how to deal with skinheads

interesting illusions

So last night and the night before that I had a long, and long overdue, chat with someone very close to my heart. This lovely girl had embraced Islam a few months back, and I know just how much of a struggle it's been for her both before, and since, and I was glad to get back in touch with her and see if she that she was okay. In a strange way I think this is her jihad, and it's exemplary of the beginning of any spiritual journey... thought to be fair she's got this wonderful soul and a mind which lights up the world, the patience, understanding and love of a saint, so I'm guessing she's a bit better equipped for her Jihad than a lot of others, myself included.

The thing is that these conversations always lasted longer than I thought they would. The first one, a couple of nights back, lasted for 6 hours! Now.. what can two people talk about for that length of time? Honestly I've no idea. NO. REALLY. Everything and anything and nothing. We spent a lot of it giggling and being sarcy with each other, and I spent a lot of it being grateful for the mercies of the Almighty in bringing birds of paradise back into my cell from time to time.

Easy conversation with someone who gets me, and whom I care about. I think I like it just because it gives me hope that one day I'll settle with some lovely gal who'll won't end the night by switching off the screen, but just roll over and cuddle up with me. A man has to have dreams.

I've been toying with the idea of publishing an email address and encrypting a few of my posts. I know a fair few folk read this now, and I was taken aback somewhat with the number of comments that got sent to GJ about previous stuff in this blog, most of it positive. I know the reason why the comments aren't allowed, and suffice to say I think it's a good idea for now. But back to the point... I think encryption has a real role to play a modern and free society, and most especially in blogs where people are talking about sensitive issues where trust is a key component. If nothing else it's good practice. And let's be honest people speak much more easily when they are sure no one is secretly watching them.

So I went for a hunt across the net for some encryptions packages. [http://cryptography.org/getpgp.htm]


You can find Gnu Privacy Guard Program (GPG) at http://www.gnupg.org (It is very nice and walks you through most things. you'll need to read it and play around with the command line (i know this scares a lot of people but it's really no more difficult than typing a letter on word) and should set you up with keys in no time.)


Finding a decent version of PGP is a bit trickier. The easiest way to get a free version is to download the trial version from http://www.pgp.com/.

A better way (and program) is http://www.pgpi.org/products/pgpdisk/ which is much more useful in real terms than the corporate version of pgp from the site. Most of what you'll want to do is encrypt files and post them to your blog, or email them to folks who you know. It makes this easy.

I'll write a proper tutorial in a while. Hopefully that should encourage a few folks to get their toes wet and try it out.

encryption

so let's say you've got a project you want to be successful, and it's likely to run into people who are going to try to stop it.

of course you could broadcast your intentions and how you are going to do things and then deal with the fallout as the opposition turns up at critical points in your project's development to hinder you.

A much simpler way is not to tell them what's happening. This is what most people do, however you've got to tell the people involved in your project what's going on, where to meet, what to do, if they have any problems etc... and to avoid unnecessary friction you have to do it in a way which outsiders won't be able to intercept.

A secure form of communication is needed. Encryption is Your Friend.

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Let's not mince words. There are a few things essential for any kind of effective resistance movement.

• Lateral communication
• organisation
• speed
• surprise
• secrecy

Encrypting your communications achieves one directly and enables the rest. By all means work on stuff in normal form, but if you create or come across anything sensitive save it in strong encrypted form and only transport it to other people in that form.

As standard you should encrypt:

• emails
• attachments
• documents
• downloads
• EVERYTHING connected to what you've done in the past.
• ANYTHING connected to what you MAY do in the future.

Always use the strongest encryption possible. I would recommend PGP or GPGP with a public/private key pair. These run on open source systems which rely on pure mathematics for their strength, and consequently are highly trusted. The strongest key pair would take thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of years with a supercomputer to break. The advent of Grid technologies does make some key's more easily crackable through brute force testing, however 2056 and higher strength keys should still be adequate for most tasks in the forseeable future.

Remember privacy doesn't licence you to break the law, nor to act in an immoral fashion. It simply gives you more flexibility and freedom to carry out your plans without packet sniffers, malware, and spyware to see what you're doing.

There are encryption tutorials all over the net. Go find a good one and look over it. I'm not going to do your work for you.

Good luck!