by: Vulkangruppe shut down the power / sabotage digital equipment
on: 14.04.2020 – 13:42
According to their own statements, the letter below was sent today to
RBB, Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, the news portal indymedia
and dpa. In the letter, a group explains the motivation behind their
sabotage of a data line to the Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, one
of the institutions involved in the development of the “Corona App”.
—–Beginning of document——
We reject the so-called Corona-App and have decided to take preemptive
action against it. Today, in order to counteract any further weakening
of basic rights and the expansion of surveillance measures, we set fire
to a shaft with communication cables that supply the “Heinrich Herz
Institute”, among others. The network cables of Colt, Telekom and other
providers were to be destroyed by our attack. The “Heinrich Hertz
Institute” (HHI) was the target of our attack. We identified the open
shaft in which new cables were being laid as a supply line to the “HHI”.
The short-term shutdown also affected other local companies, such as car
dealerships of the climate killers VW, Alfa Romeo, Jeep, Mercedes, Audi,
Porsche etc. We ensured that there was no danger to human life.
Why we politically sabotaged this app:
The regulations against the pandemic include curfews, contact bans and
other interventions, which are unprecedented in the speed of their
implementation and their fundamental nature in the history of the
Federal Republic. These interventions are often accompanied by the
rhetoric of war. China’s response to the virus serves as the model for
these rules. China: a patriarchal dictatorship that monitors and
controls every movement of the people and punishes violations of “rules”
set by the communist-capitalist elite. The cordoning off of megacities
can only be carried out in such an efficient totalitarian system, as a
measure of what is possible. China, with its 60-day total curfew (e.g.
in Wuhan) and the total control of people, has in the short term become
a model case of (alleged) containment of the pandemic for governments
across the world. At the beginning of January these measures were still
criticized as totalitarian and violating human rights. Now they are
being transferred in a modified form to other continents.
It was with this in mind that Jens Spahn repeatedly suggested mobile
phone tracking, or tracking each person’s data in order to locate and
isolate the infected and those who may have become infected. He kept the
criticism of constitutional law experts and data protectionists at least
two meters away. He copied idea for the constant tracking of each
individual’s movement profile from China and South Korea. The president
of the Austrian parliament pleaded for the obligatory introduction of a
comparable app. In this country, too, corresponding demands were made.
Even the discussions are calculated taboo breaks with acceptance of the
growing surveillance potential of the new technologies as the desired
result, or controlled in an authoritarian manner if it is not possible
on a “voluntary” basis.
In China, the “Ant Financial” app is used by the police during public
checks. The personal QR code decides whether a person can go to the
supermarket or go out for a walk. If the QR code is red or yellow,
instructions are given by the authorities. This payment app determines
the “social corona virus load” in a non-transparent way. South Korea has
not yet imposed a curfew. All people “may” continue to work until the
smartphone identifies them as “infected” or “suspected” and state
intervention is mandated. Currently, the government is forcing people in
South Korea to “voluntarily” disclose their mobile phone data and
access. The tracking of data has been tested in South Korea with the
“Total Information Awareness” program, among others, which the NSA
secretly continued to operate as “Prism”, as whistleblower Ed Snowden
revealed. In the USA, Google and Apple want to distribute a Corona app
automatically as an operating system component with an upcoming update.
A data tracking system will soon be established in Germany in the form
of an installed app. Efforts to disseminate propaganda for this app are
already running at full speed. Politicians want to launch a massive
advertising campaign, because in their opinion the desired results are
only possible with widespread acceptance. On the surface, the use of the
app sounds reasonable. When the app is introduced, it is (initially)
voluntary in order to avoid a head-on constitutional breach. This is
because contacts, i.e. infected and non-infected persons and their
surroundings, may surveilled. But as in the case of passing on of
(allegedly) anonymised movement profiles by mobile phone providers,
where the persons concerned already had no opportunity to give their
consent or abstain, it can be assumed that the monitoring options
contained in the app will quickly become a mandatory standard once they
have been “voluntarily” established for a critical mass: Whoever wants
to go to the library must have the app – visiting the library is
voluntary… Since the source code of the software is not open, it is
not possible to check whether the propaganda for using the app
corresponds to reality, who else can use the data, or if data-tracking
capabilities have been integrated into the app. A simple update of the
software is possible at any time, and this update may remove user
protections or expand surveillance capabilities. The “Robert Koch
Institute” is currently working on this app in cooperation with the
“Heinrich Herz Institute” and the Federal Office for Information
Security and the German Armed Forces, among others.
All will be regulated:
The rate of daily change is almost impossible to cope with. It is not a
coincidence that the fight against the pandemic is repeatedly
accompanied by deliberately chosen war rhetoric. For a war is always
also a domestic social attack to reorient the “national community” or –
and this is new in the case of Corona – the international community
towards the interests of the ruling class. This is not a conspiracy. It
is the ongoing dynamic of the development of the ruling class, which for
thousands of years could not be broken by a comprehensive revolution of
liberation from all forms of domination. The pattern is not new: crises
are always used as catalysts for repressive regulation of the
population, unless a revolutionary force sets a different course. In
response to the pandemic, a domestic security apparatus is set in motion
which depends on the participation of the whole population. For many
people, the corporate algorithms behind the apps already regulate their
daily routines and are their constant companions. So in times of Corona,
it’s time to limit oneself, to distance oneself socially, to monitor
oneself (and the others) when in contact – and then at some point make
it easy to do so with the app. Good and responsible feeling included,
you have contributed something to the security of all.
New buzzwords appear:
The “war against the virus” is accompanied by changes in language and
thought. Suddenly there are “system relevant” people, “risk groups” who
are supposed to isolate themselves, “social distancing” as salvation to
protect the “risk groups” and the “system relevant” people, the “heroes
of everyday life”. The latter, the nursing staff, the supermarket
employees, truck drivers etc. are turned into soldiers fighting on the
“front” instead of paying them decently – while the managers continue to
get their bonuses and collect billions for their companies. The
military-medical concept of “triage” is advancing into the civil sphere:
the systematic sorting of people: Who is to be saved, and for who is no
longer “worth saving”, who has to be left behind on the “battlefield of
the virus”. It is not the virus as such that leads to the crisis, but a
privatised and profit-oriented health care system leads to the dreaded
state of emergency in hospitals and nursing homes. In Spain, in Italy
and possibly here too.
The fact that everyone faces death with no protection is terrifying,
especially when it appears as an invisible virus that is completely
unpredictable since it is a new pandemic. These fears must not be
belittled. Nor must we exaggerate these fears, allow them to be blown
out of proportion, because we will all die one day. However, this
pandemic is instrumentalising people’s primal fears of death. These
fears are being “played with”. It is not the privatisation policy in the
health systems that is being questioned, but whether YOU stay far away
enough from other people. Whether YOU keep the rules. Adherence to these
rules is monitored (and sometimes also punished). And they promote one
of the most German virtues everywhere: the tendency to denounce. In
intellectual circles, this is compounded by the accusation that one is
not in solidarity if one does not follow the regulations. If YOU do not
follow these rules, YOU are to blame when people die. With the reference
to the “risk groups” other contradictions are stifled. Regardless of
individual attitudes, the “risk groups” become a source of moral
blackmail in order to enforce the state and political rules among
friends without question. Medical hygiene is accompanied by a social
hygiene that hardly allows dirty, resistant thinking and debating.
Therefore it is probable:
Our action will be described as lacking solidarity by those who, at
other times, turn themselves into accomplices of new state techniques of
domination and social technological attack – although they might not
want to do so. Our statement will either be withheld and subjected to an
invisible news blackout, or labelled deranged.
We stand in solidarity:
We are not taking this risky action in order to gain popular support;
the debate is too polarized to our disadvantage in a
counterrevolutionary sense. We are aware of the approval of a section of
society. We stand on the side of those who are not prepared to watch the
destruction of historically and painfully won human rights. We stand on
the side of the refugees at the borders and in the camps. We are on the
side of those who recognise and counteract the instrumentalisation of
the pandemic and the fear that accompanies it. We are on the side of
those who are worried about the growing surveillance.
How digital manipulation is taking place:
We see the digitalisation of everyday life, which is inevitably
spreading under the contact ban and curfew and which suddenly seems to
know no analogue alternatives, as a digital transformation of society.
At first glance, it seems to be the only way for isolated people to stay
in contact with each other. But the space in which this takes place is
not a neutral space. It is controlled and monitored. The social
subjects, the people, become virtual figures, which are broken down by
algorithms into data sets and judged according to secret criteria,
advertising is controlled, misconduct is marked and reported,
subservience is rewarded. “Social distancing” or “distance is decency”
are terms that sound like they were borrowed from Huxley’s “Brave New
World” or Orwell’s “1984”.
They’re terms of war when seen stripped bare, which assign to us
immersion in the virtual world as a comprehensive social action. A “we”
is feigned and the internet is offered to the “we” as a new place of
social encounter and the world of work – thereby further cementing the
social isolation already underway as a result of the technological
attack. This is where the current and future containment of entire
societies through the internet is taking shape.
Online trade, digital school lessons, online seminars at universities,
video conferences, home office, electronic patient files, Amazon,
Zalando, Netflix, Lieferando, card payments, dating portals, video
streams and games, etc. are prerequisites for this. This is where
society is re-forming itself. This is where habituation takes place,
this is where society changes at a pace whose price – total
manipulability and thus controllability – will only become clear to us
in all its details in the coming years. A new, namely hygienic
(national) “we” is currently being constructed in order to enforce all
kinds of measures against which there were reservations and resistance
in the past, such as digitalisation in schools, electronic health
insurance cards and patient files or online payments and the
disappearance of cash.
Deutsche Telekom provides cloud-based “Web Conferencing Services” for
pupils, students and teachers free of charge, completely unselfishly.
Similar offers are also available for companies and their home office
needs. And for the little ones’ leisure time, there is the new streaming
service from Disney. And an additional 10 gigabytes for mobile surfing
on top of that. Free for the time being. Meanwhile, Telekom proclaims
“We connect Germany”, the battle cry of Vodafone is “Germany remains
networked”. The range of services does not differ significantly. But
Germany and the digital network – that creates cohesion. The
coronavirus, a stroke of luck for the network operators: new demand for
faster, further-reaching, and always more. With the latest offers, they
are able to capture prospective customers and generate even more data,
which companies and secret services alike can access. For example,
Vodafone works closely with the British secret service, which in turn is
the closest partner of the American NSA. As people spend more time
online with social contacts, work and entertainment, this is a
celebration for secret services and corporations. There can be no
greater access to social life. How much more in terms of profit, how
much more in terms of monitoring and controlling buying behaviour,
desired lifestyles, early detection of revolts can be derived from this
data!
Since Edward Snowden’s revelations on NSA’s worldwide surveillance
program that monitored states, groups, and individuals, there is
widespread knowledge about the use of a vast array of digital
surveillance and behavioural control technologies, in China, in the USA,
in Russia and also in Germany. The Corona app is a gateway. The scenario
that at least 60 percent of the population in Germany should be
“voluntarily” conditioned to an app, to a single standard, for one
purpose, to a “voluntary” screening of all private and public contacts –
this is what our sabotage challenges.
What is yet to be said:
We are witnessing a worldwide civil war exercise for future crises and
wars. The consequences of this “exercise” will change the world. The
severity of the pandemic, its spread and the mass of dying people are
the matrix on which we are being introduced into a new age of crises as
a permanent state. If there is any doubt, neither fundamental rights of
the country concerned (which have never applied to everyone) nor human
rights count. While contact bans and curfews are imposed, the compulsion
to do paid work is maintained and it is left to the discretion of the
bosses whether they allow work to continue as before, whether they allow
themselves to be subsidised for reduced working hours or whether they
switch production to more profitable methods. In other places, at least
strikes have broken out. In this country, pandemic control ends at the
factory gates. On the assembly line and elsewhere, where no home office
is possible, people should work as long as it serves to maximise profits
and then quickly return to their family honeycombs, the trade unions
will not listen to anything else. While goods are expected to continue
to circulate freely and Eastern European migrant workers are expected to
arrive on time so that the economy does not collapse, refugees are kept
in camps – camps that guarantee the rapid spread of the virus and fail
to provide adequate health care.
One crisis not only replaces the next, but also makes other issues
disappear. The climate crisis disappears from sight behind Corona. The
wars, their consequences, and the reasons for them all disappear. It is
unclear where the 10,000 people who were trapped on the border between
Turkey and Greece ended up. The EU, which is increasingly turning these
borders into death traps, remains unpunished. The preparation of pogroms
in Hungary against Roma and Sinti by Orban and the right wing also goes
on unnoticed. There is no reaction to the use of the virus to establish
authoritarian governments against the constitution, as in Poland. Or the
retention of power by the corrupt Israeli president. Or to the
consolidation Putin’s power.
By now, it should be clear when the government and the business
community will rely on experts and science and when not. Why can a
pandemic trigger an emergency program and worldwide drastic measures,
but the collapse of the climate that is already taking place cannot?
This question is transferable to all global problems.
In the case of the destruction of the climate, which affects humanity as
a whole at least as much as the pandemic, the admonitions and proposals
of the experts have been and will be largely ignored. This is because a
vaccine is not enough against the consequences of climate disruption.
Corona is quite different: not only do health experts find sympathetic
ears, but their medical approach to combating the pandemic opens up new
possibilities for politicians. A murderous economy, a warlike world
system and an orientation towards progress and growth that aims to
destroy the earth and the basis of all life are being saved with
trillions of dollars and euros, while protests against this are being
banned by the health authorities. It is the colonial principle according
to which different values are attached to different human lives. Every
year 100,000 people die of malaria. Climate change is already killing:
hundreds of millions of people go hungry or are starving to death.
Billions of people have no access to clean drinking water.
In this new age, the forces that want fundamental change must reorient
and reposition themselves internationally. A comprehensive upheaval and
overcoming of patriarchal, colonial and capitalist conditions is not a
luxury, but of survival.
We will never get used to what we are supposed to get used to.
Vulkangruppe shut down the power / sabotage digital equipment
P.S.: For a revolutionary May Day against colonialism, patriarchy and
nationalism
—–End of document——
