Remember My Warnings About Proxy Services?

June 6th, 2007

Mike Ruppert responded to my post about Armorware. As I expected, he didn’t address any of the several concerns I raised. He confirms what we already knew: He’s virtually clueless about computer security and is promoting something he doesn’t understand because it looks “elegant” to him. * sigh * He did, however, mention Alex Jones.

In his response, to my post, Mike Ruppert wrote, “I get slammed for promoting one prouduct. [sic] How many paid advertisers are there on Alex Jones’ sites?”

I didn’t know if Alex Jones was promoting/endorsing/offering any computer security or anonymity products. I’d never heard of him doing do, but since Ruppert mentioned it, I thought I’d look into the matter, just to make sure.

Uhhhhhhgh. I feel ill.

Before you read about what I found, this is what I wrote about proxy services in my Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity essay:

Many technologies that amateur anonymity fetishists are attracted to are actually designed to harvest information. Put yourself in the shoes of the NSA. If you wanted a concentrated haul of the most interesting information what would you do?

You would establish a honeypot: a service (free or paid) that purported to provide an anonymous web browsing/email capability. Who knows what people might get up to if they thought nobody was looking? That, of course, is the idea with honeypots.

If you’re relying on a proxy server, how will you know that it’s not simply recording your entire session for examination by acreages of the Homeland’s supercomputers that are running advanced statistical Magic 8 Ball algorithms? Because the company or individual providing your proxy service says that they don’t keep logs? HA

Now, here’s what I just found over at Prison Planet, an Alex Jones site:

New Prison Planet.tv Member Feature: Anonymous Surfing and E Mailing

Prison Planet | June 13 2005

We are offering our Prison Planet.tv members two exclusive new features which come completely free at no extra charge.

Anonymous surfing and e mailing options are now available to our great members!

The anonymous surfer allows to you to safely traverse the web while been protected against malicious tracking cookies and government surveillance. Your online privacy is guaranteed.

Also available is the anonymous e mailer option which allows you to send private, anonymous e mails.

Prison Planet.tv members can access these two great new features at no extra charge right now.

Click here to access the anonymous surfer. Click here to access the anonymous emailer.

Not a Prison Planet.tv member? These features barely scratch the surface of what members receive. All of Alex Jones documentary films, Alex Jones’ weekly television reports, all major audio interviews from the Alex Jones Show, Alex Jones’ book Descent Into Tyranny, Paul Joseph Watson’s book Order Out of Chaos.

There is already a comprehensive library of material online just waiting for members going back over a year.

Click here to subscribe, it’s just 15 cents a day if you subscribe for a year or $5.95 a month.

I searched back through my archives, and do you know when I first warned people about this kind of thing?

2002.

In 2002, I wrote the following to a Cryptogon reader:

Few people have “clean,” that is anonymous Internet access. The people who “think” they have it are paying extra for it, and may just be supporting a NSA honeypot. I get a good chuckle when I see webwasher and anonymiser hits in my log.

Read Sun Tzu’s, “Art of War.” If he wanted people to think they were anonymous online, so he could learn their maneuvers and tactics, how would he go about it? He’d set up an ISP offering “anonymous” surfing and post ads for it all over the dissident backwaters of the Internet. He might even require clients to run an executable in order to access the “anonymous” browsing system. That way, he gets every keystroke, in addition to all Internet activity.

In 2005, both Alex Jones and Mike Ruppert began promoting possible honeypot email and web anonymity services…

I feel ill. I’m literally sitting here, holding my head in my hands.

In mindwar, which is what this is, the battlespace is littered with bullshit and honeypots. Getting outside the boxes lands you inside other boxes. It is like planning an ambush far in advance. When the enemy (you and me) walks along the path and starts taking fire, we leap into the bushes for cover… and land in a mine field.

Another analogy. The Internet is like a safety valve on a pressure cooker. If the thing is getting dangerous, dissidents and activists of EVERY possible description can meet up with the handfull of other people who share similar interests, sit in front of their computers, and spend a lot of time accomplishing nothing. In the meantime, valuable intelligence may be gleaned about us via the methods I discuss above, and probably techniques we can’t begin to imagine.

When I studied information warfare in college, this now long forgotten essay was a big deal, but twelve years later, have we learned anything?

The Internet could also be used offensively as an additional medium in psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives. Used creatively as an integral asset, the Internet can facilitate many DoD operations and activities.

Strategic Assessment: The Internet
Prepared by Mr. Charles Swett
Assistant for Strategic Assessment
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
July 1995

What about some of the most prominent dissidents and activists?

Oh, they’re busy writing books, making documentaries and selling computer “security” products and services to the people who listen to them. This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

Related: Remember My Warnings About Closed Source Computer Security Products and Services?

20 Responses to “Remember My Warnings About Proxy Services?”

  1. bloodnok says:

    It does surprise me that the likes of Mike Ruppert and Alex Jones are hawking these proxies on ther websites, however I believe they’re doing so in good faith. Who knows – they might actually be honest services with a high degree of security. The fact is we dont know – and cant know – that they’re not some front for an intelligence angency somewhere.

  2. Kevin says:

    @bloodnok

    They might be honest services with a high degree of security?

    Do you realize that people might be taking their lives in their hands by using these services?

  3. greg says:

    the fact is, you shouldn’t settle for just one person. Always keep on the look-out for something bigger and better. While Alex Jones is good for hard evidence for what you already know, Alex Jones isn’t the end-all of the entire matrix because Alex Jones simply studies what the NWO does. Like Karl Rove said, while we’re busy studying what they do, they’re busy creating new and alternate realities for us. So while we’re all listening to alex jones, guess what? NWO is busy on the next phase, which means that we’re still behind. Until we take back our inherent God-given power to create our own destinies, our own lives, and ultimately our own happiness, free from oppression and slavery of every form, we will always be servants in the matrix. In other words, we have to start creating our own realities, and a good start is to turn off the television and even the computer and turn on our Selves.

  4. Dennis says:

    Thanks for updating us on the original post, Kevin.

  5. Eileen says:

    I know everything I write on this site as well as others is subject to the big eye. Shit. I pull the circa 1940’s vinyl plastic window shade down over the large picture window in front of my computer so’s that that the micro dragonfly can’t sit there and watch me writing on my computer. Read what I write but don’t watch me doing it.
    And anyone who tells/sells a product claiming Internet security is a to put it nicely, a salesman. I don’t think that Kevin, as a messager deserves to be SHOT TO HELL for calling out internet anomymity as bullshit. Because it is, quite large Bs.
    For several years now my telephone lines have been subject to a large amont of clicking background noise during conversations with friends and family. Oh yes, we are a small terrorist group intent on caring for my 90 year old mother.We are feeling particularly terrorized by the health care system in our country. We also talk about stuff like stolen elections. Yep, we’re a bunch of terrorists who have decided to entertain our eavesdroppers, readers of email with a treat. We say “Allah is Great” and the phones go quiet for a week or two. Then its starts right back up again, and again and again. Its kind of sickening. Really, to know you are being monitored by some fricking computer program designed by someone who finds my familial conversations interesting. Me, I am a nun who reports to my cubicle at the office as close to * am as I can manage.
    Well, yesterday I told the computer at Sears “fuck you.” I think I heard it laugh.

  6. bloodnok says:

    @Kevin: Exactly – it’s that lack of certainty that tells sensible people to avoid them.

  7. bob m says:

    the only thing we have going for internet activty flagging is the time delays for human intervention. the amount of data despite any heuristic analysis is still massive and global. if a comment in english were flagged in a ‘secure’ format what would the response and response time be for intervention? in another language? i almost get a ‘security camera’ feeling from it, something to review later once the paramaters are known. the sheer scope of the web should preclude direct and immediate action unless a particular trigger were flagged for events. unless a far more complicated AI is being applied to analysis there is some small breathing room. although, i can visualize some bored terminal operators at headquarters off duty some weekend with a few beers and a handful of flavour flagged materials being read out loud for shits and giggles.

  8. amanfromMars says:

    And are you using Windows, a proxy view at what you are operating on?

  9. Several points:

    1. The Internet, like the telephone, the television, the fax machine, and any other medium of communications, is a double-edge sword. Sure it makes communication easier, but it also makes it more easily monitored.

    2. The Internet, originally a .mil/.gov project was probably always intended as a means of monitoring and control; beware of bureaucrats bearing gifts. That being said, people in power are still people, for the most part. Thus, monitoring “dissident” sites allows for the transmission of “dissident” thoughts into spook skulls.

    3. Expecting powerful interests to not invade your privacy and abuse your trust after you have purchased tools they have designed, created, and produced, while at the same time buying into the ideology that comes with the tools, is an exercise in ahistorical wishful thinking. You didn’t really buy into the idea that they were ushering in utopia, did you? Computers and the Internet are powerful drugs designed to fundamentally change you, hook you, and addict you to their use.

    4. Remember how there were things like diaries? You would write down your innermost thoughts, and then squirrel the diary away under your bed? Well, if you type your innermost thoughts onto a computer, and its hooked up to the Internet, anyone can read them, if they can hack.

    5. Expecting to beat the NSA and various public/private intelligence organizations at games they designed and play for a living is like expecting to beat Death/the Devil at chess.

  10. Bill says:

    Kev,
    This is great insight into something that seems so … innocent.

    My big question (and apologies to those above who may have already answered this) is if you really do want to use the web anonymously, what do you do? Especially if you’re always connecting from the same location (eg. a home office)?

    Thanks,
    Bill.

  11. Kevin says:

    @ Bill,

    It depends on who or what you’re trying to hide from.

    Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity took it about as far as I could take it:

    https://cryptogon.com/?p=624

  12. General Patton says:

    Why is it we in the conspiracy community so often end up argueing over the color of red herrings? 😛

  13. katatonic says:

    You pretty much hit the nail on the head. While a lot of what AJ says might be true, there was something about him that bothered me (asides from his religous views) but i couldn’t put my finger on it.

  14. Mr. Boo says:

    Expecting to beat the NSA and various public/private intelligence organizations at games they designed and play for a living is like expecting to beat Death

    Ozzy, you are The Man

    Just what do all these people plan to do with their online “anonymity”? Plot a rebellion? Surf for porn? Anything you do on the Internet you are essentially doing in writing. You should ask yourself just what you are trying to do online that you don’t want to publicly admit.

    From the gov’ment’s way of thinking, anyone wanting online anonymity is being sneaky. Guess what – the gov’ment is right. If you can’t say something both nice and legal, you really shouldn’t be saying anything at all. There is no good that can come from it.

  15. PeterPan says:

    Mr. Boo-

    Your comment represents startling ignorance. Why don’t you take some time to educate yourself about government persecution of activists before spewing such total nonsense again:

    http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/072006-amnesty-google-yahoo-microsoft.html?inform

  16. Kevin says:

    Censorship ‘changes face of net’

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6724531.stm

    Amnesty International has warned that the internet “could change beyond all recognition” unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms.

    The warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights.

    The “virus of internet repression” has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, said the group.

  17. Chad says:

    I wrote Alex Jones about this matter and received this response. It looks like they no longer offer this service. Most likely they have been warned by someone else about this.

    This feature was disabled many months ago.

    Best regards, Paul Joseph Watson.
    http://www.prisonplanet.com

  18. Kevin says:

    @ Chad

    That’s interesting. I’ll be glad to post a correction if I can get a response from them. I sent this to the main Infowars media relations address:

    To Whom It May Concern,

    My name is Kevin Flaherty. I wrote an article that looked at some potentially serious problems with a computer security product that Mike Ruppert is selling and endorsing. Part of Ruppert’s response mentioned Alex Jones and the products he’s selling.

    The entire thing is available here:

    https://cryptogon.com/?p=814

    I said that I didn’t know if Alex Jones was endorsing or selling any such products, but that I wanted to find out for sure.

    I found this page on Prison Planet that offers web and email anonymity services:

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2005/130605memberfeature.htm

    I wrote about this here:

    https://cryptogon.com/?p=834

    One of my readers posted a comment that included a message from Paul Watson that said:

    This feature was disabled many months ago.

    Best regards, Paul Joseph Watson.
    http://www.prisonplanet.com

    I would just like some kind of “on the record” statement on what is happening with the anonymous web and email services mentioned on the Prison Planet page above; specifically, whether or not they have been discontinued.

    Thank you,
    Kevin Flaherty
    cryptogon.com

  19. Hayduke says:

    Never forget that people like Mike Rupport, Fletcher Prouty, “Lee Harvey Oswald” and others ALWAYS work both sides of the street. It’s part of their survival skills.

    Read Ruppert’s detailed bio and compare it to others known to be active in the security establishment, organized crime, military “intelligence” worlds. Sounds like a broken record.

  20. Anonymous says:

    I’ve /beaten/ the devil at chess, and I stalemated death. So there. The NSA are wussies!

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