This is the way, I think. I'm not much of an anarchist but I'm more that than anything else, and when I see this crazy cryptography stuff and anonymity networks and cryptocurrencies it gives me hope that governments are losing this fucking war.
Example: Wikileaks. Just a few of those cables changed the political landscape of the Middle East - check out Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, possibly Yemen and Bahrain and a few other places. I don't think that was the real intent of the wikileaks people, that was just a good side-effect. The main ploy was to force the USA to stop writing down so much stuff because eventually it'll be leaked again and cause all kinds of shit. That means phonecalls to convey sensitive information and if you consider the sheer size of the gov't bureaucracy it's gotta have an effect.
Anyways, the point is that this whole thing is possible because really strong cryptography is available to anyone nowadays.
Example: Tor network. That was invented by the US navy, released to the open source community to build the pool of users and protect the military from attacks against their online anonymity. Now they're in a position if they expose the protection Tor offers as bullshit (and it's uncertain that they can even if they tried), everyone will abandon their network and they'll be targets for whatever other governments want to see what they're doing online. So unless you're a greater threat to the military than losing all their major anonymous communication channel you're pretty safe.
Example: bitcoin. Fully decentralized, can't stop it, can't forge or counterfeit it, free to use, if it takes off it'll threaten every currency in the world. Granted it's not physical (yet) but how much of the economy is run online nowadays? Banking and things? Tons. When people start selling their national currencies and switching to cryptocurrencies that'll be a scary moment for governments. Counterfeiters can make absolutely perfect bills but they need to put an imperfection in them (small but noticeable if you know what to look for) as a watermark so they can't be paid with their own products. When they start taking cryptocurrencies instead of cash in return you may as well blow up the US Mint, they'll be making perfect US$100 bills and nobody will know.
All in all, sometimes I think the traditional anarchist tactics aren't as effective as these kinds of things are becoming. You still need people out in the real world doing stuff, don't get me wrong, but now we all have access to all these things, shit that can never be taken away from us, we're in a much stronger position as adversaries of the government and huge multinationals than we've ever been. Just a thought.
Example: Wikileaks. Just a few of those cables changed the political landscape of the Middle East - check out Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, possibly Yemen and Bahrain and a few other places. I don't think that was the real intent of the wikileaks people, that was just a good side-effect. The main ploy was to force the USA to stop writing down so much stuff because eventually it'll be leaked again and cause all kinds of shit. That means phonecalls to convey sensitive information and if you consider the sheer size of the gov't bureaucracy it's gotta have an effect.
Anyways, the point is that this whole thing is possible because really strong cryptography is available to anyone nowadays.
Example: Tor network. That was invented by the US navy, released to the open source community to build the pool of users and protect the military from attacks against their online anonymity. Now they're in a position if they expose the protection Tor offers as bullshit (and it's uncertain that they can even if they tried), everyone will abandon their network and they'll be targets for whatever other governments want to see what they're doing online. So unless you're a greater threat to the military than losing all their major anonymous communication channel you're pretty safe.
Example: bitcoin. Fully decentralized, can't stop it, can't forge or counterfeit it, free to use, if it takes off it'll threaten every currency in the world. Granted it's not physical (yet) but how much of the economy is run online nowadays? Banking and things? Tons. When people start selling their national currencies and switching to cryptocurrencies that'll be a scary moment for governments. Counterfeiters can make absolutely perfect bills but they need to put an imperfection in them (small but noticeable if you know what to look for) as a watermark so they can't be paid with their own products. When they start taking cryptocurrencies instead of cash in return you may as well blow up the US Mint, they'll be making perfect US$100 bills and nobody will know.
All in all, sometimes I think the traditional anarchist tactics aren't as effective as these kinds of things are becoming. You still need people out in the real world doing stuff, don't get me wrong, but now we all have access to all these things, shit that can never be taken away from us, we're in a much stronger position as adversaries of the government and huge multinationals than we've ever been. Just a thought.
