Zero Days Spoiler Alert

The movie Zero Days answers a lot of questions, but it poses so many more, that I think any good review should be a spoiler.  We are left to wonder and search for what's next, how foolish people with power and financial resources will be, and how clever the better and worse technologists around the world will prove to be while struggling against each other to make things the way they want them to be.

Personally, I'd like to see Siemens spend a few million on a court case against the U.S. government to win a settlement that would pay for A) replacing all existing PLCs that are affected by Stuxnet so that they are not vulnerable to the malware as they currently are, and B) explicate the exploits that were used well enough for the creators of the software containing them to remove them.

My observations on the state of the audience and my personal desire for Siemens are not the reason I'm writing this post.  I wrote those paragraphs in order to provide a setting from which I can propose my theory and hopefully get some of the most important minds working on solving the problem of corruption (if they aren't already).

The ostensible goal of Stuxnet was to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program.  The effect was to release a kind of masterkey to infect and control a variable but very well defined set of Siemens PLCs in any way a programmer wants.  Anyone can get it because it's everywhere.  The idea of Siemens PLCs providing useful logical functions in a secure manner is no longer reasonable.  We are vulnerable to the madmen of the world who have the programming skills.

The madmen of the world generally do not have the programming skills because they are too busy getting elected, whispering in the ears of those who've already been elected, or both, and that is NOT their fault.  It's ours.  Well, not my fault because A) I don't vote, and B) I have no respect for fake (coercive) authority.  So it probably isn't your fault either, but there are loads of people who still believe that obedience to authority is a good thing, and it's entirely their fault. They suffer for it too, which is ok by me, but we suffer too, and that's what I'd like to stop.  I think it's up to us to stop it.

The people who do have the programming skills will be hired by those madmen because too many software engineers (yes, Jerry, I'm talking about you) do not peer deeply enough into their work to see whether or not it will be used for good or evil.  Einstein and Oppenheimer come to mind.  My theory is that the money to be paid to the engineers who can modify the Stuxnet to create grand problems will come from taxpayers and be funneled through black ops for that exact purpose: create grand problems.  Why?  Because that is how fake authority justifies itself.  Check out the Peace Revolution Podcast if you don't believe me.

How do we stop it?  The answer is to make people like Jerry aware of what they are doing so that they can request that more light be shone upon it.  The Jerry about whom I write offered me some work related to "smart meters" and, because it was a government contract, I declined.  Perhaps it was a mistake for me to decline.  Perhaps I would have been able to brighten the lights and scare away some of the development of "grand problems" that I believe is going on.

I don't know if Jerry will ever read this, but if he does, I hope he considers how much his work is related to the Siemens PLCs targeted by Stuxnet and whether or not he's helping create instability in a world that is very altered now that the CIA / NSA / FBI has released this masterkey into the wild.

We are not powerless.

The Bitfinex Hack: Bitcoin versus Hubris

Bitcoin is threatening those who have lived parasitically off the rest of us through clever use of the financial system.  The best way I can think of to postpone the demise of these fiat parasites (by which I mean those who don't need to put much effort into earning money because they have de facto permission to print it from the governments they serve/control/sleep with) is to make the price very volatile.  There is a moral way to do this, but as recent research has shown, bankers don't generally limit themselves to moral means.

The moral way to do this is to allocate a large sum of money and buy up all the bitcoin that is available for sale.  This would take a few generations and make several families not affiliated with the bankers quite wealthy.  This is one of the reasons the bankers won't stick with the moral means: it spreads financial power to those who earn it.

The alphabet agencies of the United States (CIA, FBI, NSA, etc.) have been engaged in immoral projects since they were founded, usually relying on the shortsighted and nearsighted and (actually quite normal) functionaries who, if they could see the whole picture, would not help for the average salaries they earn.  This includes analysts, engineers, coders, couriers, spies, law enforcement, etc.  If you don't believe me, listen to the 91 episodes of The Peace Revolution Podcast.  It provides ample evidence, rather than just claims such as I am making. Do your own research.  It's good practice.

I believe I have identified the immoral method through which the price of bitcoin will be made so volatile that most people will shy away from it.  However, some, such as myself, will simply profit from the efforts, and use the profits to help rebuild things.  The method, or something quite similar, has been called "The Doublecross" and involves the cooperation of law enforcement to avoid enforcing the law in the cases where the criminal act benefits those at the top, such as the murder of that stooge, Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.  There is a warning in here for all of you who are close enough to the powerful to derive some benefit from them.  Aside from any bad karma, you'll eventually be a liability, and your life will end for that reason.  Just walk away, my friends.  Walk away.

Essentially, powerful spy agencies, including the UK's GCHQ and the US's CIA, FBI, and NSA (and even the Kremlin and whatever components of Kim Jong Il's government and China's government and all the rest are responsible for collecting information on people) gather dirt on people.  If you want to hold some power, you have to be dirty so that the power you hold is really under the control of those who have the dirt on you.  If you think about it, this explains why both Victoria Roberts and Nancy G. Edmunds worked (and continue to work) officially and on the record to suborn perjury from Doreen Hendrickson.

This dirt-collection scheme can be used to leverage a large number of insiders in just about every company on the planet.  That's a lot of work, and not feasible, but if you restrict that group of companies to "Bitcoin exchanges" then it's feasible.  The spy agencies, we can assume, have dirt on people like Nejc Kodric and/or several of his employees, along with the same sort of people at other exchanges.  In short, they have enough blackmail material to co-opt bitcoin exchanges, and force someone to provide them with the means to commit a heist such what happened to MtGox a while back, and what happened to Bitfinex a couple hours ago.

Consider all the evidence and history surrounding the biggest bitcoin heists (take that link with a grain of salt - the author says "Billions of Bitcoin are still "missing" in todays economy" which anyone who understands bitcoin knows is impossible), and see if it seems like there might be some kind of powerful (politically powerful, like spy-agency powerful) forces preventing rectification of what is clearly theft.  Where is Karpeles today?  I don't know.

In a nutshell, the strategy I see playing out is that governmental agencies, on behalf of the people who want to control everyone, are deploying their massive resources in black operations to amass bitcoins in ways that will not make honorable people rich so that they can manipulate the price more easily.  Will it work for them?  I don't think it will.  I will profit from their attempts, but since I think their attempts are a net negative for my species, I will spread my theory in the hope that more people will profit from their efforts (thus, defeating them) as I do.

In fact, profiting from their efforts simply means buying when the price goes down and selling when it goes up.  Since dollars are the easiest thing to use to value stuff, choose a dollar amount, and choose a number of valuable assets in which to store your savings, and split your savings up between them.  When the value of one goes up (or down), sell it (or buy it) and buy (or sell) whatever has gone down with the proceeds (or gone up to cover the cost).

If you or someone you know works for one of these spy agencies, consider carefully whether or not your efforts are making things worse or better.  Short term profit is fun and enjoyable, but life gets miserable when karma catches up, and no one knows how fast she is.