People don't plan to fail. They fail to plan.
Yesterday, I wrote an essay warning how they are going to try and steal the election. Some people got spooked by that. Here's the good news: We know how they are going to do it. They are going to do it the same way they did it in 2004. The problem for them is we know WHO did it in 2004 and right now they are a bit preoccupied. But let's assume they have a deep bench. That makes our job description pretty clear. We have to overwhelm them. This is where you come in.
I want to propose a couple of ways for us to defend ourselves if/when they come to steal the election and turn out the lights. That's right. I just upped the ante. If I was planning the operation, I wouldn't just steal the election this time. I would shut down your network too. I would sever your communications links so you couldn't coordinate your response. And I'd walk away with everything in the chaos.
Let me show you how the lights will go out, and how we can keep it together in the dark... even if you are a complete computer novice...
First, let's talk about the lights going out. Sounds a bit hysterical doesn't it? I mean... the Internet go down? Impossible. It was designed to maintain communications in the event of a nuclear war, right?
That's true... to a degree. The net today is not just a military network. There are plenty of "expendable" parts. How do you shut down large parts of the net quickly? Take control of the "switchboard" called DNS. DNS is the "Domain Name Service" that makes it possible for you to get to an address on the Web (like dailykos.com) without knowing the exact location of the server (the IP number).
Why DNS is a pressure point worth controlling:
You can think of Internet traffic like phone calls. When you dial a number your phone doesn't connect directly to the other phone (unless you are using Nextel's walkie-talkie direct connect function). Regular phone calls get ROUTED through a series of SWITCHES. At every stop the connection request you are making hits a switch and asks "Do you know where this number is located?" The switch says "Nope, but I know who might be able to help." And it DELEGATES your connection request to the next switch down the line. This goes on until it hits a switch that says "Yeah, I know where that number is located." And that is when the phone on the other end of the line starts ringing.
DNS is similar but it doesn't just handle one type of communication. It handles ALL Internet traffic. Every email, IM, web page, video, RSS feed, etc. If you take control of the main DNS (the "root" servers) you could send traffic anywhere you wanted. In reality, you don't have to even do that to exercise political control. You could simply "poison" the list of domains so that when someone made a request for a site on that list they wind up going to www.deadend.com.
I'm sure that is pretty much what the Chinese do. That gives you even finer control. You may not want to mess with ibm.com or ford.com, they could sue you. But dailykos.com? moveon.org? barackobama.com? The lefties might not sue, but they would definitely be trouble makers if they were operating. Disrupting the universe of troublemakers would not be that hard to do. If there are 100,000 such political sites I would be amazed. Generating that list would probably take a month or two, and it has probably already been done.
In yesterday's essay, I explained
- Most attacks occur from within the system.
Today's essay about DNS is meant to illustrate an additional two important points.
- DNS helps route Internet traffic to the proper destination.
- Control DNS and you control all the traffic.
Since most attacks occur from within the system (see point 1), we need to assume the servers running DNS will be taken over by people nominally authorized to manage them. This assumption is not completely outlandish. We already know there has been a massive level of wiretapping that includes all email, phone, web, and Internet traffic over every major provider's network, with the notable exception of Qwest. What I am proposing would be a drop in the bucket to that ocean of data.
But what about the millions of blogs? You can't shut them all down! True. You don't have to. A handful of data entries will take everything on blogspot.com and send it to "sorry we are experiencing technical difficulties" for as long as you need to keep it offline. The odd ones that get through, who cares? They are going to be painted as bloggers in their mother's basements. Fact is, they will be limited largely to parroting what CNN or the MSM tells them because their other sources of information will be largely cut off. So my proposal doesn't require any Internet connections at all.
Defending ourselves:
So what do we do about this? Redundancy. Here is where I am taking a leap of faith and asking you to join me. You know that email the Obama campaign sent out promoting their text messaging so "You can be the first to know..." whatever they want to tell you? Sign up for it. NOW!
During the 2000 elections, Dean's supporters used to do "flash mobs" as a kind of street theater. Think of this as a more productive way to mobilize people. If the net goes dark, being on that text message network will provide us with a central connection for mobilization. I'm not promising it will work, but having watched the Obama campaign for the last few months I am willing to believe they have a contingency plan for this sort of crisis.
Here's the risk:
The Obama campaign gets your number and sends you a bunch of text messages you don't care about. Say they send you one a day for the next 3 months and you pay 10 cents a pop. That is $9.00 in unwanted messages. Would you be willing to pay $9.00 as insurance to be sure you didn't get completely locked out in the event of an electoral coup? If things do go poorly, and you didn't do this... imagine how you will feel on November 5th.
In conclusion,I am suggesting we take immediate pre-emptive action and do the following three things:
- Sign up today to be the first to know: http://my.barackobama.com/...
That will put you in their text message pool. Then
- Rec this up so others see it. The more people who do this, the safer we are.
When you are done here
- Tell a friend, or two, or three. Don't keep this a secret. The more people who do this, the more people we have keeping an eye on the Corrupt Bastards Club and its cronies.
Disclaimer: I am not employed by the Obama campaign. I have no contact with their policy people, their strategy people, their operations people, or anyone in their central office. I am not a contractor or sub-contractor for the campaign. I have worked as a volunteer in local GOTV and canvassing operations.
I do not have any relationships with any of the telcos. I do not work for any list companies or wireless vendors. There is absolutely no monetary motive for me in this. I am advocating this because it is an easy way for us to help the Obama campaign defend our interests.
My hope is the Obama campaign will use this mobilizing tool effectively when/if the time comes to pull the trigger. I'm not promising this will work. I'm just saying an ounce of protection is better than a flowery eulogy.