BECKlog

In the current debate about Wikileaks and Assange whose boss I do not want to interfere with me: I have not had time to read thousands of leaked pages. With the latest sex allegations against the Wikileaks founder I will not even like to discuss - that come directly from me in the bin for residual waste. I rather wanted to know: Where come from this man, what drives him?

Apart from a first glance, the one fetches over the Internet, I found it odd that Assange's manifesto "Conspiracy as Governance" to German as "conspiracy as a form of government" is not to be found in German. This document is fundamental to the understanding of the activist-philosopher. She was born in 2006 in two versions, both of which are found on the net. However, it is in principle the same manifesto. "Conspiracy as Governance" (conspiracy as a form of government) and "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" (Terrorist and government conspiracies).

I put a total version of the two texts below one in German.

Preliminary remark:
Assange has a background that one should know: the crypto-anarchism, it's worth a discussion: The Süddeutsche wrote on 12/02/2010 said: "The crypto-anarchism posits that an asymmetry between the state, the largest possible part of the communication of its citizens tries to control, and those same citizens there, over which the State hold much secret. The technical revolution of cyberspace can now reverse this situation. All private information can and should be kept secret cryptographic means. The state would be to suppress the individual no longer able. And should be in an "enclave of things-that-he-control-can" withdraw, as formulated in the Cypher Punks May. The reverse approach to achieve the same goal, would be the radical publication of the rule knowledge. "

This attempt of the Australian-born Assange obviously do. (Specifically, I do not wish to question the possibility of how the Platform in turn by the "Leaken", ie the forward-Lassen information from States or even for conspiracies is used.)

The relevant passage in Wikipedia , with the Süddeutsche Zeitung obviously served something is so: "Assange is close to ideas of crypto-anarchism. On the basis of libertarian ideas, the crypto-anarchism laid an information asymmetry between government and citizens. While a country is able to monitor large parts of the communication of its citizens, it simultaneously tries to keep a lot of information from this secret. The technical innovations of the internet now, would offer the possibility to reverse the observed asymmetry. On one hand, all private information could be protected by cryptographic means. This would have a far-reaching restrictions on state influence and control the result. The same goal could otherwise also be achieved through the consistent publication of rule knowledge. The publicizing of rule knowledge would cause authorities to reduce their communication flows, which would mean a reduction in the functioning of the overall system state. These Assange: 'Leaking is inherently an anti-authoritarian act. It is indeed an anarchist. '"

Assange comes from the hacker scene of the 1980s and has made himself strong by a California computer scientist, Timothy C. May, inspired. May wrote in 1988 that "crypto-anarchist manifesto", stylistically leaning slightly to the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. Even this I could not find in German, the translation below:

"A specter pursues the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy."

"Computer technology is on the threshold to establish the ability for individuals and groups to communicate with each other in a completely anonymous way and interact. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without knowing the real name or the legally valid identity of the other. Interactions across networks over wide redirect (re-routing) of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes that incorporate cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect security guarantee against any distortion, will not be more to follow. The reputation will be of central importance, even more important for businesses than the credit ratings of today. These developments will completely change the nature of government control, the ability to tax and control the interaction in the economy; the ability to keep information secret change - yes, they will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.
The technology for this revolution - and it is certainly both a social and an economic be - there were theoretically for ten years. The methods are based on public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems and various software protocols for interaction, authentication (authentication) and verification. In the center of attention so far were academic conferences in Europe and the USA, Conferences, which were heavily monitored by the National Security Agency. Only recently, however, have computer networks and individual computers enough speed to put this idea into practice. And the next ten years will bring enough additional speed to the ideas economically feasible and to make unstoppable in the core.
High-speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes (tamper-proof boxes), smart cards, satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers and encryption chips now under development, will be among the technologies that possible the making.
The states will naturally try to slow the spread of this technology or stop and cite concerns about national security, the use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders and fear of social division. Many of these fears are true; using the crypto anarchy are national secrets are traded freely exactly how illegal and stolen material. An anonymous computerized market will even make hideous markets for assassinations and extortion possible. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNET. However, this will not stop the spread of crypto anarchy.
Just as the technology of the printing press changed the power of medieval guilds and social power structures and diminished, cryptologic methods are changing the character of corporations and of government intervention in fundamental economic transactions. Together with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any material that has to do with words and images. And just like a seemingly insignificant invention like barbed wire made ​​possible the fencing of large ranches and farms and so forever the view of land and property rights at the border in the west changed, so the seemingly small discovery of an obscure branch of mathematics is to wire cutters be that tearing down the barbed wire that is around intellectual property around.
Arise! You have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences! "

***

One can say that May was very correct with his predictions in 1988. He foresaw a revolution of which we can say that we are experiencing here and now!

Now to Assange's manifesto - as far as I can see, for the first time in German:

Conspiracy as a form of government
(As described above varies slightly under the title State conspiracies and terrorist conspiracies published)
me@iq.org, 10.11.2006

"Behind the ostensible government sits an invisible government upon the throne that owes no allegiance to the people and no responsibility for it recognizes. To destroy this invisible government, to stain this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first duty of statesmanship. "
(President Theodore Roosevelt)

While you here do snoring lie,
Open-ey'd conspiracy
His time doth take.
[The entire verse continues:
Shake off slumber,
and beware.
Awake, awake!]
(German as:

While you lie snoring here
can open conspiracy
take your time.
Shake off the slumber
and pass on.
Wake up, wake up!
(Shakespeare, The Tempest, Ariel, II. Act)

Introduction
To change the behavior of Regeriungen radically, we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We need to think further than our predecessors and discover technological changes that encourage us to act in a way it could not our ancestors.
First we must be clear to us want what aspect of the neo-corporatist or government behavior, we modify or abolish. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough to us through the mire of politically distorted language to a position of clarity to bring. Finally, we must use these insights to inspire within us and others a sense ennobling and effective action.

Authoritarian power is based on conspiracy
Conspiracy, conspire: forging secret plans jointly to commit a harmful act; work together to achieve a particular result, typically to someone's detriment.
Conspiracy (English conspiration., Conspirere from the late Middle English, from Old French), from Latin conspirare match, forge plan of con = together and spirare = breathe [ie breathe together].

"The best party is just a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation."
(Lord Halifax, British. Foreign minister before the second world war)

When details of the inner working of authoritarian regimes are known, we see conspiratorial cooperation among the political elite not merely for personal gain and abetting within the regime, but as the primary planning method for the purpose of preservation and strengthening of authoritarian rule.
Authoritarian regimes favor the rise of forces that oppose it, by suppressing the individual and personal quest for freedom, truth and self-realization. Once plans that support the authoritarian rule, are uncovered, they trigger resistance. Therefore keep successful authoritarian powers such plans hidden. This is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.

"It is the same in government matters: Were here the evils springing recognized from a distance (which is only given to the wise), so it heals soon. Allowed to them but, from judges note only grow until it recognizes every one, so no more help is against it. "
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])

Teroristische conspiracies as connected graphs
Before and after September 11, the "Maryland Procurement Office" (lightweight camouflage for academic funding of the National Security Agency, Google code "MDA904") and other mathematicians have funded to study terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs (to understand this article , no math skills are necessary).
We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and apply it against the inclinations of their owners, which makes it a knife to dissect the conspiracies of power used to maintain an authoritarian government.
We will use connected graphs as a way to exploit the spatial ability of the brain for thinking political relations in a new way. These graphs can be easily imagined: First, record some nails ("conspirators") and hammering them somehow into a board. Then take a string ("communication") and loop it without interrupting from nail to nail. Name the thread connecting two nails a link. A non-interrupted thread means you can get from any nail to any other nail via twine and nails in between. Mathematicians say that this type of graph is connected.
Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator trusts or knows every other conspirator him, though all are connected. Some are on the verge of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with many conspirators, others may know only two conspirators but be a bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.

A separate conspiracy
If all connections between conspirators are cut, there is no conspiracy. Usually, this is difficult to achieve, therefore we ask the first question: What is the minimum number of connections that must be cut to divide the plot into two groups of equal numbers? (Divide and rule). The answer depends on the structure of the conspiracy. Sometimes there is no alternative paths, so conspiratorial information can flow between conspirators, in other cases there are many. This is a useful and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For example, it may be possible by the murder of a "bridge" -Verschwörers to unravel the conspiracy. But we want to basically say something about all conspiracies.

Some conspirators dance closer than other
Conspirators are quite different, some trust and rely on each other, others say little. Important information flows frequently through some links, trivial information through others. So we at extending our simple connected graph * model, as we include not only links, but their "importance" with.
Let's go back to our board-with-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between some nails before and fine, light thread between others. Rated the importance of the thickness and heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never kommuninizieren, the weight is zero. The "importance" of communication passing through a link is initially difficult to assess, because their true value depends on the outcome of the conspiracy. We simply say that the "importance" of communication obviously contributes to the weight of a link; the weight of a link is proportional to the amount of the important communication, the flow therethrough. Questions about conspiracies in general do not require us to know the weight of any compound, as this from conspiracy to conspiracy is different.

Conspiracies are knowledge tools., You are able to the same group of individuals who act alone to surpass the thinking
Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), they take you to the conspirators and then act according to the result. We can see conspiracies as a type of tool that has inputs (information about the environment), a data processing network (the conspirators and their interconnections) and outputs (actions with the intent to stablilisieren the environment or to change).

Deceive conspiracies
Since a conspiracy is a kind of cognitive tool, which is based on the information it receives from its environment, it means that acts which incur based on twisted or limited input, are very probably set wrong. Programmers call this effect "garbage in, garbage out".
Usually the effect runs the other way; it is the conspiracy is the agent of deception and Informatonsbeschränkung. In the USA we the aphorism of programmers sometimes called "The Fox News effect".

What is a conspiracy? She concocts the next action of the conspiracy
Now we ask the question: How effective is this tool? Can we compare its effectiveness at different times? If the conspiracy stronger or weaker? This is a question that prompted us to compare two values.

Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?
We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not testify about the difference between a conspiracy and the individuals of which it consists. How do they differ? Conspire individuals in a conspiracy. Isolated individuals do not. We can make this distinction apprehended by we add up all important communication (weights) between the conspirators, we will call the total conspiratorial power.

Total conspiratorial power
This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy is usually unique. But if we look at this value, which is independent of the arrangement of the conspiratorial connections, we can make some generalizations.

If the total conspiratorial power is zero, then there is no conspiracy
If the total conspiratorial power is zero, then there is no information flow between the conspirators and hence no conspiracy.
A substanziellern increase or decrease in konspiratorischer total power almost always means what we expect; an increase or a decrease in the ability of the conspiracy, as far as thinking, acting and Adapt-.

Separating conspiracies weighted
I now come back to our earlier idea to split the conspiracy in two halves. Then we looked at the distribution of a conspiracy in two equal groups by the connections between the conspirators we hats. Now we see that a more interesting idea can halve the total conspiratorial power. Since each isolated half turn, may be regarded as a conspiracy, we can continue infinitely to split further.

How can we reduce a conspiracy's ability to act?
We can marginalize a conspiracy's ability to act so long by reducing their total conspiratorial power until it is no longer in a position to understand their environment and as a result can no longer respond effectively to these.
We can split the conspiracy, reduce important communication between a few heavily weighted links or many semi-weighted links or eliminated.

Throttle weighted conspiracies
Rather than sever links between conspirators to share weighted conspiracies, we can achieve a similar effect by throttling the conspiracy - those heavy weighted connections constrict (reduce their weight), which are bridges for areas with similar konspiratorischer total power.

Attacks on conspiratorial cognition
A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner, for his ability to influence actions of the state, almost at its end. To counter the powerful conspiratorial actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them because we ourselves can not cope with the actions.
We can deceive or blind, by the information it has available, distort or restrict a conspiracy. We can reduce the total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links or by throttling them or share.
A conspiracy is sufficiently tied in this way is no longer able to understand its environment and plan robust action.

Traditional and modern conspiracies
Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination attempts have capped highly weighted connections. The act of assassination - the targeting of visible individuals, is the Resulat mental preferences that are typical for pre-alphabetic societies from which our species has developed.
Literacy and the communications revolution have the conspirators equipped with new resources to conspiracy and increased the speed of the accuracy of their interactions and thus the maximum size that can reach a conspiracy before it collapses.
Conspirators who possess this technology are to excel in the position other conspirators, they do not own. With the same expenses they can achieve greater total conspiratorial power. Therefore they accept the technology.
If we, for example, to Lord Halifax remember 'words, we should consider two exactly equal weighted and highly conspiratorial power groups, the Democratic and the Republican Party of the USA.
We consider what would happen if one of these parties their mobile phones and the fax and e-mail correspondence gave up, not to mention the computer systems that manage their supporters, donors, budgets, polling, call centers and direct mail campaigns?
You would immediately fall into an organizational rigidity and lose against the other.

An authoritarian conspiracy that can not think efficiently can not act to protect themselves against the hostility it generates
If we consider a conspiracy as an organic whole, we can create a system of interacting organs see a body with arteries and veins, is perhaps thickened and slowed his blood until he falls over stunned, because he is not able, the forces in his to adequately understand and control environment.
Later we will see how technology and knowledge about the psychological motivation of the conspirators can give us a convenient way to prevent important communication between authoritarian conspirators or reduce, to promote strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create strong incentives for more humane forms of government.

-

Footnote:

* Graphs, Sing. = Graph, graph theory = branch of mathematics. A graph consists of a set of points between which lines run (eg. B. subway system). The mathematics studied each other the properties of the graph and their relationships.

(Translation of the texts of May / Assange: Friederike Beck).

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Tags: anarchy , Conspiracy and Governance , Julian Assange , crypto-anarchism , Timothy May , conspiracy , Wikileaks

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