They Don't Seem So Paranoid Now
StrawMan
Be Seeing You
Keeping a low profile, on and off the grid.
We are living in justifiably paranoid times. Following the
attacks on the World Trade Center, we've witnessed the hasty
passage of legislation that has given federal and local
government unprecedented power to spy on us citizens. Searches
without warrants, the FBI's Carnivore program (which gathers up
our private emails), surveillance cameras where there were no
surveillance cameras before-all to keep an eye on us in the name
of "security." Even Orwellian programs that were abandoned (so we
're told) before they got underway-like TIPS and Total
Information Awareness-were planned and publicized, which in
itself is pretty spooky.
Underground publishing houses like Loompanics Unlimited and
Paladin have, in a way, been preparing for these days for years.
They've released books that promise to teach readers the proper
ways to manufacture illicit drugs, become a hit-man, hack
computers, forge IDs, dispose of bodies, build bombs, avoid taxes
and disappear. Most of them have self-explanatory titles like
Dirty Tricks Cops Use, Personal Privacy Through a New Identity
and Vest Busters: How to Make Your Own Body-Armor-Piercing
Bullets.
When you hear that the FBI has been demanding that libraries turn
over lists of the books people have read, these are the sort of
titles they're looking for. Funny thing about that is, most of
the time these books turn out to be disappointments-not nearly as
complete and informative as they promise to be.
Nevertheless, in the interest of those of you who, like me, are
simply not interested in being surreptitiously snooped on by
anyone for whatever reason, I recently acquired a small pile of
books from various underground presses. All of them, in one way
or another, from one direction or another, deal with the issue of
ducking government radar-avoiding surveillance, staying off
databases and the like. Not an extensive and exhaustive list by
any means (there are dozens of such books available), but enough
to get a feel for what's out there. I knew the "personal freedom"
genre existed long before the attacks, but I never paid much
attention to it. I never really felt the need before. Given what'
s been happening over the past year and a half, however, I was
curious to see what had become of the genre-and how the books had
adapted themselves to a world in which many of the things they'd
only speculated about have become harsh realities.
The immediate problem was that only two of the books I found had
been released or updated since the time of the attacks, ensuring
much of the information in the other titles would be mighty-but
not completely-outdated.
Although one of the older titles, Tony Lesce's 1998 They're
Watching You! remains a solid overview of the world of high-tech
surveillance. From CCTVs to wiretaps, to smart cards to biometric
scanners and the internet, Lesce illustrates how these tools
work, and how they can be used to various unpleasant ends-from
people trying to sell you things you don't want to law
enforcement officials arresting and imprisoning you unjustly.
Lesce (author of The Shotgun in Combat and Bodyguarding: A
Complete Manual) outlines both the obvious and the subtle. (I
never knew, for instance, that those innocuous supermarket
"discount cards" were used primarily to create consumer profiles
for marketing firms.) And in that way he's very good. As far as
detailing ways to avoid some of these technologies, most of the
advice is simple common sense. Pay cash whenever possible. Use
pay phones. Cover your license plate with plastic wrap to thwart
photo radar cameras. It comes down to this: The only way to
completely avoid surveillance in this day and age is to become
homeless. But even that won't do it anymore.
Less helpful, but much funnier, is Jefferson Mack's Invisible
Resistance to Tyranny. The premise is very simple: It's possible
to live freely the way you'd like, right under the nose of a
tyrannical government. All you need to do is pretend to be a good
citizen-drive the speed limit, pay your taxes, give them no
reason whatsoever to pay any attention to you. Meanwhile, while
they're not paying attention, you can do whatever the hell you
want. Once you start doing that, Mack suggests, you'll meet
others who are doing the same, and you'll be able to form your
own little free communities.
Mack opens the book by insisting that these communities would be
non-violent. Nothing at all like those wacky militias we heard so
much about back in the mid-90s. He's just talking about people
with shared interests living together peacefully, helping each
other out, while paying no mind whatsoever to the government.
Yet, by the end of the book, the members of these free
communities have been given tasks ranging from intelligence
collection, to reconnaissance, to disinformation, to
assassination. In the end, what Mack's book amounts to is "how to
start your own militia." Being one of the two post-attacks titles
here, it's interesting to note that the armed communities
described in the latter part of the book are not organized to
battle the government, he insists, but rather for protection
against terrorists.
Given the way the book opens, it's a bit of a head-scratcher. But
then again, it's a Paladin book-and Paladin's always been a bit
more hardcore than most. Still, if you want to know how to set up
a militia, there are far better resources out there-resources
that don't pull any punches.
The Professional Paranoid by H. Michael Sweeney tells you how to
become just that. When the book opens with, "Even if you only
think you might be targeted by some person, group or agency, it
is probably true," you realize immediately what you're dealing
with. Sweeney teaches the reader how to be scared of strangers,
of noises, cars, lamp posts, loved ones, co-workers, computers,
locksmiths, mailmen, shopkeepers and inviso-rays. According to
Sweeney, most anything and everything is a potential (if not
actual) threat.
The Professional Paranoid is not a book about avoiding government
surveillance so much as it's about avoiding everything to the
point of committing a kind of living suicide-alienating everyone
around you, making yourself unemployable and getting yourself
thrown out of your own apartment. Near the end of the book, he
even suggests wearing a tinfoil lining in your hat to protect
yourself from various electronic weaponry.
When it comes to hard, technical data about the things you need
to be looking for in order to justify your paranoia, Sweeney's
book can't be beat. If Sweeney tells you to be on the lookout for
someone who seems to be following you down the sidewalk for an
unusually long time, you'll see someone following you down the
sidewalk.
Then again, the way things are going, this may well be the most
important book of the lot.
The most thorough-and most annoying-book on the pile is Claire
Wolfe's I Am Not a Number. Unlike the others, the target of her
paranoia is fairly focused-in her case, it's Social Security
numbers (which she calls Beast Numbers and Slave Numbers). But
Wolfe uses the all-pervasive Beast Number as a springboard to
cover issues dealt with by all the other authors (surveillance
tech, free communities, etc.).
The book has a lot going for it-fine detail, a wider scope than
most and good references. Unfortunately, these are undermined by
Wolfe's abrasive attitude. She comes off like an embittered Earth
Mother who never saw her revolution come about, and is still
convinced that she and only she is right and holds everyone else
in contempt for not doing their part. In her preface to the new
edition, Wolfe details her reluctance to bring the book back into
print because she felt that people were too stupid to understand
her. That sort of thing continues throughout the text, where
anyone who doesn't agree with her, do what she suggests or feel
any pressing desire to drop out is a "slave" or "herd beast."
What she wants people to do is remove themselves from the SSN
system altogether. Doing such a thing-she's very clear about
this-comes with a great deal of hardship. With no SSN, it's hard,
if not impossible, to get a driver's license, or insurance, or a
job, or a bank account, or to legally marry. You give in to the
number, she argues, and you become their slave. The alternative
is to move into the woods and become self-sufficient.
The bulk of her book is spent explaining how to go about creating
a utopian "free community" from the ground up. There are chapters
on arranging for medical care, communications, sanitation, etc.,
in a community beyond the reach of the government where no one
has a Slave Number. Thirty years ago we would've called it a
commune.
The most disturbing thing about Wolfe's book is that, though it's
been updated for the post-attacks world, it hasn't been updated
very much. After railing against the Clinton administration's
efforts to get SSNs onto driver's licenses nationwide (making
them nothing less than national ID cards), she is oddly silent
when it comes to the various invasions of personal privacy
instituted by the current administration. She mentions Operation
TIPS, but dismisses it as something that will never pass; other
programs she doesn't mention at all. It's almost as if she's
afraid to criticize the current administration because it's
Republican.
For paranoids, these authors sure do buy into the government's
line. The attacks were undertaken by evil terrorists who hate
America; in response, we really need to beef up "security" by
whatever means in order to keep ourselves safe. In the end,
Sweeney and Wolfe seem to have concluded that the government
really is the Great Protector it always claimed to be-something I
find awfully suspect.
In the end, none of these books will help you disappear. None of
them offer help in removing personal information from the dozens
of national databases in which we're all listed. In the end, the
only two alternatives seem to be living in a cave or faking your
own death. Fortunately, there are several books available that
can teach you how to do both of those things, too.
They're Watching You!: The Age of Surveillance
By Tony Lesce, Breakout Productions, 130 pages, $12.95
Invisible Resistance to Tyranny
By Jefferson Mack, Paladin Press, 152 pages, $15
I Am Not a Number (second edition)
By Claire Wolfe, Loompanics Unlimited, 208 pages, $17.95
The Professional Paranoid
By H. Michael Sweeney, Feral House, 210 pages, $12.95
--
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's
profitable to continue the illusion.