# Security

*"As passwords first appeared at the MIT AI Lab I decided to follow my belief that there should be no passwords... I don't believe it's desirable to have security on a computer."* -- Richard Stallman (from the book *Free As In Freedom*)

Computer security (also cybersecurity) is a bullshit field of study of designing computer systems so as to make them hard to "attack" (which usually means accessing "sensitive" information, manipulating it or destabilizing the system itself). At the dawn of computer era security wasn't such a big deal as society wasn't yet so fucked up and didn't depend on computers so much, the damage one could cause by exploiting computers was limited, however once consumer technology became forced by capitalism, internetworked and put into EVERYTHING -- companies, governments, streets, homes, clothes, even human bodies and things that can work better without such technology (see e.g. Internet of stinks) -- privacy became another bullshit issue of society as cracking now theoretically allows not only killing individuals but wiping whole countries off the map; however despite computer networks really being vulnerable, capitalists additionally smelled a new "business opportunity" and started adding fuel to the fire, skyrocketing fear and paranoia. Recently security has really become a lot about ensuring digital "privacy", it's really causing an incredible deals of hysteria. Everyone is obsessed with security nowadays, sadly even most of the smart guys have fallen victims to it -- cartels and corporations have erected their "security" businesses that are now destroying everything, all the antiviruses, cloudflares, captchas, https certificate markets, VPNs, VMs and sandboxes, enormously bloated encrypted "secure networks", password managers and all kinds of other staggering idiocy -- and of course, most of it is just security theater.

**Security is in its essence a huge, completely unnecessary but highly burdening bullshit**. It shouldn't exist, the need for more security comes from the fact we live in a shitty dystopia. Consider that there are so many people who could cure cancer or solve world hunger but instead spend their whole life sweating about how to encrypt your dick size two million times and send it through twelve proxies so that no one gets to know your actual dick size, preventing your "PERSONAL DAATAAAZ" from being STOLEN by other people who are actively supported and empowered to do so by people this very "security expert with a furry stickers on his laptop" voted for in elections :'D Nothing gets achieved, lives of geniuses are wasted on their lifelong fights just so that they are busy not doing much damage they've been taught by the competitive culture to instinctively want to do. In a good society there would be no need for security and people could spend their time by solving real problems. We, LRS, advocate NOT for increasing security (which leads to things like police states, censorship, bloat etc.), but for decreasing the need for it, i.e. steering society towards a better direction. Remember, **secrets are always bad**, need for secrecy is an indicator something is wrong on a more fundamental level.

The security hysteria exists largely to enable bloat monopolies, to ensure that non-commercial communities of volunteers cannot afford to fork "open source" projects because part of maintenance of such project is nowadays inevitably overwatching security vulnerabilities that are being constantly discovered and fixing them as quickly as possible (to not give a long enough window of opportunity of abusing the vulnerability), i.e. something that can hardly be done by volunteers who cannot do this full time job. In other words the need for quick security fixes is what prevents forking corporate software even if it's "open source", making such software de facto proprietary, but keeping people in a false illusion of "freedom" and "openness". That is why the corporations who "care about security" make bloated software which is in direct contradiction of that, it just clearly shows they don't care about security, they care about the business around it.

**If you want true security, the most basic thing to do is to disconnect from the Internet.** Just never use it. The next step is to leave the society and go live in a jungle, because due to spy devices everywhere they'll know about you even if you're not on the Internet. Additionally if you are really serious, you HAVE TO stop using a widely used human languages such as English or Chinese, you simply have to **learn an obscure language** of some jungle tribe that no one else knows and use that exclusively for your encrypted messages (like they did with the Navajo language during WWII). All in all for maximum security it's best if you never do anything at all, just lie in bed and be safe.

Security has overhead and takes away valuable resources and freedoms, it's something we pay for in many ways (not just technological and economic but also cultural). Security maximalism and the mindset of "security by default" is akin to wearing a full body armor, a bulletproof vest and parachute everywhere you go, "just in case". And sometimes security goes against other goals, for example safety: a secure door will shut close in case of failure to prevent breach of criminals in, while a safe door will do the opposite: in case of failure it opens up to allow people out. Sometimes we have to choose, it's not always that we can sit on two chairs with one butt (unless you're Oprah maybe). Being secure means being paranoid, alert and scared at all times, it means diverted attention and restrain from sharing, it means walls, locks and clearances and all the things one would never expect to exist in a good society.

## See Also

- privacy
- bullshit
- stuxnet
- botnet
- obscurity