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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'

#101

Post by vt_mruhlin »

I heard about these guys on NPR's Radiolab podcast a couple months ago, and the whole thing gave me a creepy feeling.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/

They describe the whole ceremony the guys go through to generate the random secret key that seeds their algorithm and needs to be kept secret in order to prevent anybody from counterfeiting coins. It was an elaborate setup supposedly designed to prevent people from observing any details they might be able to use to reverse engineer the algorithm. But, despite all their insistance on bespoke cloak and dagger shit, there were a lot of times the process could have been broken:

- They're supposed to be driving to a randomly selected electronics store to buy the laptop that will generate the number; but the guy makes an "unscheduled" stop at a costume store so he can buy a wizard hat (and potentially hand off information with a third party who wants to know their destination, or to pick up some kind of surveillance device)

- When the time comes to type random numbers on the laptop keyboard, the guy covers his hands and the keyboard. Arguable pro there is that nobody can see which keys he touches, but the big obvious con is that he can slip that USB device he picked up at the costume shop into one of the USB ports.

- People are using their phones while this whole process is going on? Ok, seems counterproductive to all that paranoid security they were trying to have...

- Oh look, they noticed strange indicators that strongly suggested somebody's phone got hacked and was being used to spy on their skype conversation? Somebody that paranoid should have immediately shut the process down and restarted it at a later date. They didn't do that? Something sure is fishy with the guy running this thing.

tl;dr; I don't trust 'em

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

#102

Post by gnaritas »

vorg wrote: post #92
gnaritas wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not attacking any movement, I'm saying I think Snowden did a just thing and I respect it and have no reason to distrust his motives; the same is not true for Assange who's made it clear he wants to topple America. I watched Wiki leaks display bias in the election in a clear attempt to take down Clinton, so I don't trust his motives and have every reason to doubt him. Had he attacked both sides equally, it'd be a different case, but his motive was clear, do the most damaging thing he could to us, help Trump.

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

#103

Post by contingencies »

the_stc wrote: post #33
mrb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He knows a thing or two about, you know, privacy . And Zcash's main feature is, you know, privacy :) For the crowd, Zcash obfuscates the sending address, the receiving address, and even the amount transacted, using zero-knowledge proofs.

Only when you opt-in to using shielded transactions. Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do. Combine that with two of the founders saying they're OK with backdoors (Green) and making it too traceable for criminals (Zooko) plus a 20% cut of all the currency for years and it starts looking sort of bad. (Yes it's 10% overall, but instead of showing long-term trust in their project, they…

they're OK with backdoors

See matthewdgreen response elsewhere in this thread. This is FUD.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15370744

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

#104

Post by bogomipz »

Fnoord wrote: post #93
bogomipz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>"Your question is answered in depth in the documentary ..."

It wasn't an actual question it was rhetorical. I've seen the documentary, I don't buy it all. I find his sincerity questionable. Similarly his Twitter profile shows he is the President at @FreedomofPress, yet he takes refuge in a country that that is one of the most deplorable in terms of media freedom.

>"Semantics, both are entwined in case as GPG."

No it's not semantics and if you want distort it like that, both security and privacy are under assault by that same NSA.

>"Not a statement of much, if any, value."

But sighting a Hollywood movie as evidence of accuracy is? Sure, right that makes a lot of sense.

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

#105

Post by animex »

thisisit wrote: post #2

In case people don't open the link or miss the disclosure: Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Zcash Company, the for-profit entity supporting zcash's development.

Such a weak reason to write up an article about ZCash that it comes off as shill. Debating Snowden's skillset or motivations is a waste of time. I think he was just referring to the concepts behind ZCash, not the technical implementation. And even if it was the latter, a 140 character tweet isn't the place to state the why/how of his methodology when arriving at such a statement.

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

#106

Post by kafkaesq »

linkregister wrote: post #77
kafkaesq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An "average sysadmin" would not be (anywhere near) capable of setting up a VPN so that non-technical journalists can access a considerably sized document stash - but which not even the most powerful and well-funded spy agency on the planet can break into. For example.

According to Greenwald's original article, Snowden gave him a physical copy of the media in Hong Kong. When was the VPN introduced as a medium?

I was referring to his initial assistance to Poitras, actually (which apparently involved setting her up with enhanced email encryption, not setting up a VPN per se).

So people can get jollies downvoting me for misremembering something I last read about 4 years ago, if they want. The bigger point is that the depiction of Snowden as simply a "SharePoint administrator" is clearly off base, according to multiple journalistic accounts (which are very easily findable).

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

brentis wrote: post #100

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…

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by tX84 »

brentis wrote: post #100

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…

> Fixed or not doesn't matter, to him it's a risk for a) being tracable b) having bugs.

So Zcash should be a risk to him then:

a) Zooko's tweet about making it traceable.

b) Zcash's bugs:

.i) Right after launch, they discovered private transactions couldn't be mined - https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/zcash-bug-prevents-private-t...

.ii) Security vulnerabilities, bugs, attack vectors, etc - https://z.cash/tag/bugs.html

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

#109

Post by spurcell93 »

tambienben wrote: post #98
Fnoord wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I wonder if you're conflating skepticism with suspicion. I don't believe it's a meaningless distinction.

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

#110

Post by AgentME »

vt_mruhlin wrote: post #101

I heard about these guys on NPR's Radiolab podcast a couple months ago, and the whole thing gave me a creepy feeling. http://www.radiolab.org/story/ceremony/ They describe the whole ceremony the guys go through to generate the random secret key that seeds their algorithm and needs to be kept secret in order to prevent anybody from counterfeiting coins. It was an elaborate setup supposedly designed to prevent people f…

Here's Peter Todd's writeup of his part in the setup ceremony: https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... . For what it's worth, he was completely physically separate from anyone else in the ceremony, and no such shenanigans are described in his part of it. As long as any one of the 9 did their part correctly, then it's good. His writeup is not without criticism of the Zcash system though.
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