What you’re doing is illegal. Very illegal. And you’re a terrorist.

But you’re probably in denial.

You may have thought it many times; this is America. This is XYZ. Said to yourself, “We’ve been moving in some pretty awful directions, but I still have rights.” There’s the Constitution. The Bill of Rights. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, etc.

Well…You’re wrong. Even the American Supreme Court has recognized distinct categories of speech that exclude you from these rights. One of these categories is any speech that incites “imminent lawless action”.

Now think for a second. Have you ever called yourself a Marxist? How about discussed communist revolution on record? Haven’t you, to quote Marx & Engels from the Communist Manifesto, defined revolution as only “the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie”?

Sure you fucking have.

You use Facebook. You have a Google account. You can’t take the battery out of your cellphone and the microphone is always on. And you probably aren’t using a Faraday cage because you’re not that smart. You probably just figured, “Fuck it.” You might even be using your real name.

You may also be thinking, “This is ridiculous. I’m not gonna go the extra length to be super sneaky out of fear. Fear kills. I will not let the opportunities that social media present as a medium to spread the ideas of communism go unutilized.”

Well how does three years in solitary confinement sound? Forced rectal feeding? Maybe being waterboarded is your thing. Or maybe you think being denied the necessary meds while in the middle of a gender transition would work out great for your mental health.

Welcome to 2015. All these things are happening. Besides, how effective of a medium is social media anyways? Is it really worth it? Most people on these sites are engaged in slacktivism and nothing more.

You see, in addition to the American Constitution (that reformist clowns like Ed Snowden love to go on and on about), there’s this nifty little thing called the Espionage Act of 1917. And guess what? They’ve been using it to arrest, torture, imprison and execute communists and anarchists for almost a century. Yet for some fucking reason you can’t resist changing the “Political Views” field on your public Facebook profile to “Marxist”, “Communist”, “Anarchist” or my personal fave—“Militant Vegan”.

Siri, Cortana and “OK Google” are recording your voice with the ability to recognize it anywhere afterwards, including in the midst of a crowd from someone else’s cellphone mic. Everything you do on Facebook is being recorded; your native OS, your browsing and search history, the time/date stamps of your mouse clicks, your chat logs, your face, the back of your head, who your friends are, your contacts, etc. And Facebook, along with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Dropbox and at least 43 more companies are passing this information on to governments everywhere without so much as raising an eyebrow. In fact, even that would be illegal for them.

Where does all this data go? To one of three massive, permanent and completely searchable repositories.

And you probably still think it was cute when you posted that Bordiga quote to your wall earlier today.

Count me out. If you want to talk about overthrowing governments, do us all a favor and at least get behind some encryption and a decent VPN. It’s not that hard. Here are some links to get you started. Feel free to leave any questions below.

https://ssd.eff.org/

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/wiki/index

https://www.privacytools.io/

Click to access cryptobook-v1.1.pdf

http://www.billdietrich.me/ComputerSecurityPrivacy.html

https://tails.boum.org/

Jamal Rayyan

7/28/15