By Winston Smith
A new era has dawned across the United States that puts us at risk. To maintain our freedom, integrity, and security, we must make some important changes to how we live, work, and play. Our society no longer can assume that the norms and standards we have enjoyed will continue to frame and protect our privacy and our lives. The responsibility for our well-being, and the well-being of those around us rest on our shoulders.
Risks:
Our culture of convenience puts us at risk. Enamored with the novelty and sparkle of our Information Age, we have traded the ease of accomplishing tasks for the integrity of the information held within. Google offers convenience in finding information and communicating in exchange for access to your private information. Meta has transformed our ability to engage with our community by monetizing your activity and effectively mining and selling your privacy. Our shopping is now centralized, placed at your fingertips, and delivered sometimes within hours with the trade off that all your buying behavior is tracked, analyzed, and manipulated across the internet by Amazon. We have adopted convenience and given up our freedom, integrity, and security in trade.
In this trade, we have fueled the largest class-wealth gap in generations, and have put unprecedented power in the hands of a tiny group of technology oligarchs. Now in power, these oligarchs are focused on building more wealth, power, and control at the cost of the safety, stability, and the integrity of the rest of us. Their reach is omnipresent, their greed insatiable, and their integrity is compromised.
Guiding Principles:
Although wrestling back control will be a difficult challenge involving social revolution, we can engage in some change individually that can protect us individually and collectively as well provide the foundation for the larger revolution. Some people will find these changes difficult and for others it will be easy. Many of these changes will involve technology fixes, others require behavior changes. The path forward requires us to make some important changes and embrace a set of principles that protect and free us. We need to implement DEAPC.
The DEAPC:
The DEAPC is a set of principles that frame behavior and technology with the goal of maintaining our freedom, integrity, and security. These principles are interconnected and interlinked. These principles are; Discipline, Encryption, Anonymity, Privacy, and Control.
D: The first principle is Discipline, and it is the framework that must hold the whole DEAPC set together, for if we lose Discipline, we jeopardize the success of the whole approach. Many will find Discipline is the hardest of all the principles. There is no quick fix, but there are tools we can use to help establish and maintain Discipline.
Challenge: If we usually generate a unique, high-quality password, but reuse an easy-to-remember password occasionally, we risk loss of Privacy, and Control of our information and potentially our freedom, integrity, and security.
Tips: adopt and ONLY use tools that support the DEAPC principles
Tools: password managers, VPN, private email and file storage
E: The second principle is Encryption, and when employed consistently (with Discipline) it acts as a protective layer that wraps the rest of DEAPC. Proper use of encryption can effectively lock access to information with an unbreakable lock. Encryption has been made incredibly accessible with the advent of nearly ubiquitous fast computer processors while also becoming incredibly protective through Open Source development. However, quantum processors may unravel this protection, so we cannot depend solely on Encryption for protection.
Challenge: currently it is quite easy to employ high-quality encryption
Tips: use communication tools, file storage, and device protection that have good encryption at their core
Tools: VPN, encrypted chat and email, and hard drive encryption
A: With the fate of Encryption unknown, the third principle of Anonymity becomes more important. Its location in the middle of the DEAPC principle stack represents the role Anonymity plays and the tension it has to balance. Anonymity’s goal is to hide identity and attribution. By doing so, Anonymity also complicates communications and makes authenticity harder to verify. This will require travelers in the DEAPC to adopt some fluidity in their use of Anonymity based on changing needs and goals.
Challenge: sometimes you want information to be attributable and verifiable and anonymity can limit or prevent this
Tips: use tools that allow you to manage who sees identifying information and employ obfuscation techniques
Tools: VPN, encrypted chat and email, and file encryption
P: The fourth DEAPC principle is Privacy. This principle is an idea that has historically had a lot of power in our society, but with the advent of Social Media, global connectivity, and nearly universal adoption of connected technology, Privacy has become almost non-existent. If you want to live with security, integrity and freedom, you need to regain your Privacy. The other DEAPC principles will help, there are some technological tools you can wield, but much of the loss of Privacy is due to an individual’s behavior. This makes establishing, maintaining, and rebuilding Privacy a challenge for many.
Challenge: Social Media is a societal norm and the contrary to privacy
Tips: manage access to your information by limiting use of connected devices, data mining applications, and websites
Tools: VPN, faraday bags, privacy-focused communities
C The final principle we need to employ is Control. Our Control over our information and our lives is both a goal and a method. At the end of the DEAPC, it quickly becomes clear how connected Control is to Discipline and how the two ends of the stack of principles is actually more like a ring.
Challenge: many people have already ceded control of their information, so the challenge becomes how to regain control
Tips: disciplined use of good passwords, encrypted communications, and encrypted data storage
Tools: password manager, VPN, encrypted communication
Recommendations:
Email– Proton Mail
Chat and Voice–Signal
VPN–NordVPN, Proton VPN
Faraday Bags–Mission Darkness, SLNT
Password Manager–LastPass, 1Password
Device Encryption–FileVault or BitLocker
The Revolutionist is 100% Volunteer run and subscriber funded. We do not sell our soul for advertising dollars. Nor do we prostrate ourselves for grants from the non-profit industrial complex. We are community media. Join the community! Subscribe today at whatever rate you can and get a hard copy of The Revolutionist in your mailbox. Subscribing subsidizes free distribution copies.
The Revolutionist 