Hacking is NOT a Crime

BREAKING: @TheJusticeDept announced a policy revision to the United States Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) which includes exemptions of criminal charges for "good-faith" security researchers.

This is a huge victory for our cause!

#HackingIsNotACrime

justice.gov/opa/pr/departm…

"In the summer of 2013, Edward Snowden shook the world with a trove of disclosed documents from the National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a host of other global three-letter agencies.

For more than a year, there were weekly (if not daily) revelations of just how extensive these agencies’ digital information-gathering capabilities were, particularly those of the United States.

It felt as though the NSA was able to get any information that went through internet or phone networks that wasn’t encrypted plus some information that was weakly encrypted and some more information that wasn’t encrypted on corporate servers. That feeling is close to the truth.

Not long after the Snowden revelations, I partnered with the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), a nonprofit that provides legal support to social movements that “seek to dismantle the political and economic structures at the root of social inequality and environmental destruction.”

The CLDC gives know-your-(legal)-rights trainings to social movement participants, emphasizing how to protect and invoke one’s First and Fourth Amendment rights: the right to free speech and the right to no illegal searches and seizures. These rights are eroded with mass surveillance.

This is quite clear with Fourth Amendment rights, but for First Amendment rights, legal scholars often point to this chilling effect: citizens restrict their speech if they know they are being surveilled.

To complement the CLDC’s legal trainings, I started regularly holding digital security trainings for activists centered on the premise that encryption is the only way to protect your First and Fourth Amendment rights in the modern world of mass surveillance. This book has grown out of these educational efforts."

open.oregonstate.education/defenddissent/

#1a #4a #cypherpunk #censorship #surveillance

🚩 @EFF
🔗 @OregonState

Hack the planet! #hacktheplanet #hackingisnotacrime #makehackingdefiantagain

What is our society coming to?!?

What kind of sociopath would sabotage a @flock mass surveillance camera by disconnecting its one and only battery cable from its one and only solar panel?!?

Is it a humiliating single-point-of-failure design flaw? Absolutely! Some might even call it an easily exploitable denial-of-service vulnerability. But that shouldn't be a reason to perform such nefarious acts.

Because without the solar panel, the battery can't recharge after 24+ hours of surreptitiously surveilling innocent civilians and monetizing the data analytics they collect from 80,000 of these deployed across the United States of America.

Geez, some people just want to see the world burn! 🔥

Question: how many masked ICE agents does it take to hold down one man before executing him in the street?

Answer: more than it would take an unmasked, well-trained, disciplined, military soldier who only fires when fired upon.

Synopsis: ICE agents are exercising more force on people at home than military soldiers exercise on enemies abroad.