Cory Doctorow’s zine, Make, is an encyclopedia of ways to turn yourself into a mad scientist. Most of them are kind of pointless; the digital magic 8 ball won’t really tell you the future, and the junk robot won’t crush, kill or destroy. But if you play around enough, you may build enough confidence to take on something more ambitious. Like a hydroponic window garden.

If he had is way, we would all have little screw drivers in our hands. Our desks would be littered with parts from first generation IPads and smart phones with broken screens. You see, Cory has always learned by undoing. He dismantled Star Wars in 1977, re-writing it over and over in order to learn the narrative process. (George Lucas should have done the same.)

But big corporations don’t want that. They don’t want you to tinker with their things, even after it’s become your property. Unlocking is the process of enabling your phone to operate on any carrier. It’s now pretty much illegal to unlock your new phone, with fines of up to$2,500 per phone, or $500,000 and five years in prison if the deed is done to gain commercial advantage.

And although you can jailbreak your phone, you’d better not do it to your tablet.  Corporations such as Apple and Samsung aren’t just relying on the feds to enforce their wishes. Their first line of defense is in the software.

Hidden amongst your apps, with their happy icons are programs that are keeping their steely red eyes on you. The thing is, when their programmers hide programs, hackers take note, often using the same methods to insert their malware.

You would think that secrecy keeps us safe. Doctorow argues the opposite. “Keeping security secret only allows us to be secure from people who are stupider than you are.”

The late Barnaby Jack, for example, infected wireless pacemakers with a virus from up to 30 feet away. That virus spread from pacemaker to pacemaker, giving him theoretical control over their heartbeats.  Barnaby did it to prove a point about security. Not everyone has such pure motives.

The Ratters used malware to infect and then steal incriminating pictures from victims. They then used those pictures to blackmail their victims, whom they called slaves, into performing sex acts on camera.

By making their software more accessible, they would eliminate the need to insert back doors to keep tabs on you. And people like the Ratters would have a much harder time taking advantage of the built in blind spots.

What’s more important? Apple’s right to keep you from playing unlicensed games on their Ipad, or your right to keep your selfies to yourself?

If you want to find out more about his crusade, click The Open Rights Group.

If you want to find out which definitely non-Illuminati member had his hands in your phone’s business, click here.