Crypto currency makes government obsolete

“The gun has been called the great equalizer… It ensures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed.”

            –Ronald Reagan

If the gun is the great equalizer, protecting the people from tyrannical government, then crypto-currency will be the next great equalizer by eliminating the very source of government tyranny. If a gun in the hands of an average citizen allows him to stave off the incessant advances by a government that is bent on obtaining totalitarian control and centrally planning every individual’s life, then Bitcoin in the hands of the average citizens of the world will make it impossible for any government to even attempt such gross violations of our individual rights. What a concept, fighting off government tyranny before it even starts! Bitcoin can work even better than a gun; governments can ban guns and forcefully remove them from the possessions of the citizens. They can do no such thing with Bitcoin. Crypto-currency is necessarily untraceable. Its decentralized nature makes it essentially impossible for anyone to find out who you are. The only information that is displayed in a Bitcoin transaction are the two addresses engaged in trade and the amount of bitcoins being sent. None of those things have any link to your personal information, given that you implement solid cybersecuritymeasures.

Why is decentralized money such a devastating weapon against governments when wielded by individuals operating in the free market? Because money is the source of all government power. Governments attain all things through their monopoly on the issuance of money and the control of its supply. Some may say that it is not the government’s monetary monopoly that gives it such power, but that it is in fact the government’s monopoly on violence that gives it power. Without a monopoly on violence, governments would never be able to establish a monopoly over the money supply of its nation. But a monopoly on violence presupposes total control over the country’s money. Violence requires bodies, weapons, and transportation. None of those things can be conjured from thin air. But money can be, when put in the hands of the government. When in a monopolistic position over the issuance and supply of money, a government can alter the production structure in any way it deems beneficial to itself. Enormous contracts to military-grade weapons manufacturers so that they can go to war, subsidies to businesses that will benefit them, and handouts to special interest groups so that they will get reelected. All the government has to do to acquire the money for these things is sell an infinite amount of treasuries to the central bank, who will then create infinite amounts of money from thin air, at the expense of the average person.

Governments do not need a monopoly on violence to establish a monopoly on money. That monopoly is voluntarily given to them by the citizens under their rule. Due to a tacit assumption that there should be only one prevailing currency in each country, and that those currencies must be controlled by the governments, the citizens automatically assume that their governments must monopolize the supply of money. So they hand that power over to the government willingly, without being extorted by the government with a threat of violence. Once the government has control over the money, then they can establish their monopoly control of violence. Fire up the printing press, run deficits, and build armies to suppress the people, should they dissent. In the meantime, business cycles are produced because of inflation and the people suffer. And the people have no escape; the citizens are bound to their governments by their currencies.

Money is the strongest chain that ties individuals to governments. Break that chain, and the government loses all of its power. Threats of violence mean nothing if the government cannot pay anyone to carry those threats out. The government cannot throw anyone in prison if they cannot afford to fund the prison. Decentralize the money supply and the government becomes nothing more than a small group of angry old men stomping their feet and making empty threats. Decentralizing the money supply, Bitcoin does just that.

If Bitcoin becomes widely adopted, it will be impossible for governments to print however much money that is required for them to fund their violent escapades. Their revenue will be restricted to only what they can bring in from “legitimate” taxes. But, given that Bitcoin gives extreme anonymity to its users, it will become next to impossible for governments to actually collect even the “legitimate” taxes authorized by their constitutions. With the power of compulsory taxation taken away from them by the very nature of Bitcoin, the governments will only be able to survive through voluntary donations from people who value the services the governments provide. Governments then would have to actually satisfy people in order to make money; if the people do not like the quality of the services the government provides, they can pay another firm to provide the same services at a better quality. The government will, in effect, become nothing more than a private business competing with other firms on the free market. The reign of totalitarianism and central planning will be over. This historical paradigm shift will come from a seemingly mundane market activity. There will be no guns, no explosives, and no blood. People will not take up arms and violently remove their governments from power. They will just start using a different currency, one that cannot be controlled by any government.

Naturally, governments will try to rid decentralized currency from the world so that they can maintain their dominance over the money supply. China, for instance, has already been actively working to remove Bitcoin from its country by implementing a number of unsuccessful bans on Bitcoin. A government will not be able to ban something if they cannot realistically enforce the ban. A simple prohibition of Bitcoin will not suffice, the inherent anonymity of Bitcoin removes much of the risk involved in using illicit goods. So the governments would have to go after the technology itself. The only way to get rid of the blockchain technology completely would be to get rid of all computers and smartphones. What a task it would be, if a government were arrogant enough to attempt such a thing! It is quite humorous to imagine a situation in which a government attempted to confiscate every single computer and smartphone within its boundaries. It is an impossible task.

Governments will never be able to completely rid the world of decentralized currency, now that it has been unleashed. The only thing standing between the oppression of the people and the starvation of the State is the wide acceptance of Bitcoin. The spread of Bitcoin must be encouraged and facilitated through education and social activism. Decentralized currency can be successful only if the people choose to use it. If they do so, they will liberate themselves. Crypto-currency is the next, and final, great equalizer.

How Federal Surveillance and "Parallel Construction" Undermine the Rule of Law

by Mike Maharrey

When we talk about NSA spying, most people’s eyes glaze over. They just don’t think it will have any impact on them. After all, the surveillance agency only spies on foreigners and terrorists, right? And if some Americans’ data ends up in NSA databases in the process, well, that doesn’t really matter. It’s the price we pay for security.

But in fact, federal surveillance and the investigative practices it fosters undermines and subverts the fundamental rule of law in the United States.

State and local law enforcement agencies use the reams of data the NSA collects to prosecute Americans. Most of these cases have nothing to do with terrorism or national security. In fact, the vast majority relate to the so-called “war on drugs.” In the process, these state and local cops shred due process, obliterate the Fourth Amendment and make a mockery out of the “rule of law.”

Using a secretive process known as “parallel construction,” police build cases on illegally obtained, warrantless data collected by the NSA and other federal agencies without anybody ever knowing. These investigations take place in complete secrecy with no judicial oversight. Oftentimes, suspects and defense attornies have no idea how police obtained information.

Former NSA technical director William Binney called parallel construction “the most threatening situation to our constitutional republic since the Civil War.”

Reuters revealed the extent of NSA data sharing with state and local law enforcement in an August 2013 article. According to documents obtained by the news agency, the NSA passes information through a formerly secret DEA unit known Special Operations Divisions and the cases “rarely involve national security issues.” Almost all of the information involves regular criminal investigations.

Through fusion centers, state and local law enforcement agencies act as information recipients from various federal departments under Information Sharing Environment (ISE). We also know that ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence, which is an umbrella covering 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. While fighting terrorism was always held out as the reason for dragnet spying, Binney said it was bound to be abused.

“That’s what happens when you allow this kind of assembly of information – that’s so much power. That’s like J. Edgar Hoover on super-steroids,” Binney said. “This is not compatible with any form of democracy at all.”

The feds share information gathered without a warrant and direct the local police force to make an arrest. Using parallel construction, investigators then build their case using normal policing techniques, getting warrants for information they’ve already obtained. The process serves to hide the illegally gathered information, creating the illusion of a legitimate case.

“You use that data to substitute for the NSA data that was originally used to arrest them. And you substitute the parallel constructed data in the courtroom, which I’ve called perjury. They’re lying to the courts and they’re subverting our entire judicial process,” Binney said.

Human Rights Watch issued a report on parallel construction earlier this year, noting that the process subverts the Constitution and undermines “fundamental fairness.”

“The United States Constitution draws on lessons learned from the abuses of the British colonial era in placing firm restrictions on how the government can behave when it wants to prove someone has done something wrong. It establishes criteria for rights-respecting searches and seizures, requires the prosecution to turn over to the defense any evidence favorable to the accused, and demands that all trials and proceedings take place in accordance with ‘due process’—that is, fundamental fairness. However, parallel construction—when sustained through the end of proceedings—means defendants cannot learn about, and therefore cannot challenge, government actions that violate these or other rights.”

Even so, a lot of people simply shrug and parrot the tired, worn “I don’t have anything to hide” mantra. Ironically, a lot of “law and order” Americans will simply shrug off gross violations of the supreme law of the land – the Constitution – if it serves to put some criminals in jail. If you really care about “law and order, the fact that the government routinely ignores the fundamental legal framework intended to keep it in check should concern you – even if you don’t personally think you have anything to hide.

And the fact is you may well have something to hide. Human Rights Watch offered a poignant warning about what can happen if government agents can cobble together cases based on illegally gathered information obtained in secret.

“This impact is not limited to criminal defendants. If government agents can potentially create privacy-violating, discriminatory, or otherwise unlawful programs or patterns of behavior in secret and without facing any negative consequences, the rights of every member of the public are in jeopardy. Taken to its worst logical conclusion, parallel construction risks creating a country in which people and communities are perpetually vulnerable to investigations based on prejudice, vast illegal operations, or official misconduct, but have no means of learning about these problems and holding agents to account.”

The secrecy inherent in parallel construction creates a two-way street. Not only do the feds share information with state and local police, data also flows the other direction. Local police gather data using technology often funded by the feds and then shares the information with massive federal databases. The process not only facilitates the prosecution of individuals based on secret information, it also allows secret surveillance programs to remain hidden. Oftentimes, prosecutors will even drop cases if defense attornies or judges start pushing them to reveal the source of information. Judges never have the opportunity to scrutinize surveillance technologies or practices because their use remains secret. Human Rights Watch Described how this can play out in practice.

“For example, if the government were to identify a suspect in a robbery by scrutinizing a store’s security video using a new but flawed facial recognition technology it does not want to reveal, it could send an informant to talk to the suspect and report what he said—then suggest in court records that this conversation was how the investigation began. Such possible uses of parallel construction are especially troubling in human rights terms because new technologies may be inaccurate (including, in the case of facial recognition software, for people of certain racial or ethnic groups) or raise new legal concerns. Unless judges are aware that such new technology has been used, they will not be able to assess whether the technology violates rights.”

In late 2013, the Washington Post reported that NSA is “gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” This includes location data on “tens of millions” of Americans each year – all swept up without a warrant.

Despite concerns, Congress has done nothing to rein in NSA spying. In January, Congress reauthorized the FISA Sec. 702. Before approving the six-year extension, the House voted to kill an amendment that would have overhauled the surveillance program and addressed some privacy concerns. Provisions in the amendment would have required agents to get warrants in most cases before hunting for and reading Americans’ emails and other messages that get swept up under the program.

Just one day after Trump signed the extension into law, news came out about the infamous FISA memo. This memo was available to members of the House Intelligence Committee prior to the vote to reauthorize FISA. None of this information was made available to Congress at large. Most telling, every single Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee voted to reauthorize Sec. 702, and in a heartwarming show of bipartisanship, six of the nine Democratic representatives on the committee joined their colleagues.

This is yet another indication we can’t count on Congress to limit its spy-programs.

But state action can take on parallel construction. A bill that just passed in Michigan would not only hinder federal surveillance by denying spy agencies material support or resources, it would also have the practical effect of blocking parallel construction. By barring state agencies from “participating with” federal warrantless surveillance, states can end parallel construction. Under the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, police would be legally blocked from using information passed down through these federal information sharing systems.

More states need to follow Michigan’s lead. If enough states begin to reject federal spying as a viable investigative tool, we can box them in and shut them down.

The Second Amendment Isn’t About Hunting or Self-Defense, But Revolution

After Orlando, some are calling for stricter gun laws, or even a repeal of the Second Amendment. But gun rights and liberty are inseparable.

By John Daniel Davidson

Last week, Rolling Stone published an article by David S. Cohen, a law professor who thinks the Second Amendment should be repealed. “The Second Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact,” writes Cohen. “When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the AR-15 assault rifle and many of the advances of modern weaponry were long from being invented or popularized.”

In the wake of the Orlando massacre, Cohen reasons, “now is the time to acknowledge a profound but obvious truth—the Second Amendment is wrong for this country and needs to be jettisoned.”

This isn’t the first time liberals have mused out loud about whether the Second Amendment is really necessary, or whether it really means individuals have a right to own guns. But tragedies like Orlando seem to revive all the old arguments. Not that commentators are very knowledgeable about the weapons they’d like to ban. An AR-15, for example, can’t fire 700 rounds per minute, nor can any guy who’s taken a shop class modify a semi-automatic rifle into a fully automatic in five minutes, as Michael Moore seems to think.

But even if an AR-15 only fires once every time you squeeze the trigger, even if it can’t be easily converted into an automatic, just taking the rifle for what it is, liberals want to know: who needs a gun like that? How many rounds do you need to be able to fire per minute to kill a deer, or ward off a burglar? Does anyone really need a 25-round magazine? Isn’t the only reason for such firepower to make killing people as efficient as possible? Isn’t this a weapon of war? Why would American civilians need to own weapons of war?

The Second Amendment Guarantees the Right of Revolution

Turns out, that’s precisely the right question to ask. The Second Amendment, after all, doesn’t recognize our right to hunt deer or protect ourselves from criminals. Owning guns certainly makes doing those things easier, but it’s not why the Founders bothered to codify gun rights. They were getting at something else—the right of revolution.

Simply put, the purpose of the Second Amendment is to give the people the means to overthrow the government in the event it becomes tyrannical.

Most gun control advocates scoff at this. Indeed, it’s an argument that even some conservatives are hesitant to make. How could the people, armed with rifles and 

pistols, overthrow the government? On its face, it seems absurd.

More on that in a minute. But first, consider that the Second Amendment is unique among the amendments enumerated in the Bill of Rights because it contains a kind of explanatory preamble: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Edward J. Erler, a political science professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and an expert on the Second Amendment, has argued that the right of revolution is asserted in the Declaration of Independence, which states that governments derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed”—not every power, only “just powers,” which the people delegate to a government that is by definition limited to the purposes for which it was established, “the Safety and Happiness” of the people. Furthermore, the Declaration states that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Erler says this is what has come to be known as the right of revolution,

an essential ingredient of the social compact and a right which is always reserved to the people. The people can never cede or delegate this ultimate expression of sovereign power. Thus, in a very important sense, the right of revolution (or even its threat) is the right that guarantees every other right. And if the people have this right as an indefeasible aspect of their sovereignty, then, by necessity, the people also have a right to the means to revolution. Only an armed people are a sovereign people, and only an armed people are a free people—the people are indeed a militia.

In recent years an argument has become popular on the American Left that the Second Amendment means only that a “well regulated militia” has the right to bear arms, not individuals. The idea is that, say, the State of Texas can form a militia and arm it accordingly, but individual Texans have no inherent right to the private ownership of firearms.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court repudiated this idea in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for the majority and quoted Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, which recognizes “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.” Scalia insisted that the Second Amendment acknowledges rights that predate the Constitution, such as the right of revolution.

But Erler argues that Scalia “was wrong to imply that Second Amendment rights were codified from the common law—they were, in fact, ‘natural rights,’ deriving their status from the ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.’… Like the right to revolution, the right to self-defense or self-preservation can never be ceded to government.”

In Case of Civil War, Americans Need to be Armed

So what does this mean in practice? Are we to conclude that the Founders imagined a day when civilians armed with AR-15s and Glocks might one day march on Washington DC if the government ever became tyrannical? If the Second Amendment guarantees our right to the means of revolution, does that mean civilians should also be allowed to own tanks and artillery?

Not quite. The Founders thought standing armies were a threat to liberty, which means they surely would have thought that standing private armies constituted the same threat. Self-preservation and self-defense might be natural right, but even in Heller the Supreme Court indicated that there could be reasonable limitations on gun ownership.

To answer the scoffers on the Left, though, imagine what an American revolution—the exercise of first principles—might look like in the twenty-first century. The government, or a branch of it (most likely the executive) becomes destructive to the ends for which it was established. It tyrannizes the people, takes their property, deprives them of their rights, destroys their lives. A revolution, or an abolishment of that government, would likely not be a civilian undertaking but a military one. Working in conjunction with other branches of the federal government and perhaps some state governments, the military would effect a coup d’état.

It would likely be a kind of civil war, and civilians would likely be caught up in it at some point. Perhaps they would form local militias to defend their homes and businesses. Perhaps they would volunteer their services to military commanders or state police forces. Perhaps they would simply want to ensure the safety of their families.

To do any of that, they would need to be armed. Just as the Founders envisioned.

Freedom

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion” 

- Albert Camus

The Edge

“So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head….but in a matter of minutes I’d be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz…not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out…thirty-five, forty-five…then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these, and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything…then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscram in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.

Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly–zaaappp–going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-slick–instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway 1.”

Indeed…but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there’s no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needles leans down on a hundred and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for reflexes.

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and nor room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right…and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it…huwling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica…letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge…

The Edge…There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are ones who have gone over. The others–the living–are those who who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.”

- Hunter S Thompson