To be human is to be private, as private is to be free

Hero or Traitor

In 1987, aged 16, Julian Assange began hacking under the name Mendax (Latin for “liar”.) He and two others, known as “Trax” and “Prime Suspect”, formed a hacking group they called “the International Subversives”. In 1993, Assange gave technical advice to the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit that assisted in prosecutions. In the same year, he was involved in starting one of the first public Internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network.

Assange is an Australian citizen, an editor, publisher, and activist who along with others, established WikiLeaks in 2006. He became a member of the organization’s advisory board and described himself as the editor-in-chief. The material WikiLeaks published between 2006 and 2009 attracted various degrees of international attention, but after it began publishing documents supplied by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley), WikiLeaks became a household name.

The Manning material included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010) which showed United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 people from a helicopter in Iraq, including journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. This material also included the Afghanistan War logs (July 2010), the Iraq War logs (October 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011). The files also contained an audio/video film of US military forces murdering innocent people walking down a street and then murdering a father and his two young children who stopped to give aid to the civilians the American soldiers had shot.

… a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents

By 2015, WikiLeaks had published more than ten million documents and associated analyses and was described by Assange as “a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents”.

WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”

In an April 2017 speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then CIA director Mike Pompe called WikiLeaks “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. The accusation followed a series of “damaging leaks” of confidential documents, code-named Vault 7, that included details on the CIA’s hacking capabilities, electronic surveillance and cyber warfare, Abilities such as compromising cars, smart TVs, web browsers, along with computer and mobile phone operating systems.

Contrary to the theme of this magazine on privacy, what Julian Assange has been able to do is to give transparency to the secrets that powerful people in nation-states and the military-industrial complex hold closely. Advocates of privacy may contend that what Julian did was counter-intuitive, and unleashes a plethora of arguments that work against the ideals of privacy. However, to me, the story may not reverberate so much from the disclosure of illegal and unethical activity on our behalf, as it does by giving light to the fact that there is a class with the privilege of privacy and a class without it.

Privacy is weaponized when it is used incorrectly. When did we empower Government with an ability to absolve itself of criminal acts that it does not permit its citizens? We didn’t, but we’ve enabled them to hide the mistakes and foolish blunders behind a veil of secrecy, more commonly known as a matter of national security.

This term is used to envelop a Nation-State and protect the integrity of its commitments to the people. All the more we are seeing it being used to protect people from exposure to involvement in criminal activity. Illegitimate operations performed to the benefit of 3rd party undermine the charge of consent the people gave to its government.

Just as an individual, so too should the same measure be applied to the people in Government responsible, when they commit a crime. There simply is no excuse.

Atrocities committed by inter-Governmental agency’s, have no business being hidden from the very people who calibrate their government

Governments are made up of representatives of the people that they govern, they are real people. Their power is derived from the sovereignty of the citizenry and a social contract is engaged that grants government power to make laws that reflect the standards of their given mandate. Once the line of unlawfulness has been tripped, Governments, like it’s citizens, must be held to account. When a government makes a decision or does something contrary to the wishes of its’ citizens, it must be accountable. By allowing a government to redact and omit information from its official reports, you open yourselves up to the possibility of being managed, like cattle.

What Julian Assange did for me was help me understand that privacy was and is used as a weapon. It is used by our ‘handlers’ in a way that also creates doubt around the purposes of privacy. But outside of government, privacy is a matter of choice, a legitimate state of being, a human right, a necessary tool for a well-functioning society. It lets us forget the past and move on, wake up to a brand new day, every day. It gives us an opportunity to make good on our inflections, and repair our mistakes, and it allows us to just, be.

To be human is to be private, as private is to be free.

How to Secure Your Crypto Wallet

When you’re dealing with an entirely digital asset like cryptocurrency, you want to be sure that you’re protecting your wallet digitally, too. This might seem like a no-brainer to the digital-savvy consumer who maintains a crypto wallet, but there are actually a number of vulnerabilities that you may not be aware of when you’re using digital currencies across your online life.

In this short section, you’ll learn how to better protect your crypto wallet and its assets. In doing so, you’ll be able to trade online without worrying about the security of your assets.

Password Protection

In many security circles, the humble password is slowly being revealed as a fairly insecure way of getting access to your assets. Indeed, it just takes one scammer to ask you to type your password into their website or program in order for them to have an intimate chunk of data, with which they may be able to access a number of your digital assets. As you’ll know, a password can be the gateway into your email account, from which you manage your digital assets, so a password’s protection is rarely enough to protect your digital wallet.

Two-Factor Authentication

As such, all crypto wallets — and digital assets generally — should be protected by a deeper layer of security than just a password alone. In security circles, this is often called ‘two-factor authentication’. Instead of simply typing in a username and password, you’ll also be requested to use a different form of ID, like your phone number or an element of your biometric data. With this additional layer of security installed, your crypto wallet will be far more difficult to breach, which means cybercriminals will give your digital profile a miss in favor of easier targets.

Software

Meanwhile, there are a number of software solutions on the market to help you protect not just your computer, but all of the endpoints connected with you and your digital system. These might include your phone, your tablet, your printer, and your smart home devices.

All of these constitute weak points in your cybersecurity which leading firms like www.mcafee.com have provided updated, next-generation software to protect. It’s your responsibility to download and onboard these cybersecurity solutions to ensure that your digital assets are protected by the world’s leading cybersecurity offerings, enabling you to trade online free from stress.

Personal Behavior

As well as using new technologies and software packages to help you get more secure, there’s an element of behavior that comes into conversations about digital asset protection. If, for instance, you give out your passwords to loved ones, you’re more likely to experience theft or cyber threats on your devices. The same goes for those who store their passwords digitally on their computers, or who are happy to leave their digital profiles signed in on communal computers. You should police all these behaviors and more if you’re to offer your digital assets the protection that they deserve.

Use these four tips to help you build out a more robust security blanket for all of your digital assets, especially your valuable crypto wallet investments.