Militant
Electronic Piracy:
Non-Violent Insurgency Tactics Against the
American Corporate State
Written by Kevin
Flaherty
http://www.cryptogon.com
Military tactics are
like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high
places and hastens downwards.
So in war, the way is to avoid
what is strong and to strike at what is weak.
Water shapes its
course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the
soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is
facing.
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
my revolutionary deeds
are not as obvious as yours
i contribute to the core of a
technological war
that exists where no eyes can see
-Anonymous
(Female) Hacker/Pirate
DISCLAIMER
This essay
is an examination of an emerging form of asymmetric warfare; a look
at the situation on the ground. Taken out of context, the following
material might appear to some as a, “terrorist operations
manual.” It isn't. Operational information has been
intentionally excluded.
I've never advocated violence or
breaking the law, but I know that those facts don't matter under a
system of overt fascism. Even so, I'm stating, clearly and
emphatically, that what follows is intended for educational use
only.
Hopefully, this disclaimer will be remembered if an
attempt is made to pull my words out of context. This file includes a
GPG signature;
proof that this disclaimer was included at the time of publication.
Any attempt to modify the content of this message will cause the
electronic signature verification scheme to fail and provide evidence
of tampering.
INTRODUCTION
The germ of this
essay was a Wired article about electronic piracy called, “The
Shadow Internet.”1
The following Cryptogon analysis will focus on the nature of
insurgency in the U.S. and critical national security aspects of
electronic piracy that the article failed to address.
The
Wired article does not mention that there is now a strong
ideological motivation driving some actors in the piracy scene. Back
in the 1980s, piracy was mostly for the fun of it, as the
article indicates. Now, though, some militant anarchists see piracy
as a way of bankrupting corporations and view their activities as a
form of warfare against corporations and the governments that serve
them. The supporting material for this statement is available on the
Internet. I will not provide direct links to information related to
the operational aspects of militant electronic piracy because doing
so could subject me to criminal prosecution.2
This
analysis will use the term “militant electronic piracy”
to refer to the high level, massive theft and distribution of
copyrighted material for purposes of politico-economic warfare. This
may be viewed in stark contrast to the more ubiquitous activity of
“file trading,” where individuals use peer-to-peer
software to download music, movies and software for free. Casual file
traders ascribe no political motivation whatsoever to their actions.
“The American Corporate State,” (ACS) refers to the
existing power structure in the U.S. This system is characterized by
the fascist convergence of corporate and government interests.3
In
order to understand the national security implications of militant
electronic piracy, an examination of conventional insurgency against
the American Corporate State is necessary.
THE NATURE OF
ARMED INSURGENCY AGAINST THE ACS
Any violent insurgency
against the ACS is sure to fail and will only serve to enhance the
state's power. The major flaw of violent insurgencies, both cell
based (Weathermen Underground, Black Panthers, Aryan Nations etc.)
and leaderless (Earth Liberation Front, People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, etc.) is that they are attempting to attack the
system using the same tactics the ACS has already mastered: terror
and psychological operations. The ACS attained primacy through the
effective application of terror and psychological operations.
Therefore, it has far more skill and experience in the use of these
tactics than any upstart could ever hope to attain.4
This makes the ACS impervious to traditional insurgency tactics.
-
Political Activism and the ACS Counterinsurgency Apparatus
The
ACS employs a full time counterinsurgency infrastructure with
resources that are unimaginable to most would be insurgents. Quite
simply, violent insurgents have no idea of just how powerful the foe
actually is. Violent insurgents typically start out as peaceful,
idealistic, political activists. Whether or not political activists
know it, even with very mundane levels of political activity, they
are engaging in low intensity conflict with the ACS.
The U.S.
military classifies political activism as “low intensity
conflict.” The scale of warfare (in terms of intensity) begins
with individuals distributing anti-government handbills and public
gatherings with anti-government/anti-corporate themes. In the middle
of the conflict intensity scale are what the military refers to as
Operations Other than War; an example would be the situation the U.S.
is facing in Iraq. At the upper right hand side of the graph is
global thermonuclear war. What is important to remember is that the
military is concerned with ALL points along this scale because they
represent different types of threats to the ACS.
Making
distinctions between civilian law enforcement and military forces,
and foreign and domestic intelligence services is no longer
necessary. After September 11, 2001, all national security assets
would be brought to bare against any U.S. insurgency movement.
Additionally, the U.S. military established NORTHCOM which designated
the U.S. as an active military operational area. Crimes involving the
loss of corporate profits will increasingly be treated as acts of
terrorism and could garner anything from a local law enforcement
response to activation of regular military forces.
Most of
what is commonly referred to as “political activism” is
viewed by the corporate state's counterinsurgency apparatus as a
useful and necessary component of political
control.
Letters-to-the-editor...
Calls-to-elected-representatives...
Waving
banners...
“Third” party political
activities...
Taking beatings, rubber bullets and tear gas from
riot police in free speech zones...
Political activism
amounts to an utterly useless waste of time, in terms of tangible
power, which is all the ACS understands. Political activism is a
cruel guise that is sold to people who are dissatisfied, but who have
no concept of the nature of tangible power. Counterinsurgency teams
routinely monitor these activities, attend the meetings, join the
groups and take on leadership roles in the organizations.
It's
only a matter of time before some individuals determine that
political activism is a honeypot that accomplishes nothing and wastes
their time. The corporate state knows that some small percentage of
the peaceful, idealistic, political activists will eventually figure
out the game. At this point, the clued-in activists will probably do
one of two things; drop out or move to escalate the struggle in other
ways.
If the clued-in activist drops his or her political
activities, the ACS wins.
But what if the clued-in activist
refuses to give up the struggle? Feeling powerless, desperation could
set in and these individuals might become increasingly radicalized.
Because the corporate state's counterinsurgency operatives have
infiltrated most political activism groups, the radicalized members
will be easily identified, monitored and eventually
compromised/turned, arrested or executed. The ACS wins again.
-
ACS Full-Spectrum PSYOP Dominance
The ACS wields the most
powerful weapon of political control the world has ever seen: the
mass media. This is the corporate state's trump card against
leaderless resistance movements which are impossible to infiltrate
and compromise by counter-insurgency teams. The appearance of
legitimacy is all that matters in a low intensity conflict, and the
ACS, with the corporate media running continuous propaganda and
perception management campaigns, represents the final solution to
what the public will view as legitimate.5
All
anti-corporate/anti-government political activism will be portrayed
by the ACS as lunatic muckraking and a potential hotbed of terrorism.
All violent insurgency activities will be portrayed as terrorist
acts. (Some criminal activity is now considered terrorism by the
ACS.) The behavior of the ACS will be represented as just, measured
and prudent, regardless of the ghastly nature of its atrocities. The
general population will be bombarded with images, sound bites and
articles about the threats posed by the “terrorists.” In
other words, the population, rather then fearing the state and its
continuous cryptofascist operations and more overt international war
crimes and economic exploitation, will come to view the insurgents as
a threat and the ACS as their savior. The ACS can punctuate the point
by unleashing false flag terror incidents on the population while
conveniently blaming any organization it wishes, including other
states.6
The general population will respond by supporting: foreign wars, the
diminution of individual rights, and legislation and funding that
adds to the power of the corporate state.
Some simple
analogies might help to clarify the realities facing an armed
insurgency in the United States.
Could a 5 year old beat a
university mathematics professor in a mathematics contest?
Could
an ape beat a grand champion at chess?
Could a high school
basketball team beat the Los Angeles Lakers at basketball?
Could
an armed insurgency overthrow the American Corporate State?
The
obvious answer to all of these questions is: NO.
Some
insurgents, having determined that terror and psyops will obviously
fail against the ACS, sought out other means of attacking this
extremely powerful foe.
MILITANT ELECTRONIC PIRACY:
MILITARY-STYLE DAMAGE WITH NON-VIOLENT TACTICS
High level
electronic piracy (massive intellectual property theft and
distribution) has the potential to inflict "military-style"
damage to the American Corporate State.
What does
military-style damage mean in this context?
- Bankrupt
ACS
The ACS is quite literally bankrupt, yet it continues
to function do to an increasing flow of foreign capital that serves
to finance its unimaginable levels of debt.7
If an insurgency was able to slow the flow of capital to
corporations, by any means, the revenue loss could eventually cause
reverberations throughout the economy that would be catastrophic for
the ACS and the wider system of institutionalized theft commonly
referred to as “global capitalism.” According to Robert
Holleyman, president and CEO of the Business Software Alliance,
“Software piracy continues to be a major challenge for
economies worldwide. From Algeria to New Zealand, Canada to China,
piracy deprives local governments of tax revenue, costs jobs
throughout the technology supply chain and cripples the local,
in-country software industry.”8
If
any non-violent insurgency could cause serious and sustained economic
damage to major components of the ACS, the resulting chaos might
resemble the results of a strategic military attack, complete with
infrastructure breakdown, food shortages and the collapse of
government authority. This is not to say that militant electronic
piracy would be the primary cause of the collapse of the ACS. Piracy
might, however, serve as the straw, or one of several straws, the
breaks the camel's back.
- Casual Downloaders Unknowingly
Assist Insurgency
In the most simple terms, the less money
individuals spend, the faster the collapse of the ACS will occur. The
ubiquity of peer-to-peer file trading tools provides non-technical
computer users point-and-click access to massive amounts of music,
movies and software. The militant electronic pirates are intelligent.
They know most people are lazy and will never---willingly---do
anything to fight the status quo, in terms of tangible power.
Do
casual downloaders think they are throwing Molotov cocktails at a
TimeWarner building or blowing up a Walmart each time they download
music or movies from the Internet for free? No, the average p2p user
isn't thinking along these lines. But every legitimate purchase that
isn't made as a result of electronic piracy drives another nail into
the coffin of the American Corporate State. At what point does
electronic piracy move from being an annoyance for profit hungry
corporations to a national security matter?
- Militant
Electronic Piracy Operations
Militant electronic piracy
operations may be carried out by anti-corporate computer experts in
any geographic location on the planet. Whereas armed insurgents face
physical and public relations impossibilities of using political
violence successfully, militant electronic pirates, on the other
hand, can more effectively control the battle space using security
hardened software tools (all of which are available for free). On the
Internet, militant electronic pirates possess capabilities that are
more congruent to the corporate state than the most sophisticated
armed insurgency group could ever hope to attain in the conventional
military sphere.
By using electronic piracy as a mode of
attack, pirates are able to inflict tens of billions of dollars worth
of damages per year against the ACS.9
This is an astonishing proof of the validity of this mode of attack
versus violent operations. Violent insurgency groups, such as the
Earth Liberation Front, have only managed to inflict tens of million
dollars worth of damage to the ACS over their entire
lifetimes.
Additionally, pirates do tangible damage to the ACS
with little to fear in the way of a public relations backlash. The
ACS has had difficulty in generating public concern for the losses of
maniacal corporations, primarily because no unpleasant spin---such as
news video of anti-corporate rioting and chaos---is possible.
Militant electronic piracy represents a silent, continuous and costly
attack on the ACS. Contrast this to violent insurgency tactics, which
amount only to symbolic pinpricks against the ACS and are accompanied
by wholly untenable public relations consequences.
Militant
electronic pirates enjoy the benefits of being able to conduct their
operations in a virtual battlefield. Stealth is obtainable through
the use of encryption and other techniques that are not suitable for
discussion in an essay of this type. As a result, authorities face
great difficulty in trying to interdict high level pirates. According
to a recent Associated Press article:
The
groups are typically very hierarchical, with tiers of leadership,
said John Malcolm, head of the Motion Picture Association of
America's antipiracy unit.
"There are many of them out
there, highly organized, very clandestine," Malcolm said.
"They're tough nuts to crack."
Authorities don't
have a fix on how many groups exist.
"There are a lot of
similarities with the drug war," said David Israelite, chairman
of the U.S. Justice Department's Intellectual Property Task Force.
"You never really are going to eliminate the problem, but what
you hope to do is stop its growth."10
With the continuous increase in the use
of broadband Internet connections, the base of the piracy
pyramid---the casual downloaders---will only continue to grow in
size. New peer-to-peer filetrading tools and specialized firewalls
(all available for free) increasingly protect users at the base of
the pyramid from ACS interdiction efforts. A small number of
insurgent seed nodes can, in a very short period of time, spread
files further down toward the ever expanding (and well defended) base
of the pyramid, causing an unstoppable flood of shared files. It's
not clear which task would be more daunting for the ACS: attempting
to apprehend tens of millions of individual downloaders, or
attempting to take down a loose network of several thousand
hard-core, militant pirates with computer skills that are
commensurate with intelligence agency information warfare experts.
-
Just Kids Having Fun?
The assertion in some media (the
Wired article, for example) that high level electronic piracy
is just-a-bunch-of-kids-out-for-a-good-time is ludicrous. Without a
doubt, at the lower levels, a horde of generally clueless users is
just looking for free music, movies and software. But at the node
level and above, things are much more interesting. It's difficult to
imagine individuals taking on different multi-billion dollar
industries (represented by RIAA-Music, MPAA-Movies, BSA-Software),
the mercenaries hired by these industries (Overpeer, etc.) and the
U.S. Government just for the fun of it. The ACS is dedicating
increasing energy to thwarting high level electronic piracy. The U.S.
Department of Justice agent above compared electronic piracy to the
drug war! Clearly, it's not all fun and games for high level
electronic pirates. It's war.
THE ACS RESPONSE
The
ACS will become increasingly reckless as it nears the abyss of
economic collapse. It will lash out against enemies, real and
perceived, in expected and unexpected ways. As for the pirates,
they're already classified as terrorists.11
They should expect the ACS to escalate the operations against
them.
Expect a legislated, “national security”
justification for Microsoft's long awaited (and dreaded) Digital
Rights Management scheme, codenamed Longhorn. Microsoft will tout
Longhorn as the solution to piracy and other “terrorist”
uses of computers and the Internet. Besides turning each computer
into a tamper proof vending machine (this will mean The End of
general purpose computing), Longhorn will provide an astonishing
surveillance capability to ACS law enforcement, intelligence and
military organizations. Those who refuse to use Longhorn will
increasingly find themselves locked out of networks. The goal will be
to apply maximum surveillance and control to “trusted”
users on the Internet.
CONCLUSION
Militant
electronic pirates can successfully obtain military-style results
from their activities.12
An insurgency based on militant electronic piracy is viable (and
preferable to violent tactics) for several reasons. Militant
electronic pirates cause orders of magnitude greater damage to the
ACS than violent insurgencies. And they do so while avoiding much of
the impossible-to-manage public relations disaster that surrounds
violent tactics. Pirates use a virtual battlespace for most of their
activities; they can attack and maneuver without too much fear of
being physically apprehended by authorities. Militant electronic
piracy takes advantage of the massive force multiplication effect of
tens of millions of low level cadres (casual downloaders) who don't
even understand the implications of what they're doing.
With a
foe as powerful as the ACS, violent insurgents face an impossible
struggle. Militant electronic piracy offers a much more viable and
effective mode of combat to insurgents, both as groups and as
individuals.
Notes:
1The Shadow Internet, by Jeff Howe, Wired, Issue 13.01, 1/2005, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html
2It might be useful to think of militant electronic piracy as a more extreme form of hacktivism. In any event, the following page about hacktivism describes the philosophical underpinnings of what is driving militant pirates without providing operational information: http://www.thehacktivist.com/hacktivism.php
3Hundreds of books and thousands of Internet sites have documented this process. When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten is probably the best single volume treatment of the subject.
4Low Intensity Warfare represents a nexus of insurgency, counterinsurgency and psychological operations. Detailing this massive area of inquiry is far beyond the scope of this essay. Some useful materials are: U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-20, Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-20/index.html; documents on the Information Warfare PSYOP site, http://www.iwar.org.uk/psyops; and Low-intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping by General Sir Frank Kitson.
5Mindwar by U.S. Army Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Aquino.
6The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, from Antiquity to September 11 by Paul David Collins and Fake Terror: The Road to Dictatorship, http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/9-11/FakeTerror.html
7Trouble Ahead-Trouble Behind: Restructuring the Global Economy, a New Marshall Plan by Chris P. Dialynas, http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Latest%20Publications/2004/Dialynas%20Paper.htm
8http://www.bsa.org/usa/press/newsreleases/Major-Study-Finds-36-Percent-of-Software-in-Use-Worldwide-is-Pirated.cfm
9Ibid. The Business Software Alliance claims that 36% of installed software worldwide is pirated, accounting for a loss to corporations of $29 billion in 2003. Also in 2003, the music industry estimated that it lost $4.3 billion per year do to piracy. The film industry estimated their losses at about $4 billion. See: Calif. Government Condemns Online Music, Film Piracy, AP, 4/2/2003, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-04-02-calif-piracy_x.htm
10Covert Online Groups Behind Bulk of Bootlegged Movies, Music, Software, by Alex Veiga, Associated Press, 1/3/05, http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2973771
11There are several stories on this. The following Google search yields hundreds of entries related to online piracy and terrorism: (software OR music OR movie) piracy terrorism
12To what end? It appears that the goal is to collapse the system, not replace it with a different system.