uxdt". Ultrasound-cross-device-tracking. Using ultrasound footprints in commercials and on websites, uxdt can be used to trigger smart phones to gather data about what commercials you've watched so they can continue bombarding you with the same ad on your smart phone. With JavaScript enabled in the TOR-browser, I risk coming across a website that triggers a smart phone to know what website I visited through TOR, which could be enough to backtrack through that TOR sessions activity and link it to me. Theoretically. So I start turning off JavaScript again, or at least turning off the sound on my computer... I hope that works...
My point is... in a world where anonymity was once the default for all Internet usage, these days it seems to be slipping away from me... Perhaps this Tumblr will be my final resting place, to hang my hat, and give up the chase. Not a place to be silent, but a place to speak my mind, despite the risk. A place for all my anonymous loose ends to synthesize into a single identity, for better or for worse. Not that I will quit my anonymous projects altogether, but that I will accept my fate that I may never perfect a completely decentralized, untrackable, unknowable online presence... Even now Skynet is no doubt scanning my words, and building a profile of this pseudonym, perhaps even using stylemetry to figure out my irl identity. But to remain entirely in the dark web doesn't seem like a particularly effective way to spread information and expand consciousness, either, because of the catch-22 that the very people who need to hear more about this kind of stuff are the ones who aren't on the darkweb.
In my lifetime, I've seen technology progress by leaps and bounds. But for whom? And to what end? Must Skynet come to fruition, despite all our warnings throughout the years? Must we settle for an identity-driven Matrix that most people silently long to escape? I remember when computers were new. I remember when my family got our first computer. And over the next couple decades, we went from owning our first computer, to living inside one. We've gone from getting our hands on these cool devices that give us more control to manipulate numbers, data, sound and video, to becoming controlled and manipulated ourselves as components of the machine.
But the original spirit of the Internet lives on. It lives on in me, and perhaps in you, as well. It lives on in the opensource movement. It lives on in whistleblowers and hackers who still manage to maintain some degree of anonymity, and it lives on in groups fighting for the right to internet freedom such as the EFF.
In the early days of the Internet, Anonymous arose quite naturally and organically as a wellspring of information. A channel for an ongoing global conversation about where our world is headed, and how we can shape it for the benefit of all of humanity. It gave people the truest expression of free speech this world has ever known. A chorus of whistle-blowers began, and the world started waking up. At the same time, people were given a break from their egos. We saw what we were capable of when we completely side-stepped our own self-concept, and spoke as a faceless genderless raceless ageless entity. In those days, there weren't even images online yet, and when images did arrive it took a while before anyone was willing to show their face. But now we seem to be moving into the era of "asl", and being shamed off of social media for not showing our faces. Facebook is slowly but surely implementing a "real names" policy and the clearnet more resembles an FBI look-book than an underground movement to unite humanity beyond the superficial personal identities.
But I have trouble believing that this is the direction we want the Internet to move in. It seems more like we're being swept up into a direction not of our own choosing. A chorus of egos, where truth is polluted by identity and self-concept, where personalities clash and conversations stall out, and people care more about who is talking rather than what is being said. I hate to say it, but the surface web is looking more and more like the real world.. a wasteland of bullies and fear, where information is willfully ignored or even violently silenced whenever it is convenient...
But here we all are. The children of Earth. Brothers and sisters of humanity, immediately and intimately hyperconnected through the Internet. It's up to all of Us how we decide to shape our world. So, tell me. What's it going to be?
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