Manifesto

The Crossroads – What Road Will You Choose?

You woke up this morning and I bet it seemed an ordinary, plain, vanilla; like any other day. This is natural, because a feeling stasis and normalcy permeates our lives. It can mask the fact that we are at a pivotal moment in history. 

We stand at a crossroads. Not just you and I, but all of mankind. The world has two choices before it, two paths. On one path lies misery, destruction and death. On the other path lies prosperity, freedom and mankind achieving its unbounded potential

These two paths are composed many steps, many small choices. You will make some of these decisions. This is why reading this essay is so important. Our destiny is in your hands.

Why I’m Writing This

I’m not here to sell you anything, in fact it cost me a good amount of time and money to set up this site. I’m doing this because I believe deeply in what I’m about to share with you and that by giving you knowledge I am marking you with both power and responsibility.  We are at an existential tipping point. You and I have the power to bring forth a bright future. 

For many years I delved into philosophy, religion, politics, epistemology, psychology, economics and many other disciplines. From the age of 21, I worked and fully supported myself and then my family. At the same time, I studied at rigorous schools and earning my highest degree at 28. But while I have spent many years in the “system”, ultimately I am an autodidact with a deep, structured and curious mind. 

There are many important causes to support and to fight for. Ultimately keeping safe what you love most dearly requires forgoing surface level impressions and engaging in higher order thinking. The most vital cause, the cause upon which all other causes rest, is one that you would have missed before reading this manifesto. It took me years of deep thinking to arrive at this insight and I’ve worked hard to scaffold and condense it for you. 

Here is my intellectual journey.

My Journey

In 2013 Cody Wilson created the worlds first 3D printed gun. Cody was much more than a guns rights activist. His goal was to utilize technology to hamstring government overreach. Cody was intelligent, articulate and daring. He introduced me to the concept of using cryptography and ciphers to create privacy and distance. Codes have a range of uses. They can keep unwanted intruders out of your life or emails. Cryptography can also disintermediate the state, removing it from our life and relationships, like removing a splinter from a puss filled wound. 

Inspired by Cody, I dived into cryptography. Fundamentally, cryptography is not about codes, it’s about communication, relationships and exclusivity. The cypherpunks in works such as the cyphernomicon by Tim May showed how cryptography (or its absence) would shape the future. 

Regular unencrypted information, when shared on the internet, is inherently promiscuous. You think that an email or google search in private, but in fact, its out there in the open for anyone look at. Little did we know that a lot of peeping was taking place.

In 2013, an NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, released top secret government files showing that the government had been peeping on us for years. While service providers like Google and Yahoo said that your information was secure, they had been giving the government the “keys”. The NSA was tapping all of our phone conversations and had went deep into to the ocean to “wiretap” the internet connection pipe between the US and Europe. 

What we thought were personal emails texts and phone conversations were being listened in on. When you thought was a private 2-way communication with your friend was actually an wider exchange. The government was there with you. It was not only listening in, it was recording and archiving your conversations.

I realized that if the NSA was tapping our phones, it would be trivial transcribe our conversations and file them away. They likely had a folder with each citizens name. This folder would include all email and text as well as any phone calls made. Search results would be included. The government could easily view their folder if they desired. They could do a word search on anything you’ve said or written your entire life.

Sadly, my prediction came true. When the government looked into the “folders” on Trump, Flynn and their associates, it called this “unmasking”. 

I expressed to friends (years before Trump) that if anyone threatened the establishment, the deep state would use these files to embarass, spook and even prosecute any challenges to its power. I later saw this unfold as the FBI, NSA and the entire deep state apparatus and targeted candidate Trump and then president Trump. 

Understanding how new technology gave the government massive surveillance powers made me fear for the future. But as I delved into the works of the cypherpunks I was imbued with hope. The government does have the technological power to spy on you, but it does not have the power to crack your codes. Encryption is like a tinted window bedroom window. Anyone can stare at it or in NSA fashion, record and archive the view from outside, but the tint prevents anyone from seeing your personal life inside. 

I realized that the internet with its interconnectivity and low cost of entry empowerd the little people to challenge the elites. Anyone can start a blog, anyone can tweet. If the free internet could be preserved, the little people would throw off the yoke of their corporate and deep state overlords.

Activism

When I discovered the arms race between the state and megacorporations vs the people, it became apparant to me that this contest was the fulcrum upon which the whole world turned. The future was painful to view in its binary intensity. There were only two options. Either the state would use technology to enslave the people, banning cryptography in the process, or the people would leverage the unprecedented power of the internet and create an era of liberty and unprecedented human expansion.

I felt this truth deep in my bones and joined the fight in a variety of roles. The battle against the Marketplace Fairness Act was crucial. We held it off for years, and then the US Supreme Court went around congress simply legislated this internet tax into law.

I’ve spent the last eight years devoted to this cause. I made this website, Nightmare Vs Paradise, to show you the crucial choice we all face and give you easy to apply tools to support freedom, liberty and prosperity. 

When you see how easy it is to make a difference and when you fully grasp our situation… when you not only see this vision, but feel it as I do… I’m confident you’ll take advantage of these tools, share them with your family and friends and perhaps even shout them out from the rooftops. 

On that note, let’s get back to this binary choice. The choice is harsh, stark, and terrifying. There are only two options. Our world will enter a Nightmare or a Paradise.

It Will Happen. It is Happening.

George Orwell predicted an approaching nightmare, a place where you are a slave of totalitarian government. The government demands complete subservience. Any deviation is quashed. For even thinking differently, you are punished for ThoughtCrime. This vision described in Orwell’s book 1984 ends with the rebel being mentally reprogrammed by the government and then shot.

In your lifetime it is possible for the government to gain unthinkable powers and create a 1984 existence for its subjects. I know this seems radical, but I’m going to explain how this is current trajectory. You and I will be forced to live in this dystopian world. There will be no escape.

There is a second path, the path to paradise. I don’t mean some mystical experience or a heavenly realm. The material world we live in can become even more wonderful and beautiful then it already is. Disease, poverty and war can be sharply reduced. The tools for wealth and riches will be at your disposal.

Sounds fanciful, I know.

If you’ve read this far, bear this in mind before continuing.

He Who Controls The Internet Controls The World

There are only two possible endgames:

1. The Government outlaws cryptography and polishes its spygame until the surveillance is absolute.

2. There is high or universal adoption of cryptography

The difficult task before me is to help you see that Endgame 1 will inevitably lead to the “nightmare” scenario and that Endgame 2 will lead to the “paradise” scenario.  

Endgame 1 – Nightmare – Edward Snowden said that even George Orwell could not comprehend the powers available to government today. Orwell’s governments tracks the citizens using cameras and a massive secret police. This of course is very scary, but keep in mind that technology in Orwells day was primitive. Your government today has many more tools at its disposal. The cell phones we all carry have built in microphones, cameras and GPS locators. The government today has the ability hear your every conversation. It knows you even more intimately since it knows your search preferences if you are pregnant, gay,  or any other secrets you might have.

Don’t think the government is above using your secrets to control you. That’s what they did with MLK Jr. The only way we know about this is becasue an activist group in the 70’s burglarized an FBI office and mailed their loot to what was back in the day a free press. 

Endgame 2 – Paradise– The government controls knowledge. For most of human history and certainly the past hundred years, the government has been in control of information sources. This trend has intensified. The information you get is the knowledge the government wants you to have (more on this later). This can be described as top-down information transfer. Ie, transfer of information from the government and big corporations to you the populace. The internet has the potential to do the opposite. Every person has the ability to be an information source. We have the opportunity to have freedom of ideas. We the people, can combat the government propaganda. We can expose and fix our flawed governments. When you consider that governments in the 20th century have killed ninety million people, it becomes obvious that there is a lot to fix.

Not convinced. Let’s delve into this a bit more.

The Nightmare Future

Personal:

Imagine the world in twenty years, the government knows everything about you. It has been tracking your phone calls, then turning them into text documents. Any phone conversations you’ve ever made are recorded as are any conversations overheard by your computer or phone microphone. The government knows every web search you’ve ever made. This means that it knows what type of food you like, the medicines you take, your political preferences and your sexual orientation. It also knows all of your sins.

It knows if you’ve innocently flirted with an old flame on facebook. It knows if you’ve ever done a google search for something naughty or looked at clickbait you shouldn’t have. This same government that has no qualms about spying on you, has no problems in using your personal information to its benefit. It doesn’t care if you suffer.

Destruction of Democracy:

When the government is hell bent on taking away your rights, who is there to stop it? It takes someone outside the system to fix it. The bureaucrats who created the problems, are not going to step out of the way. It takes someone with guts and a fresh perspective to challenge the status quo.

In a society where the government is privy to your deepest secrets, you are severely handicapped and can offer no meaningful resistance. No outsider will be able to compete with entrenched interests. Imagine running for office when your opponent knows everything about you and will do everything it can to destroy you. How could an outsider run for office when those entrenched in power are listening to your communications and phone calls?

A New York Times article profiles Hacking Team, an Italian company that creates software that allows government agencies and corporations to get your phone calls, emails, skype, location… Repressive regimes spend millions to buy this software and use it to destroy their opposition. The Hacking Team’s clients include some of the worlds most repressive governments, including: Honduras, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia. Russia and Mexico are also clients. In South Korea, the software had helped the N.I.S., its intelligence service rig an election. In Ecuador, opposition party lawmakers and a mayor were targeted.

Repressive regimes are willing to pay millions becomes spying technology allows them to silence the opposition. As Hacking Team spokesman, Eric Rabe promotes, “if you disagree with someone… there’s no need to have a public policy debate. Just destroy them.”

We already know that the NSA is recording your phone calls, skype chats, emails and much more. It has facilities to store this information. The government will use this information to destroy individuals like you and me. It will also use it to destroy its opposition and wipeout democracy.

What We Must Do

The most important thing we can do for mankind’s future is to keep the government out of the Internet. This is especially important in areas where the government uses control. There are two areas in particular that will make all the difference.

Regulation

The government can use regulation to mold the Internet into its puppet. This government used Microsoft and Google and many other companies to spy on Americans. It has used copyright regulation to shut down websites and technologies it doesn’t like. The golden rule is to fight any and all regulation of the Internet.

Encryption

“We discovered something. Our one hope against total domination. A hope that with courage, insight and solidarity we could use to resist. A strange property of the physical universe that we live in. 

“The universe believes in encryption.”

“It is easier to encrypt information than it is to decrypt it.”

Julian Assange

The government has the money, the power, the guns; but as Assange points out, we have encryption. With encryption information can be kept private. The government can’t insert its nose.

If I ask you to guess a number 1-10, it will take you at most ten guesses or 30 seconds. If I ask you to guess a number 1-100, it will take longer. Now what if I ask you to guess a number that is 256 or 512 digits long. It’s going to take a very long time. Using encryption means that the government can’t access your information. That means they can’t acces your emails, your zoom or your phone calls…

This is huge. Encryption stops the government dead in its tracks. But here is the clincher. The government can stop encryption at any moment, by outlawing it. The only way to stop the government from outlawing encryption is to use it; to have so many people using encryption that its impossible to outlaw.

Here is what you can do. Visit my “take action” page below for a list of practical steps you can take to keep your information private, promote encryption and help shift our collective path from its current nightmare trajectory. You can make these small changes to your online activities and the process make the world a better place.

You’ve read the manifesto. Get out there and do what you need to do. Below are notes I need to incorporate into the manifesto.

The are two ways we prevent the nightmare. Either many people make small steps without a sacrifice or a few people make huge sacrifices of their careers, reputations or even their lives. It is vital you spread this message. Let’s all make those easy choices rather than gamble that a brave few will step up to the plate.