Essays Contents
IP
April 22, 2024
My opinion?
outlaw IP addressses completely
unless you are convicted of a crime.
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.[1][2] IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface identification, and location addressing.
Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.[2] However, because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP (IPv6), using 128 bits for the IP address, was standardized in 1998.[3][4][5] IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s.
IP addresses are written and displayed in human-readable notations, such as 192.0.2.1 in IPv4, and 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 in IPv6. The size of the routing prefix of the address is designated in CIDR notation by suffixing the address with the number of significant bits, e.g., 192.0.2.1/24, which is equivalent to the historically used subnet mask 255.255.255.0.
The IP address space is managed globally by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and by five regional Internet registries (RIRs) responsible in their designated territories for assignment to local Internet registries, such as Internet service providers (ISPs), and other end users. IPv4 addresses were distributed by IANA to the RIRs in blocks of approximately 16.8 million addresses each, but have been exhausted at the IANA level since 2011. Only one of the RIRs still has a supply for local assignments in Africa.[6] Some IPv4 addresses are reserved for private networks and are not globally unique.
"I remove this CHIP from phone before using it!"
"Brain Station" YouTube channel
Edward Snowden speaking - 8 minutes
Transcript:
Once your phone is hacked, what is in their hands is not simply your device.
It is your future. They're selling our future. They're selling our past.
They are selling our history, our identity.
And ultimately, they are stealing our power.
The screen may be off as it's sitting on your desk,
but the device is talking all of the time.
The question we have to ask is, who is it talking to?
If I get a smartphone and I need to use a phone,
I actually open it up before I use it.
Anything you can do on that device...
the attacker in this case, the government can do.
Before 2013. if you said there's a system that's watching everything you do,
the government is collecting records of every phone call in the United States...
even for those people who are not suspected of any crime, it was a conspiracy.
Yes, there were some people who believed it was happening.
Yes, there were academics who could say this was technically possible.
The world of 2013... we suspected... some suspected... that this was happening.
The world after 2013... we know that is happening.
The distance between speculation and fact is everything in a democracy.
We have now had the first European regulations that are trying to limit the amount
of data that can be collected secretly and used against populations broadly.
And we have also seen the basic structure of the Internet itself change in response
to this understanding that that the network path that all of ourbcommunications cross,
when you request a website, when you send a text message, when you read an email.
For so long those communications have been electronically naked or unencrypted.
Before 2013, more than half the world's Internet communications were unencrypted.
Now far more than half are measured by just Web traffic from one of
the world's leading browsers, the Google Chrome browser.
The entire world has changed in the last few years.
It hasn't gone far enough. The problems still exist, and in some ways they've gotten worse.
But we have made progress that would not have been possible
if we didn't know what was going on.
Hacking has increasingly become what governments consider
a legitimate investigative tool.
They use the same methods and techniques as criminal hackers.
And what this means is they will try to remotely take over your device.
Once they do this, by detecting a vulnerability in the software that your device runs,
such as Apple's iOS or Microsoft Windows,
they can craft a special kind of attack code called an exploit.
They then launch this exploit at the vulnerability on your device,
which allows them to take total control of that device.
Anything you can do on that device, the attacker in this case,
the government can do.
They can read your email, they can collect every document,
They can look at your contact book, they can turn the location services on.
They can see anything that is on that phone instantly
and send it back home to the mothership.
They can do the same with laptops.
The other prong that we forget so frequently is that
in many cases they don't need to hack our devices.
They can simply ask Google for a copy of our email box
because Google saves a copy of that.
Everything that you ever typed into that search box.
Google has a copy of every private message that you've sent on Facebook,
every link that you've clicked, everything that you've liked
they keep a permanent record of.
And all of these things are available not just to these companies,
but to our governments as they are increasingly deputized
as sort of miniature arms of government.
What about enabling your microphone... camera?
If you can do it, they can do it.
It is trivial to remotely turn on your microphone or to to activate your camera
so long as you have systems level access.
If you had hacked someone's device remotely,
anything they can do, you can do.
They can look up your nose, right?
They can record what's in the room.
The screen may be off as it's sitting on your desk...
but the device is talking all of the time.
The question we have to ask is who is it talking to?
Even if your phone is not hacked right now,
you look at it, it's just sitting there on the charger.
It is talking tens or hundreds or thousands of times a minute
to any number of different companies
who have apps installed on your phone.
It looks like it's off.
It looks like it's just sitting there, but it is constantly chattering.
And unfortunately, like pollution, we have not created the tools
that are necessary for ordinary people to be able to see this activity.
And it is the invisibility of it that makes it so popular
and common and attractive for these companies.
Because if you do not realize they're collecting this data from you,
this very private and personal data,
there's no way you're going to object to it once your phone is hacked.
What is in their hands is not simply your device, it is your future.
But we see how these same technologies are being applied
to create what they call the social credit system.
If any of your activities online, if your purchases, if your associations,
if your friends or in any way different from what the government
or the powers that be of the moment would like them to be,
you're no longer able to purchase train tickets,
you're no longer able to board an airplane.
You may not be able to get a Passport.
You may not be eligible for a job.
You might not be able to work for the government.
All of these things are increasingly being created and programmed
and decided by algorithms, and those algorithms are fueled by precisely
the innocent data that our devices are creating all of the time,
constantly, invisibly, quietly.
Right now, our devices are casting all of these records that we do not see
being created that in aggregate seem very innocent.
You were at Starbucks at this time.
You went to the hospital afterwards.
You spent a long time at the hospital.
After you left the hospital, you made a phone call.
You made a phone call to your mother.
You talked to her until the middle of the night.
The hospital was an oncology clinic.
Even if you can't see the content of these communications,
the activity records, what the government calls metadata,
which they argue they do not need a warrant to collect,
tells the whole story.
And these activity records are being created and shared
and collected and intercepted... constantly by companies and governments.
And ultimately, it means as they sell these,
as they trade these,
as they make their businesses on the backs of these records,
what they are selling is not information...
what they are selling is us.
They're selling our future.
They're selling our past.
They are selling our history, our identity.
And ultimately they are stealing our power
and making our stories work for them.
If I get a smartphone and I need to use a phone,
I actually open it up before I use it,
I perform a kind of surgery on it to physically disorder or sort of melt
the metal connections that hold the microphone on the phone.
And I physically take this off.
I remove the camera for the phone and then I close it back up,
I seal it up. And then if I need to make a phone call,
I will attach an external microphone on it.
And this is just so if the phone is sitting there
and I'm not making a call, it cannot hear me.
Now, this is extreme.
Most people do not need this.
But for me it's about being able to trust our technology.
My phone could still be hacked, my laptop could still be hacked.
And just as I told you before... the same principles applied to me.
If it is hacked, they can do anything to the device that I can do.
So my trust in technology is limited.
My opinion?
outlaw IP addressses completely
unless you are convicted of a crime.
"I remove this CHIP from phone before using it!"
"Brain Station" YouTube channel
Edward Snowden speaking - 8 minutes