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Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

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Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#91

Post by Fnoord »

tambienben wrote: post #90
Fnoord wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its different because Snowden has credibility. He didn't receive any money for the movie Snowden (it was donated to The Guardian instead) [1]. He didn't sell any of the NSA data. He doesn't have a track record of profiting, apart from working (like we all do) and receiving some donations. So the claim that Snowden is a proponent of Zcash because he has invested in it has no merit. There is zero proof for such stateme…

>So the claim that Snowden is a proponent of Zcash because he has invested in it has no merit. Maybe you're using hyperbole. The /suspicion/ at least, has plenty of merit. I agree that doing something like that would go against his track record, but believing a subjective statement on face value doesn't keep that track record intact (except in your own mind, maybe). I trust Snowden's opinion as much as anyone here, b…

> The /suspicion/ at least, has plenty of merit.

Merit? I've seen no merit whatsoever. A vague conspiracy theory, that's what I've seen.

> I trust Snowden's opinion as much as anyone here, but you can't ignore basic precautions simply because someone is popular for "the right reasons".

What you propose doesn't fall under basic precautions; it is a conspiracy theory. And one consisting of very little theory, I'm afraid.

For the record your two quotes:

"I'm suspicious of this."

"For those of you who are down voting, perhaps you could explain why this case might be different from any other value hype. What happened to trust no one--verify?"

You're trying to shift the blame. The burden of proof lies at you.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#92

Post by vorg »

gnaritas wrote: post #80
Aqueous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of November, 2016, Snowden's opinions have altogether stopped being relevant, and I no longer have any confidence that he acts in good faith. The guy almost certainly lives in an FSB safe-house in Moscow, the very same FSB that just helped to launch a brazen attack on our electoral process. This is not a coincidence. Snowden and like-minded people (Assange, Greenwald, Manning) were very deliberately used as Russia…

The left and the libertarians have always been divided, they've never been a coalition, why would they start now? I mean I agree Russia fucked with the election, but I wouldn't group Snowden with Assange, Greenwalk, and Manning. Assange in particular is out to bring down the U.S. empire, his motives are always in question even if the information he chooses to release is real. Snowden is the only one in that list that…

> I wouldn't group Snowden with Assange, Greenwalk, and Manning

A line in the same vein as such others we've heard before:

"Schwartz doesn't count because he gave up."

"For Assange it's mostly about himself, and a little bit about anonymity."

"Kim Dotcom doesn't rank with the likes of ... because he's a profiteering off of it."

These lines attack the Free Information movement by peeling off those at its edges one by one.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#93

Post by Fnoord »

bogomipz wrote: post #83
Fnoord wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah sure, people believe what they want to believe. Or we could just accept that until 2013 he was just another wheel in the giant machinery that is the NSA and that his morals changed - for whatever reason. His motives and how he ultimately ended up leaking information is well documented in the 2014 documentary Citizenfour [1] and the 2016 movie Snowden [2]. > But he was with the bad guys. Are there shades of gre…

His motives? He worked happily for the CIA from 2007 - 2009. Then he worked for Booz Allen Hamilton/NSA from 2009 to 2013. That's seven years of employment in the security-industrial complex. Was he playing the long game then? >"Its impossible to care about security as NSA employee?" I don't think the question is security but privacy and no, it's hard to imagine sincerely caring about other's privacy and working for…

> His motives? He worked happily for the CIA from 2007 - 2009. Then he worked for Booz Allen Hamilton/NSA from 2009 to 2013. That's seven years of employment in the security-industrial complex. Was he playing the long game then?

Your question is answered in depth in the documentary, in the movie, and in various interviews (written, as well as videos). Imagine someone who's patriotic at heart, who picks up signs where he's starting to doubt the things he's doing are patriotic (e.g. on the longer term, or in their specific targets). That's Snowden in a nutshell.

You're also seemingly unaware Snowden attempted to disclose the information before.

Furthermore, elsewhere in this thread HN user sig links to an article where he admits he did join "Booz Allen to gather evidence of surveillance".

> I don't think the question is security but privacy

Semantics, both are entwined in case as GPG. The latter depends on the former, and GPG is very much related to security just as well.

> Documentaries like autobiographies are often a vehicle for revisionist history.

And often they're not. They're used to tell one side of the story. The other one's the US government's take on the matter.

> In regards to [2], Hollyood is not really considered a good source of historical accuracy.

Not a statement of much, if any, value.

It wasn't the sole source I stated. If you'd have a look on Wikipedia article, you could learn how the movie was made (research-wise there's quite some details). If you'd have seen both docu and move you'd know how close the movie is to the docu (although also dramatised as mentioned in the movie itself, btw).

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#94

Post by krick »

Jordanpomeroy wrote: post #7

Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for his sacrifice, and I think he deserves to be pardoned.

For the same reason people care what Jay-Z thinks about laptops or whatever. Because he is a celebrity.

Hell, I remember some unremarkable actor (Kutcher, I guess?) being hired at Intel for some quazi-technical job a couple of years ago. Because marketing.

And you are wondering why Snowden (some hackerish dude that worked at some super-secret government agency and revealed how USA spies on everyone — or something like that) has something to say about everything privacy/security-related.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#95

Post by [deleted] »

the_stc wrote: post #41
neuro_imager wrote: post #29

Just FYI for anyone not aware - Snowden dismissed Monero on the basis of a bug that was resolved several months ago.

Yet ignores the founders of zCash saying they can make a backdoor for police and make it too traceable for criminals. >Green says that he and his fellow researchers are not interested in facilitating criminal activity with Zerocoin. "Zerocoin would give you this incredible privacy guarantee, then we could add on some features which let the police, for instance, to be able to track money laundering. A back door." http…

[deleted]

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#96

Post by kobeya »

knocte wrote: post #89
kobeya wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... that's a system with entirely different properties.

And? It provides privacy.

With a very different set of tradeoffs. MW does not provide anonymity. It provides, at best, pseudo-anonymity with coinjoin mixing by default, with N=2 in the implementations being considered. Careful repeated application with the right counter-parties can compound that into larger anonymity sets. That's a step forward from bitcoin, for sure. And if you're very careful, it could achieve whatever privacy requirement you might have.

The Zcash-like approach on the other hand is to provide a transaction mode where your anonymity set is everyone who has ever transacted with the system before. That's N=everybody; the source of funds is entirely obscured.

The two achieve totally different goals, with a different set of tradeoffs. Apples to oranges.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#97

Post by matthewdgreen »

geofft wrote: post #45
the_stc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet ignores the founders of zCash saying they can make a backdoor for police and make it too traceable for criminals. >Green says that he and his fellow researchers are not interested in facilitating criminal activity with Zerocoin. "Zerocoin would give you this incredible privacy guarantee, then we could add on some features which let the police, for instance, to be able to track money laundering. A back door." http…

That's a very weird statement, and I wish there were some more context behind it in the article - is this a cryptographic or protocol-level back door, or is this just the idea that you can start with an anonymous system and add tracing (but you can't start with a visible system and add anonymity)? It could be either, and I'm not sure how to read it.

Matt Green here. This statement has been trotted out a lot by people who I don’t honestly feel are offering it up with any kind of good faith.

As you suggested, all I meant is that once you have a fully anonymous currency it’s always possible to deliberately weaken that privacy if you want to. I think that sort of decision is up to the currency adopters. But to be clear, that kind of feature is absolutely not included in ZCash. Anyone who implies so is selling FUD. Since the ZCash code and design is fully open source this is easily verifiable, and plenty of people have looked.

For the record: as a researcher I deal with a lot of people who’ve told me that privacy technology is fundamentally dangerous. One standard response I give them is that this is crazy: a fully private currency is the right starting point. If you want to make a fork of ZCash that has less privacy, you can do that and I won’t stop you. But that isn’t ZCash.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#98

Post by tambienben »

Fnoord wrote: post #91
tambienben wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So the claim that Snowden is a proponent of Zcash because he has invested in it has no merit. Maybe you're using hyperbole. The /suspicion/ at least, has plenty of merit. I agree that doing something like that would go against his track record, but believing a subjective statement on face value doesn't keep that track record intact (except in your own mind, maybe). I trust Snowden's opinion as much as anyone here, b…

> The /suspicion/ at least, has plenty of merit. Merit? I've seen no merit whatsoever. A vague conspiracy theory, that's what I've seen. > I trust Snowden's opinion as much as anyone here, but you can't ignore basic precautions simply because someone is popular for "the right reasons". What you propose doesn't fall under basic precautions; it is a conspiracy theory. And one consisting of very little theory, I'm afrai…

So you would trust anything he says on face value? Regardless of what he might stand to gain? My only point is that having a substantial amount of faith in anyone, when the stakes are high, is folly. That's the entire point of blockchain technology. I'm not openly accusing him of anything. Im only stating that, as for myself, I regard the statement (given its content) with a reasonable amount of suspicion. Again, you may disagree.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#99

Post by kobeya »

gojomo wrote: post #71
kobeya wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. Not really, no. There is no known scheme that has similar properties but non-trusted setup. There's not a proof that it's impossible either, so something might get invented. But at the moment, no. That said I share the criticism. Even with trusted setup it could have been done much better.

If I understand correctly a recent presentation by Eli Ben-Sasson, one of ZCash's scientists, there is now at least one ZK system with this 'transparent' property (needing no trusted setup), but it is not yet practical for a blockchain currency. See Ben-Sasson on "STARK": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9K_o-RRSY

Maybe. The STARK paper hasn't been published yet as far as I know. All we have is claims.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#100

Post by brentis »

Love the assertion of critical thinking taking place. Nets out to be petty banter.

I think at any given time Snowden doesn't have a lot of liquid assets to do a Jamie Dimon and swing the markets on a trade. Hence I think his intentions are sound coupled with his known scruples.

Monero was found traceable recently. Period. Fixed or not doesn't matter, to him it's a risk for a) being tracable b) having bugs.

Lastly, it's a tweet from one person getting wrapped around the axel overthinking it. Next.

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