Egypt might be a good marker for popular uprisings that challenge large existing power structures. I noticed the pamphlets that got leaked by The Atlantic [1] contained street-tactics very similar to the typical G20 blackbloc stuff. The tactic of torching police stations/equipment has Greece written all over it [1.2]. Also, the use of Social Networks to mobilize people on the ground. We are beginning to see our communities endlessly-critiqued tactics being adopted and paying-off.
Then there was the straight up shutdown of the countries routers, by removing them from the global BGP network [2]. This was pretty much the worst-case scenario for Tor. Yet ironically, the government could not shutdown the NOOR route, which hosted the countries Stock Exchange and some Banks. Capitalism ended up being their weakness. Now Tor is routing through NOOR, and Tor traffic has skyrocketed [3].
As shit spirals out of control, Al Jazeer gets props for still recording on the ground, even after their offices got raided by police shooting live ammo [4]. Real journalism bro, taking it back to the streets,
literally.
Not sure how things will turn out, one things for certain it wont be easy. US politicians aint doing shit, since they aide the Egyptian Government; a form of bribery to stay out of Middle Eastern politics. Well to be fair, US politicians are making fools of themselves, by calling on a military dictator to respect civil rights, and talking about how violence will not solve anything (lol wat?). Once again, political gestures are meaningless, it's all about people power on the ground and tactics.
However, I think it's telling that most of the police equipment being used against protests was made in the USA [5]. Also, their internet was apparently being monitored/filtered thanks to software/hardware from Narus [6].
Tor VM Setup Guide - How to set up a virtual machine on Linux for securely browsing with Tor while allowing active content (flash, etc.). The section on installing Tor is out-dated, so follow the instructions from their official site. Note that there are also several LiveCD distributions (which are CD's that your computer boots off, completely bypassing your hard drive) that are built for exactly this purpose so they save you the configuration. See the Icognito LiveCD and the Amnesia LiveCD. For an updated list, check the Tor FAQ Section on LiveCDs.
Tor Hidden Service Setup Guide - A guide for securely setting up a Tor hidden service using a virtual machine where the server can run active content (such as PHP) in a sandbox (protecting against attacks which would break the owner's anonymity). If you're just hosting straight download content without PHP, wordpress, drupal or other active systems check out Tor's official documentation which is much easier. NOTE: The section on installing Tor is out-dated but can be easily remedied by following the official instructions from the Tor site!
Theodore Reppe, a well known net activist and crypto-anarchist was charged with posting false information on the internet and causing 38 euros in damages. As many of you may remember, he had his house raided earlier which was likely due to his name being on the wikileaks.de domain name. He also runs a Tor exit node, allowing users (and leakers) to access the internet anonymously. Somebody used his exit node to do something that was illegal in Germany however the courts found that he was not guilty of it as clearly he did not commit the act despite it being tracked to his IP address.
Have a tip for your editors? Send it to staff@h*ckbloc.org You can use our pgp key which can be found here.
Donate to hackbloc to help us keep it running!
Why You Should Donate

Tools, Actions, News, and more!!
hackthiszine@lists.hackbloc.org
Emails sent to the above address are publicly archived online. Want more privacy? Contact us at staff{at}hackbloc.org.
Article Deadline for Issue #14: N/A Release Date for Issue #14: N/A