Steal This Show

In this episode, we meet anthropologist Joshua Reno (https://binghamton.academia.edu/JoshuaReno) , author of 'Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness' (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520316027/military-waste) to discuss Josh's investigations into the strange externalities of rapidly proliferating military technology, both on planet Earth and beyond. Join us to discover Point Nemo, the so-called "oceanic pole of inaccessibility,” and graveyard of the world's downed orbital tech;  why future war really will be fought in space; how ‘Oumuamua’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua) may be the first instance of interstellar landfill; and how hackers are repurposing abandoned orbital technology using ham radio and rented satellite dishes.

In this episode of Stolen Headlines, Jamie hangs out with patrons Tim Reutemann and Mattias Rubensson to discuss: why the phony Marxist Greek government is evicting horizontally organized refugee shelters; how centralised statism is leading to bad software choices in Sweden; and why it doesn't matter whether Craig Wright is actually Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. 

This is part two of our interview with Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan. We discuss the technology behind the Sunflower Movement,  which radicalized democracy in the country, and how the Taiwanese government is using Free Software such as Discourse and Polis to enable its ongoing real-time experiment in direct democracy. Audrey explains the inspiration provided by Bowling Green Civic Assembly, the so-called 'online to offline' model in which a virtual decision-making process helped inform and structure a traditional town hall's agenda.   We dig into Taiwan's evolving approach to participatory democracy, focusing on Audrey's notion of 'conservative anarchy' and the fascinating idea that ordinary people actually share far more consensus than anyone realizes. What could be achieved if we focused policy-making energy on the stuff we can all agree on?

In this second installment of Stolen Headlines, cybersecurity experts Sean Lynch and Adam Burns discuss why Peter Thiel thinks Google's co-operation with China on AI is treasonous; how governments around the world are increasingly employing internet shutdowns as a political tool; and what to do about the fact that Android is increasingly rife with malware.   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/opinion/peter-thiel-google.html https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/

This is the first of a two-part interview with Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan. We discuss Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, which marked the first time the country's legislature has been occupied by citizens, and which led to a radical new phase for Taiwanese democracy.  How have digital networks facilitated the emergence of horizontal power and leaderless organization in Taiwan? Is the continuous participation in Taiwan's ongoing experiment in direct democracy responsible for reducing online trolling and creating constructive digital communities there? And how has the Taiwanese experience, from Sunflower onwards, pointed the way to what's happening right now, in Hong Kong's own Umbrella movement?

This is the pilot episode of a new format in which Jamie discusses the news with invited patrons and guests.  In this episode, author and climate consultant Tim Reutemann (https://www.bravenewworld.nl/Speakers/tim-reutemann/) and ex-NSA analyst and NewGeld CEO Tim Ofril discuss: why NSA is getting a new Cybersecurity division; the latest advancements with CRISPR and potential IP problems; and Github's censoring of users impacted by US sanctions -- just another sign of the increasing politicization of online platforms. Links to items discussed on this show: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/crispr-gene-editing-blindness-1.5226163 https://www.digitalmunition.me/nsa-to-establish-new-cybersecurity-directorate-to-boost-defense/ https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-owned-github-reportedly-blocking-people-in-crimea-iran-sanction-2019-7?r=US&IR=T

In this episode we meet Sean Tilley (aka @deadsuperhero) of We Distribute (and formerly the Diaspora project) to discuss: early days at Diaspora, the first Facebook alternative to really reach critical mass;  the steady rise of Mastodon and why the Fediverse its gaining traction; some surprising factors pushing  people to move from Big Social to federated social media networks; and whether technologists could (or should) move beyond de-platforming to begin refusing use of their technologies to those whose political ideas they disagree with. 

This is the second part of a two-part interview with Tim Tayshun, bitcoin entrepeneur and activist, who dedicated himself to exposing the crypto ponzi scheme, OneCoin. We discuss: how the internet changed the business of running a ponzi; the simlarities between scams like OneCoin and the crypto world's ICOs; how OneCoin modeled the way it moved money and on methods used by drug dealers; how Tim used memes to deal some deadly blows to the operation; and why Onecoin -- which by its own account should now be worth more than all US dollars in circulation --- still refuses to die.

In this episode we meet Josephine Wolff, author of a new book on financial and economic cybercrime, You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/youll-see-message-when-it-too-late) .  We discuss two important case studies from the book. First, GameOver Zeus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameover_ZeuS) - a massive financial fraud botnet which innovated by using P2P to distribute its command and control infrastructure, and a network of money mules to route funds to its owners, making it extremely hard to detect. The evolution of this botnet in response to Bitcoin demonstrates how cryptocurrency has produced a real paradigm shift in cybercrime - not least in shifting the financial impact of the crime onto the individuals and away from credit card companies and banks. Moving on to the case of PLA 61398 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398) , we discuss the Chinese deployment of hacking resources for economic advancement via China's so-called APT or Advanced Persistent Thre

In this episode author Cory Doctorow discusses three stories from his new collection, Radicalized. We discuss:  the perils of DRM, and becoming dependent on manufacturers --- from printers, to toasters and beyond -- and how (or if) we can force control of our technological future what lengths it’s permissible to go to when we're trying to effect change against the systems which might very well end the world as we know it;  if all of this fails, the ethical, philosophical and practical problems involved in waiting out the apocalypse in a high-tech, high-security bunker. Grab Cory's new book Radicalized -- DRM and EULA free - at Craphound.com, or all the traditional online retailers.

In this episode, I consider the inter-state struggle over 5G, the rollout of which will create a new global surveillance surface. Who will control this massive new opportunity to surveil the world's data?  If China gets its way, it will be Huawei, run by ex-Chinese-military officer Ren Zhengfei. And if the precedent of the world pharmaceutical market - almost completely controlled by China - is anything to go by, there may not be much anyone can do to stop them.  

Part One of a two part interview in which Tim Tayshun (AKA Tim Curry) of EZCoinAccess discusses taking on OneCoin, the massive crypto ponzi scheme responsible for bilking investors out of $4.6bn dollars. We discuss: how OneCoin was supposed to work vs. the dismal reality, its colourful cast of leaders and the lengths they went to in order to establish OneCoin as a valuable investment and the risk OneCoin posed to the growth of Bitcoin itself.

This is the second and final part of our interview with Enric Duran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enric_Duran) of the Faircoin (https://en.everybodywiki.com/Faircoin) / Faircoop (https://en.everybodywiki.com/Faircoin) project. We discuss: the advantage of using Faircoin rather than Bitcoin or even Euros; the history of anarchism of in Spain and the use of pre-crypto 'scrip' currencies in and between anarchist communes; the need to build an infrastructure for the coming community of disaffected normies, and more. We also take a long excursion into Enric's backstory as the 'Robin Hood' of the antiglobalisation movement: how he stole half a million euros plus from banks and gave it all to anticapitalist projects , and his ensuing life in the underground.  And finally we come around to the big question: how to get to a global Commons without requiring big-state communism. Bonus: the mysterious link between Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin and Enric Duran's commune Calafou. 

Part one of a two-part series with Enric Duran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enric_Duran) , outlaw and leader of the Faircoin project (https://fair-coin.org) and founder of Fair Coop (https://fair.coop/en) . Faircoin is a fascinating experiment in cryptocurrency: a LETS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_exchange_trading_system) -style community currency which also functions as an exchange-traded token. With it, Duran's Fair Co-op wants to power an international co-operative movement based on ideas and principles emerging from the Catalan Integral Co-operative: peer-to-peer organization, and horizontal governance by consensus. Support STEAL THIS SHOW and get involved! https://patreon.com/stealthisshow  

If you're enjoying the show, support production and join the community! https://patreon.com/stealthisshow This episode picks where we left off in the discussion with @rabble (https://about.me/rabble) , one of the co-founders of Twitter and Indymedia. Starting with the idea of Silicon Valley as a new empire, restructuring the world's institutions through software, we consider the ideology of this empire, and how it differs from that of the previous order of transnational capitalism.  Have what Evan calls Silicon Valley's 'social libertarian' values survived the terrific enlargement of the second-wave web services like Uber, Facebook and Airbnb into global superpowers? Finally we discuss @Rabble's work developing Scuttlebutt as a future platform for decentralised community, content distribution and monetisation. Are we moving away from the cycles of centralisation we've seen with platforms like Google and Facebook and towards a cycle of decentralisation? 

This is part one of a two-part interview with @Rabble (https://about.me/rabble) (Evan Henshaw Plath) -- activist technologist, co-founder of Indymedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Media_Center) , and one of the originators of Twitter. We discuss the origins of Twitter in the protest organisation tool TxtMob (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TXTMob) ; Evan's work developing Indymedia and the early days of tech's interaction with activism; how social media is continuing to mutate politics, for better and worse; how the sorting algorithms developed by Big Social are becoming indelibly embedded in our world -- and finally Evan introduces the subject of part two: Silicon Valley's hidden mission to restructure the world's institutions via software. 

If you listen back, Loomio has already come up a few times on this show. It's an open-source civic platform designed to help people make decisions collaboratively, and it's been used by everyone from Pirate Parties to City Councils.  In this episode I met up with with Loomio's Rich Bartlett to discuss the relationship of software to social change -- how platforms like Facebook and Slack embed coded ideas about how people should relate to and interact with each other, and how Loomio is trying to design for new modes of interaction and consensus springing up in and around the social movements.  We discuss how a truly decentralised, horizontally organized society might look and talk through Loomio's attempts to build the software to power it. Finally we talk about how to upgrade what Rich calls our 'cultural operating system'. Where does change really start: with our social organization, with our software or with ourselves?

‘Watch as Silicon Valley replaces everything with robots… Authorities release a geolocation app to real-time snitch on immigrants and political dissent… Government services fail….   Upheaval, polarization, politics as bankrupt as the financial markets–yet under crisis lies possibility.’  These words are cut from the pages of Inhabit.Global (http://inhabit.global/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss) , a pamphlet-platform-programme outlining what its members call an ‘operation in a cyberwar’. Collectively and anonymously produced by a network of actors across North America, Inhabit.global (http://inhabit.global/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss) presents a call to arms for a new autonomous, decentralized movement. This interview introduces two Inhabit members to discuss the sharp end of decentralized autonomy as the network seeks to become a force for global change in the style of Anonymous, Lulzsec and other ‘4th generation warfare’ non-state actors. Starting from the principle that ‘only the tech industry is allowed

Part pamphlet, part platform, part programme, Inhabit.Global (http://inhabit.global/) , outlines what its members call an 'operation in a cyberwar'. Collectively and anonymously produced by a network of actors across North America, Inhabit.global (http://inhabit.global/) presents a call to arms for a new autonomous, decentralized movement. This interview introduces two Inhabit members to discuss the sharp end of decentralized autonomy as the network seeks to become a force for global change in the style of Anonymous, Lulzsec and other '4th generation warfare' non-state actors. Starting from the principle that 'only the tech industry is allowed to change the world', the Inhabit.global (http://inhabit.global/) network proposes repurposing the technologies around us to produce real social change. We discuss: what happens when AI replaces the middle class (lawyers, programmers, doctors); the politics of cryptocurrency and money as a protocol; and whether citizens still have the power to produce real change.

Who controls your online accounts and identities? For most of us, the answer will be some combination of Big Social — companies like Google and Facebook — as well as a host of smaller platforms and services, all of them parceling up and selling our information for profit (https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/11/485571291/firms-are-buying-sharing-your-online-info-what-can-you-do-about-it?t=1542960207176&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss) . But after a series of high-profile hacks (https://money.cnn.com/2013/12/04/technology/security/passwords-stolen/index.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss) , trusting social media corporations to store and safeguard our personal information looks an increasingly bad idea. And many are understandably wary about letting platforms look after their cryptocurrency investments. Custody of our digital assets, it seems, is shaping up to be a key issue for network citizens. Enter Dark Crystal, (https://darkcrystal.pw/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss)  a project based around