Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative' • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by AgentME » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

uncletaco wrote: post #40

mrb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony » No. You only need to trust 1 of 9 persons. The cryptographic algorithm works so that if 1 honest and 8 malicious persons participate, then the output can be 100% trusted. I do think it would have been interesting to allow hundreds of random participants to take part in the ceremony. But I'm not sure what the technical hurdles would have been (eg. wh…

I believe there's a hardfork planned to add more features (like light client support) that will need another ceremony and the Zcash team is planning on there being hundreds of participants.

Oooh being one of the participants would be fun. Perfect excuse to go full paranoid for a while.

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

#112

Post by AgentME » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 5:19 AM UTC

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…

>Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do.

It's nothing beyond what most laptops can do in a few seconds; the main issue is that it's enough that they decided not to make it the default mode, and many services like exchanges don't make anonymous transactions when sending to users. (A user can always then immediately move that zcash to an anonymous address afterwards, but that does mean it's somewhat public that $service made a transaction of X amount at a certain time.) Hopefully they'll change the default sometime since they've announced that they've found ways to massively improve the efficiency.

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

#113

Post by linkregister » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 5:26 AM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #106

linkregister wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 journal…

You're being down voted? Jollies? What?

I don't think he had more technical capability than a typical SharePoint administrator at the time of his leaks. Setting up a VPN is pretty much sysadmin work. Digital Ocean had excellent guides on setting up OpenVPN and IPSec tunnels on CentOS in 2012.

SharePoint administration is credible tech work, it's just unrelated to programming and crypto.

He has had time to learn about any subject he wants to since. He may very well be a privacy or crypto expert now. If he wants to become an authority on any of that knowledge, he'll need to write about it with justification. Otherwise, why would anyone take him at face value?

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

#114

Post by emerged » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 8:08 AM UTC

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…

Agreed, red flags bombarded that entire interview and it's incredible that anyone could hear it and still buy into the system.

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

#115

Post by geofft » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 12:40 PM UTC

the_stc wrote: post #70

ewillbefull wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zooko explained afterward: https://twitter.com/zooko/status/864341289374023680

That's not an explanation. It's just an assertion they'd not do bad stuff, ignoring what he previously tweeted. Neither is his stuff about it being compatible with law enforcement. A real explanation would follow through the thought and say exactly how they can make zCash "too traceable for criminals". Especially when Green has his own quote saying they're OK building backdoors for police. Or maybe that is their enti…

I want to rely on a cryptosystem which means that at a protocol level, the designers can't build in backdoors for police even if they want to. Then I don't have to worry about their public statements. Maybe they're firmly ideologically opposed today and get a court order tomorrow. (This is exactly what happened with well-intentioned scam artist Ladar Levison: he built a system that didn't have the cryptographic properties he promised, and the government called his bluff. He didn't particularly desire to help the government, but he had no choice.)

The question is, do we believe that there's room in the Zcash protocol for a cryptographic back door?

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

#116

Post by geofft » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 12:42 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #104

Fnoord wrote: post #93

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? 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…

> 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.

That's because we live in a world where there is no country that's good at media freedom. We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding its own, various somewhat less powerful countries that are effectively allied with one or the other, and various significantly less powerful countries that don't have the ability to anger either.

What country do you think he should have taken refuge in?

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

#117

Post by Fnoord » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 1:07 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #104

Fnoord wrote: post #93

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? 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…

> 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.

His destination wasn't Russia. He went from Hong Kong to Ecuador and got stuck in transit at Sheremetyevo International Airport because the US government revoked his password while he was flying from Hong Kong. Efforts to get him to Germany (with pardon) failed.

As for media freedom in our Western so-called free world, look at what happened with news agency The Guardian, how they had to discard material which was in the interest of the general population of the UK and the world.

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

#118

Post by bogomipz » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 1:22 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #116

bogomipz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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…

> 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. That's because we live in a world where there is no country that's good at media freedom. We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding i…

>"That's because we live in a world where there is no country that's good at media freedom"

No, there's no shortage of countries that have good media freedom:

https://rsf.org/en/ranking#

>"We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding its own,"

Please name one crime that the US media hid from the American people? Everything and everyone in the US is fair game.

>"What country do you think he should have taken refuge in?"

That's not the point, the point is he emigrates to Putin's Russia and then becomes President at @FreedomofPress. And for a refresher on the state of media freedom in Russia:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/23...

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

#119

Post by Fnoord » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #118

geofft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's because we live in a world where there is no country that's good at media freedom. We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding i…

>"That's because we live in a world where there is no country that's good at media freedom" No, there's no shortage of countries that have good media freedom: https://rsf.org/en/ranking# >"We have the US, which is interested in exposing Russia's crimes and hiding its own; Russia, which is interested in exposing the US's crimes and hiding its own," Please name one crime that the US media hid from the American people?…

> No, there's no shortage of countries that have good media freedom: https://rsf.org/en/ranking#

Cute list, Sweden at #2, I suppose Assange should go to Sweden as well?

What you say is completely and utterly irrelevant in the context where the United States of America would use extradition agreements to get Snowden back on US soil, for example by basing themselves on this ridiculous law [1]. Notwithstanding that Snowden did a service to the countries in your list.

Germany did not pardon Snowden, so he didn't go there.

Bottomline is, such a list is secondary to Snowden's personal freedom, his primary interest (don't confuse that with your lack of care about his personal freedom). His personal freedom is [somewhat] protected in Russia, but not in Sweden, Germany, or The Netherlands because the claw of the US government reaches that far. TL;DR he'd have been an utter idiot if he went to the EU.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917

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

#120

Post by Fnoord » Sat, Sep 30, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

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…

> My only point is that having a substantial amount of faith in anyone, when the stakes are high, is folly.

Because he has credibility due to his track record. That's the basis of how networking works. The authors of software such as TLS, Whonix, Tor, Tails, Debian, all have a certain amount of credibility within their peers as well as the general public.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Yes, credibility can be abused; as a matter of fact, he did abuse his credibility. Snowden broke his credibility to the NSA (and US government), but for a greater good of both the people of the USA as well as the international community. The price he paid? He lost his well paid job, he lost seeing his family and friends, he lost the luxury life in the USA, his house and any and all of his assets, and a substantial part of the USA hates him (tho a more vast, significant part in the world, is thankful). Ie. his credibility with the rest of the world has substantially increased.

Now, you may think he may abuse his credibility, and it'd be a great plot for a movie, but that doesn't make it realistic. And why? Isn't the same true for any programmer on Zcash, Bitcoin, Etherium, and anything else? If you claim you cannot trust anyone, how can you live with yourself? Are you sure that's air you're breathing? Are you sure the color white is white? You'll end up with a full blown paranoid psychosis if you go with that line of reasoning (speaking from personal experience as well here). My point is that, at the very basic level, we need to trust and take some basics for granted (and, all of us do).

So what we need from you, is some kind of facts (not theory) as to why we cannot trust Snowden. The fact, as far as I can tell, contradict what you wrote: Snowden hasn't acted in the past based on financial gains. For example, he didn't sell NSA information to media or foreign agencies. Instead, his actions were solely based on moral grounds plus personal survival (hence he ended up in Russia).

I'd like to end my post that, yes, people who are psychopaths would very well end up doing something you described. I have no indication Snowden is a psychopath; tho I'm not sure about those he worked for at the CIA and NSA.