Let's talk about privacy, intimacy, anonimity and identity

I wanted to write about those topics for a while because I think they're important topics, eseentially nowadays due to the ever growing ubiquitous surveillance. I think that most of them are not perceived the same way by everybody, so i'll try to write down and define what I put behind the concept of identity, privacy, anonymity and intimacy.

So, we're going to start with some definitions, see how they are linked etc. I wo'nt use many links, because it's what I think it's probably not original and unique, but that's how I fell things are working. Also, we are going to eat Information Theory.

The identity problematics

We walk in the world as an emitter and receiver of signal (part noise, part information). This signal is directed toward one((unidirectional communication, also named unicast by network engineers)), some((multidirectionnal communication, named multicast in network operation)) or all((wide communication, or broadcast)) receivers in range.

The etymology of ''Identity'' comes form the latin identitas (sameness) annd indicates what information are emitted by the same entity, thing. That means two things. There's a track to previous information emitted by this entity, and the receiver can link the emitter to this entity. The identity is then the sum of all the information about an entity an emitter can perceive, and an entity can have multiple identity, in general one for each space (public or private) the entity evolves into.

One thing about information, if they're not archived and indexed, they will disappear with time. Who remember who Jessi Slaughter is?

What's my name?

The name is the unique handle of an identity. It can be a unique number, a common name, a description, etc. The name of an entity is how you will access all the information you can find about it. This is the bit of information you need to know to find out who an entity is and then accessing all the information available about this identity in the space you're standing.

If an entity has no name, and is in fact anonymous, then you won't be able to find any information about it. But then, the 'Girl with Nice Boobs who was at the party yesterday' and the 'Bunch of people that sing in the subway' in a name. A temporary one, but it's still a name. You can discuss about those person with other people who were in the same space at the same time, but the information will probably be wuickly dissolved in the flux of data we live in.

A name stand for an identity. Or should. The tricky part is the homonyms. Two (or more) different identities covered by only one name. To find out which entity you're communicating with, you will try to find context that is, previously stored information that you can then use to find out which entity your dealing with. You deal Homonimy the exact same way that Usurpation. Using the information you can find about an entity, you can know who they are to you, independently of their name.

Trust

The trust is the biggest thing in social relation. It exists in principally three states. You trust an entity, you distrust it or you have no idea of the trust you should have into the entity. The trust is the accountability. When something you trust gives you an information, you know the information is correct. If someone you trust claims a name, you won't check his history back to confirm or infirm it. Someone you trust is alos someone who will probably not takes information about you out of the space you are communicating.

The people you distrust is easy, you won't believe them and try to verify every information they send because you can find a source of information you trust to confirm or infirm their identity.

The world is small anyway, so you can probably build a trust chain to this entity and confirm or infirm the identity link for an entity you do not trust.

Trust is not bidirectionnal and is personnal. That's not because you trust me that I trust you. ANd that's not because I trust someone taht you should trust it by default, but it will gives it more trustability (because you trust me and I'm telling you that this entity is really who they claim to be), so that will help you to decide if you want to trust this entity.

What's privacy then?

Privacy opposes to publicity. If something is not in the public space, that means it's in a private space (or that it's in no space, which is not possible due to some contrsaints such as physics).

So, what is public then? From etymology it is linked to the people((From the latin poplicus which is a derivative from populus, the people)). That mean everybody can access and see a public thing. At least, there is no authorisation needed to access something public.

For instance, when you walk in the street, you are in a public space. When you enter a bar or a restaurant, you're still in a public space. When you pay the fee to access a museum or a night club, you are in a public space (it's not an authorization, it's a cost). When you surf the web reading at datas that do not requires a password to access to, you're in a public space.

That mean that everybody in the same public space as you can access all the information you're emitting. Wether it being you're apparent age, skin color, gender (not your sexual identity however), the thing you're saying or the song you're singing. If you are in a public space, everybody can access and see and track all the information you're emitting there.

So, the privacy opposes itself to the publicity. That is, you're in privacy, and so in a private space, when you access a non public place. A place that requires you to have an authorization of a kind. It could be a good old key for your house or your locker, a password to access a private sharing space online, a simple door closed with a sign on it stating 'Access forbidden' is a delimitation between a public and a private space.

Privacy is then a matter of limiting access to the information you emit. If you have the key to enter a private space, you can access the private information.

Intimacy

The intimcay, again from etymology, comes from the inside. This is what's inside an entity, that's all the information you're not emitting. It's when you opt-out totally, with no emitter of information you cannot control, and all the one you control shut down. You generally add your closest friend into this intimacy, as long as all the 'special' people, those are people that won't tell those information to anyone.

The intimacy is the part of yourself that no one knows about, except the specials ones. Intimacy is way more than privacy, privacy is intresting, as it allow you to communicate with people of choice without being put in danger for what your saying. It allow you to have multiple identities and to use them in multiple social circles. Intimacy is what's out of all social circle.

let's explore the world!

We now have our concepts defined. Almost. So, now, let's go online, because everything is funnier if you add network and computers to it.

Let's enter the world of information

So, it's easy to get a grasp on the private/public problem in the physical space. I can live with a bunch of people in an open space like a loft, or a squat, but still have some private space (the one I close with a key I own). What's hard is when you add some layers, and, for instance the cyberspace. I can sit in a private space (my room, locked) and accessing a maybe-public space.

The thing is, independently of the thing you're gonna access, every bits of information that goes out of your device of choice will go through different intermediaries before reaching the data you want to access. The origin and the destination of the packets are know, as long as a lor of other stuff. Those information are needed to route the packets through the diferents network, but they are data you emit in the public space (anyone on the route of yourpacket can see it and access to this information).

Wether you're accessing your facebook page (which is more or less private, dependings on the settings you choose), your webmail (which is private, given the fact that only you is supposed to have the password needed to access it) or your mails, reading a website, downloading a video using P2P protocols, etc, you will emit a lot of information that a lot of people (or computers) can read.

So, remember what I told about the lock in the previous part? You need to put a lock on the information you want to keep private. You can't lock all the information in the packets, some of them are needed to grants you access to the resource you've asked for. Those are mainly routing and protocol information, because that's the way computers works, they need to talk a lot to each other to get things done. But the others informations, the ones you want to keep private, you can lock them to deny anyone the possibility to read them without a key of a kind.

That's the cryptography goal. Forbidding a data being physically readable by anyone and restricting it to whoever got the key.

So, you're in the private space only when you use string cryptography. yeah, encrypt everything you want to make private. If something goes online without encryption, it belongs to the public space.

A wild corporation appears!

Corporations, at least internet ones, suck at two things. Security (but that's the burden of everyone) and transparency. When you land on a 'secured' website of a company, they will require you to proove your identity while they're doing the same (using ssl certificates). They're not asking you for a key (an authorization), they're using your identity as a key. They're using the whole set of data they can build about you as the key to access their services. You cannot know what data they have on you, you cannot opt-out those data, they're building a strong identity of you. And they're following you everywhere they can, without telling you.

So, they build an identity about you, one you don't know anything about and they're building it using data from a private space that they're not supposed to share with everyone else (except if you explicity opt-in). They're archiving everything information you emit, stocking it in extremly redundant servers becasue tehy do not want to lose any bits of identity about you. And then, they will replace the wall of the private space they made by polarised window, giving everyone who can afford it to penetrate theprivate space without the key and without your consent. When someone goes into your place without authorization, generally you call the authorities or shoot the trespassor. You're not allowed to do it for corporation taht sells personnal data, some of them they shoudl not have.

I mean, they do not need your name for running their business. The only reason they need it is becasue they want to cross check into other database - private space - what you're doing when not undr their radar. That's what real-name policies are, they're a meta identification token spanning all the databases taht uses the same policy. And that's why they're so bad.

The financial data stored in non banking websites is bad to. They do not need it. They need to know, in the worst case, who buys what to who and when. Not the bank name, the card number or any othr details on it.

So, corporation are robbing your identities. They lure you in confy private space, then put you on national broadcast. I'm not even speaking about the risks of a data leak or a breach in the infrastructure. People accuses hacker when information about them isleaked. But hackers did not archived this information in frist hand, they did not make huge files to track people and to spy them and to rape and destroy their privacy. What hackers do is finding a part of a public space that was hidden behind a curtain. So, next time someone is doxing you, asks the company why they had those information about you in clear text.

You can access a company server, if they store all the private information (or what they define as private) in an encrypted format you won't be able to read it. That's the way to go, if you want an information to be private, then encrypt it. If it touch toyour intimacy, do not publish the information. The internet and computers have an endless memory of extreme precision.

Protect yourself. Encrypt everything that moves. Give momentum to everything that do not move.

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Version 1.0 of this entry was written by okhin on 2012/01/26. Use it as you wish. Or follow the WTFPL.

Tyranny by default

I got this in my mind since a while. I do not like when I have a default preselected on any choice I have to do.

And I think, it's bigger than the fact I just do not like it. But what are those default choices that I'll rage about in a while? It's all the configuration choice you see, all the already opted-in check-boxes, all the radio buttons already selected on the 'by default' configuration options.

 What's a default?

Those options are chosen not randomly (else, they won't suggest anyone). They are the one that 'most people choose' but no one here is most people. Take the public furniture for instance. They're tailored for a standard human of average 1m70 tall. Which correspond to the average size, but is then, probably, the size of 1% of the population. So, this 'most people fitted' thing is fitted for no one in the end. They could have build a public bench tailored for 1m30 or 2m10 tall people.

The thing is, in the case of public bench, there's a lot of people 'around' 1m70 tall (from 1m60 to 1m80) and those people will accommodate so, in the end, only a small share of the crowd will have problem with it. It's because the meatspace is a non-discrete space.

In the wonderful world of cyberspace and software, we are in a discreet space, with a limited number of options. When you setup your system, you have to make some choices, mainly because you need one tool to do one task. Maybe you'll need a backup tool and a test tool. But you do not need ten web browsers.

When you're setting up your system, and you're confronted to a choice like this:

Choose your web browser: * browser1 (default) * browser2 * browser3

And if you have no more information, you'll just go for the default one, because it's more convenient.

Let the other decides

But, by doing this, without having a think process, balancing the odds and evens of each solution, you let the guy who made this choice make this decisions for you. The 'default choice' then go from the 'what most people want' to 'what we have interest for you to choose'.

When you go on Facebook, the default is, basically, everything is public. This is not what most people want - or they're won't be any privacy issue related to Facebook -it is what Facebook want. When you go on youtube, they will asks you if your location must be used to identify the video you might want to see.

They try to lure you in the fact that they know what suits you best. They want you to stop thinking about the problematics around choice and just click on the 'I agree' button. Providing a default choice, or a default configuration, is giving the possibility to someone to be lazy and to not think.

And yes, every time they can, people will choose the easy way. This is why we have governments which decides for us what's good or bad after all.

But, by removing each and every occasion to have no choices but think, people will finally have an habits of not thinking and just clicking 'Next' without even reading what are their choices.

If people were really thinking about the implications of the default configuration made for them in a lot of modern system (from Apple's product to Google's engines, from Ubuntu default config, to the Skype system) I think the privacy issues raised by social networks such as Facebook or Twitter would have been addressed earlier.

And this is a tyranny. This is a small group of people imposing their choices and interests to a vast majority of other people. It became worse because, then, a majority of people will share the same default configuration, and then the minority of users that do not want to use those settings will be ostracized.

To make things worse, the ones who decides what are the default will add more and more default choices everywhere they can. You would not accept that, the day you're going to vote, someone gives you an already filled-in bulletin to just ease the process of choice, that is unacceptable, right?

Then why do you let people doing the same with your privacy? Or with your communication system? Or your friends?

The default and the stereotypes

Yeah, I know, the transition sounds ugly. But there's no such thing as a smooth transition.

So, what are stereotypes? They are kind of default identity. I've already wrote a part about the default identity claiming that there's no default identity in the cyberspace. But there is.

People tells me that I look like a hacker. They expect a cute girl to be an easy one without a brain, they consider the physically different people as strangers and invaders, they think Anonymous are only 14 years old script kiddies in their room.

I do think this is a natural process, it's how our brains work. But it's not a reason to keep this process that way. I mean, if we should keep this behavior because it's natural, we'd better go back collecting plants and hunting big mammals to eat, while leaving naked in a cave.

So, when you're making a default choice about someone, you'll stick a stereotype on them. You'll recall of them has this brand of person and you won't think about who they really are.

When you consider someone using a stereotype, you do the exact same thing as when you're not making a choice and use the default one: you refuse to think. And, wince you're going to use this stereotype in a social situation, you'll enforce the stereotype in the person identity, enclosing them to the point where they can't act differently of the stereotype you've build upon them.

Decide by yourself

So, I'm not saying that you must spend thirty hours a day to speak and discover everyone. Just that, when someone told you that this person is an asshole, or that this one is 'hawt' or whatever, the ones telling you this are doing the same that the ones telling you that you must share everything on your wall with everyone in the world.

It's not that the stereotype is true or false, it's just that you should made your idea about this person by yourself.

And it's the same for software.

Or when you buy a computer that is sold with a pre-installed system.

You have a brain. Use it as much as you can, before someone tries to forbid it.

Context

There's a lot of heat those day in France about a call for project made by the RATP (the more or less public organism which is in charge of managing all the private and public parts of the Parisian and Île de France commutation system). It's a simple project that would be used to help regular customers to automatically pay their monthly fee using a facial recognition system.

If you're not Parisian, or a suburban, you have to know that there's actually two legal way to use the commutation system. One trip tickets, or monthly pass. Those monthly pass are either paid directly by taking the money from your bank account, or every month by the mean you choose (cash, check, credit card). Those pass are either anonymous (you buy them 5€ and you write yourself the data on it, so they don't have your name in a database) or linked to a account in a database (but the pass itself is free, and they geenrally makes you a discount). This whole system is the Navigo system and is, surprisingly, quite safe (given the security of other system you may have met).

So, now they want people in their databases (those who, most probably, have an automatic monthly paiement already in place) to automagically pay their pass using a facial recognition system (so, instead of the credit card they're not currently using). It must be this because, you know, other people don't want to have an automagic paying system (or they would already use it).

You're wrong!

If you think it's only about payement, then you're wrong. The people who can benefit of a real gain of time (we're speaking about half an hour once a month), have the year pass and they do not really care.

So, now that we agree on the fact that this whole "it will be easier to pay" is a lie, let's look at other things.

First, when people found the document (online, in a public dropbox, no encryption - seriously people???) and made some publicity about it, the RATP did remove the call for project from their website and, a little bit later, the project. But internet is cool, and the streisand effect still works fine, so you'll find it everywhere. It juste mean they're ashamed of it or do not want people to be aware of this project.

Another interesting point is to look at all those European Funded Project into which RATP - as well as arms manufacturer - is involved. The most interesting one I found lately is the VANAHEIM project, developped with the RATP equivalent of Torino. They have now a fully automatic system which can do machine learning and can interpret unusual behaviour (such as someone falling in stairs, someone jumping the fence, a lost tourist or - and it's used as an example - someone distributing some flyers to people) and launch an alert.

These kind of systems have been widely used in the RATP subway system for a while, and they're ineffective because, in case of agression, the mother fucking cops arrive in more than fifteen minutes.

You're wrong!!

If you think it's a privacy invasion. It's not about privacy. You're privacy is at stakes in the EU Parliament, and you should speak about it with https://www.laquadrature.net or https://nakedcitizens.eu, but this is not the issue at stakes with this kind of project.

I mean, there's already way to much CCTV cams in the subway (just getting inside and outside of the subway system makes me going through 30 of them, for a 100m trip that's a lot).

Besides, since you've bought the fame, you've got a tracking device in your pocket making you leaking a lot of data about your errands, who you're with, and the call you've made (just search for FinFisher ‑ and don't think they've stopped doing that because it has been exposed).

There's also the fact that you want to check on your (girl|boy)friend, where your kids are or if the elders one are ok. You asked for it. You beg for it. You want to spy people around you instead of trusting them, and you can now buy a GPS tracking devices to tap your partner for less than 100€. And after that, you complain about someone else than you doing the same thing. You deserved it.

But in this case it's not about privacy, the RATP can barely do more harm to your privacy than what they're doing right now. They're currently linking biometrics data (picture), names, travel history for the last 48h (that's what they claim), bank account and now, since they're selling a device to load your pass from your computer, they even got the address and details about the computer you're using at home (and with the possibility for them to install a software on your computer). So no, this facial recognition system (one another) is not about your personal data or your privacy.

It's about being able to analyse your behavior, the way you dress, the way you walk, and to automatically launch an adequate response (I'll go for cops right now, but it won't last long before they send drones or before an automatic fee being paid directly by your bank without your knowledge).

You're wrong!!1

If you think it's only a RATP issue. I mean, Thales is working on it. They are weapon manufacturers (and sellers), they build missiles and drones. The transportation system is just a sand box and an experiment for them. The police will use it soon (what, you'd expect they'll leave human behind screens to interpret CCTV data? Well, with all the CCTV - heck, sensors there's microphones now and I expect infrared camera that interpret feelings or electromagnteic scanners who scan backpacks, like there's already some of them in airports customs system).

If you're interested, there's a whole bunch of similar project funded by the EU, just look for INDECT.

We know that a lot of private companies are already spying on everyone, and they're not even limiting their job to borders (hint: borders don't exists but to jail you), look at what Gamma is doing, or Qosmos (with HackerTeam - oops, another Franco-Italian alliance in tech) or even Google or Facebook (hey, they're also doing facial recognition).

Those systems are used worldwide to detect insurrectional comportment, to identifies bad citizens, ask China or Belarus about that. And now they're going one step further. They're just trying to remove the human from the decisional system because human is expensive and may have one day a moral issue with doing this job. (hey, go look at the spyfiles if you do not think they're doing this)

We now have systems which can analyse and track "bad" citizens in the world on one hand, and, on the other hand, we have assassination systems (drones) ran by private corporation (asks the CIA who's operating their drone - for the record CIA is NOT a military organistaion it's just a civil one), to kill people without trial wherever in the world. They're working on automatic drones (because you can't rely on the stability of communication in times of war) which will be unstoppable once launched, just too ensure the result of the mission, whatever electronic warfare is deployed on the other side.

I'm just wondering at what point they will connect the two systems (and then the Santa Claus will be happy, all the "bad" kids will be killed once detected by the system). I mean, they will, I just don't know when it will be done. We do have "analysts" who are now filling data gathered by autonomous system to determine who to kills first and who then launch an automatic assassination system without supervision, or accountability. The day where the analysts will disappear isn't that far.

YOU'RE FUCKING WRONG!!!!

If you think it is a nation-state related issue. The nation don't need an imprecise and automatic system to kill people without trial. If it's a democratic state it should not do that, if it is not, dictatorship are already effective at that (the history is full of people mass-murdering their population without any computer aided system).

Who's gonna benefit from that? Come on, it's easy. It starts with a B and end with a USINESS. Business. Money. Profit. Control. This is what corporations feeds on.
Arms dealers need war. Security dealers need insecurity. Cyber-defense sellers need cyber-threats.

This is the rise of new automated systems. Google has already built the root of an AI and they paved the way to mega-scaled computing to exploit and make sense of data to answer the best way possible to questions (such as "what is Finfisher?"), Thales (and Safran / Morpho, and a lot of other companies) now have an efficient system of analysing the comportment on a city scale. We do have autonomous weapons. The financial systems doesn't depends on human intervention (another question for Google: "What is High Frequency Electronic Trading?"). The legal systems of all the countries are threatened by the operators of those not yet sapient AI (continue asking Google some questions: "What is ACTA?", "What is TAFTA?") because they just want more control.

I said efficient? Well, it's not. There's a lot of false positive. But those companies don't care, all they want is the system to be efficient enough to be sold. The fact that thousands of people have been killed by drones doesn't mean that those people were all targets. They just were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the operator was high or drunk and just thought he was playing Medal of Honor. This is probably the worst part.

This is a new era. The rise of the machines. And, according to James Cameron, it won't end well. I'm not opposed to computers and technology. I'm opposed to technology who take control of my life and yours (because then they can control my life)

GAME OVER

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Thanks to the whole karmeliet team who did a lot of correction here

Where did it starts?

This post is the result of a discussion I had with @ElodieChatelais, @jujusete and @oOBaNOo following the publication of an article on indymedia written by NADIR (the piece is here. This article, a bit harsh but hey activists can be harsh, expose the implication of using Facebook to plan the contestation.

The context in which it has been publicized is the occupation of the ZAD in the NDDL airport battle (because,yes, it looks like a battle).

There is, in fact, two problems at stakes here. The first one is the question of the tool used to plan and organise a contestation or a social movement that can lead to repression from a form of government (may it be civilized or not). The second one is the communication around a manifestation, this communication is a necessity to give a movement some momentum.

The people I'm talking with about those issue generally says that they use Facebook, even if they know the so called danger, because everyone is doing it and because there's no time to develop new tools to communicate,it's time to fight.

And, as you may expect it, I disagree with that.

What exactly is Facebook

Facebook is a tool. It's not a place (for it has no physical boundaries), so people aren't on Facebook - they are connected or not. It's a tool that is, apparently, good at building and growing social networks and bonds. It's a tool that is, apparently, good to propagate idea and memes.

It is supposed to be the perfect tool to organise your private life except that it is a lot of thing, except private. Facebook is the biggest database of consumering habits and the biggest maps of social network that have ever existed. It is run by a private corporation whose only goal is to monetize your privacy by selling it to everyone who is willing to pay for it.

Let's be clear about that, Facebook is to freedom what arsenic is to life. Facebook don't want you to leave their pages, they want to know exactly where you're going, who you're talking with and what you're talking about. They want to control what is said, what has been said and they want to keep a log of everything, even if you've deleted it. They even have personal profile and data collections about people who do not even have an account. If,at any time, a form of government asks you to wear a GPS enabled device, to permanently wear a voice recorder, and to asks an ID for everything you're doing (from reading newspaper, to shopping) you will call it a fascist state,but that's why Facebook is doing. They're gathering data about your habits online, and you do not even know what they know about you (also, they also possess all the content you've generated on their websites).

So yes, Facebook is a poison.

Organise

So, organisation. If you're plotting something on Facebook, they will know about it. I mean, you're gonna use a platform that keeps deleted personal messages, do not hash those messages (granting the ability to read them), is centralized and closed, and maps social networks for profit.

Imagine a government wanted to infiltrate a social network,Facebook provides them with the perfect tool. They can create profiles and join your social group quite easily. They can probably forces Facebook to collaborate and to just give them all the data they got on you - which is way too much.

So, organising yourself for something that can bring to repression is endangering yourself as well as all the other ones implied, even if they're not using Facebook. By the only fact that one person is using it among the people who tries to organises themselves put the whole organisation at risk.

I've been told that Facebook is a good way to authenticate the people you're speaking with. Well, it does not protect yourself from impersonation, someone stealing, or building, an identity that they will later uses to infiltrate your network - But it's not a Facebook related issue - and it's not a proof of authenticity. A session can be hijacked, a password can be stolen, etc. The only way you have to authenticate is cryptography (using a pre-shared secret) and Facebook does not provides tool for that.

You need to organise your contestation. You do not need Facebook for that. What you need is tools that will be usable, decentralized and free - as in freedom. They exist, you do not need to build them. Pick one, there are wikis, communication server (think jabber for instance), platforms such as https://kune.cc (based on Wave) or https://riseup.net already exists and are tailored for paranoid activists (well, each activists should be paranoid).

If you're not in total and full control of your communication link, it means that your communication link is controlling you and your organisation. And the only way to get in total control of those links is for them to be free and decentralized (and, in the ideal case, to be run by each and everyone on his personal home box).

Communication

The other issue is communication. Protesting, disobeying, contesting is, in fine, a communication issue. You will need communication to tell other people what you're doing and why and, since you're convinced you're on the good side, to try to convince them to join you, to develop your movement.

So, you need to reach out. And to go where people are. The common mistakes is to publish your content on Facebook. By doing so, you're doing two things. First, you give a non revocable, non exclusive licence on your content to Facebook. Second you centralise all the information in one site.

When Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web, he designed a handy tool to help the sharing of information. This tool is the hyperlink. It grants to someone the possibility to go from one website to another one by just following a link. No registration system, no directory system, just the URL describing the resource to go onto. Facebook tries to discourage this (because most of the interaction done is made by like of Facebook hosted content) and so Facebook tries to destroy the basis of the Web.

Hypertext is all that is needed to propagate information. This text as a Uniform Resource Locator (yeah, URL) and that's all what you need to access it. A content on Facebook requires you to have an account to access it.

But, people are on Facebook you're going to tell. Well, no. People arein their houses. They're not on Facebook. You can reach them with so much tools that I won't count them. Also, I'm not sure that seeing a like (one among so many others) on a wall will create implication. Evgeny Morozov has wrote some good pieces about slacktivism and you should read it.

I do believe that, when I reach out to people, I'm best in the flesh, having a casual talk with my inner circle friends. They're the people I have most influence on, and this is mutual (hell, friends exist for a reason: manipulate them and being manipulated by them). It won't take me long top have ten more people fighting a cause (maybe an evening, perhaps two) when having a discussion. To get this same results on any social media (and I do not mean 10 likes, I mean 10 people that will do something), it will takes me way much more works.

I do not think you need Facebook to get momentum and to motivate people. You do not need Facebook to have media coverage. You do not need Facebook to change the world. You do not need a megaphone to speak - even if that's classy - you need arguments, idea, and freedom. Facebook can't provides any of them.

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You can do the same with Twitter, Google, Skype and each and every other closed tool.

I've laughed

I was reading through my mail^Wspam today and, I found one that did two things in my mind. First I wad disgusted because, you know, people will exploit everything.

But then, after reeading it again and again, I found the fact of me receiving this particular scam, was quite ironic. And, in the end, it's more than plausible that what's happening in this mail is true, syrian officials trying to hide their money.

So, here is the full mail, with headers.

Return-Path: rasheeedkazeem@syriacomms.net X-Original-To: okhin@okhin.fr Delivered-To: okhin@okhin.fr Received: by ssmtp.okhin.fr (Postfix, from userid 1003) id 5FAD12E6171; Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:40:14 +0200 (CEST) Received: from server88-208-250-155.live-servers.net (server88-208-250-155.live-servers.net [88.208.250.155]) by ssmtp.okhin.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E37F2E616F for okhin@okhin.fr; Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:40:14 +0200 (CEST) Version MIME: 1.0 From: "Rasheed Kazeem" rasheeedkazeem@syriacomms.net Reply to: rasheedkazeem@syriacomms.net To: okhin@okhin.fr Subject: Proposal Mime type: text/plain Encoding: quoted-printable X-Mailer: Smart_Send_2_0_132 Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:40:04 +0100 X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.474480, version=1.2.2

Good day,

I am Rasheed Kazeem I represent the interest of my brother in-law who is a minister in the Syrian Government. As you probably know, there is a lot of crisis going on currently in Syria and my brother in-law is having problems with the ruling party and they are currently investigating his ministry. While he is sure that he has not done anything wrong, there is also every reason for him to secure to think ahead his family’s future in case the unexpected happens. He has asked me to help him find a reputable foreigner who can help him invest a substantial amount of money. I am contacting you with the hope that you can assist with investments in the market of your country. We will provide the funds. If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, please kindly contact me back via email and I will give you more details. Hopefully, we can do some good business together.

Regards,

Rasheed Kazeem.