Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

coindesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 150 posts

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

#121

Post by bogomipz »

Fnoord wrote: post #119
bogomipz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 Snow…

Reporters Without Borders is a 35 year old non-profit institution that promotes and defends freedom of information and freedom of the press around. It's incredibly respected and has local watch-dog offices all over the world.

Every time you are confronted with facts and you shift the focus to something else. Now you are discussing Julian Assange? But since you brought him up, he is another one who has taken up refuge in a country where censorship is rampant and press freedom is abysmal:

https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-17891-attacks-freedo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Ecuador

>"Bottomline is, such a list is secondary to Snowden's personal freedom,"

How very selective for both Snowden and Assange that being a pawn of corrupt regimes that have no respect for press freedoms is acceptable as long as you have another bogeyman to point at.

So it's OK for them to condone the behavior of those governments provided that both of them are recipients of their favors? They are both principled where and when it's convenient for them. I didn't think principles were something that could be selectively applied. I'm sure they both appreciate that your doing their bidding though.

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

#122

Post by firethief »

asciimo wrote: post #87
firethief wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a healthcare activist has poorer options to make a difference at McDonalds...

They can make strong arguments to consumers that they should spend their money elsewhere.

Try it. Report back with "minutes until fired".

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

#123

Post by the_stc »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #97
geofft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 includ…

I don't mean it in bad faith. I am one of the people you and Zooko talk about preventing from using zCash. That's very offputting and since I cannot audit zCash it makes me nervous. People tell me zcash is very advanced and thus hard to understand and audit for other people too: newer crypto.

I am not implying any backdoor, just that it seems you are sympathetic to such works. I don't follow Zooko's explanation that he wasn't talking about zcash but about some other unmentioned layer. If it's a generic statement about all currencies, why bring it up and mention zcash in the same breath?

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

#124

Post by the_stc »

geofft wrote: post #115
the_stc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I am unable to judge zcash and must rely on other cues. So when the founders seem to be saying they're OK with backdoors, it makes me think hey, given the chance maybe there's something they could do.

Anyways once they get mandatory shielded transactions I'll look at it in more depth and see if I can get comfortable.

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

#125

Post by tambienben »

Fnoord wrote: post #120
tambienben wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>The authors of software such as TLS, Whonix, Tor, Tails, Debian, all have a certain amount of credibility...

All of which are open source == independently verifiable. TOR would not be recommended as highly as it is if it were a closed-source binary.

>If you claim you cannot trust anyone, how can you live with yourself?

Hilarious when people speak down to you like this. You're inflating my (very clear, i feel) statement to mean something I don't think i said.

>I'd like to end my post that, yes, people who are psychopaths would very well end up doing something you described.

For someone who claims to have had issues with mental stability, you seem very quick to use that label. /Anyone/ is capable of /anything/. The only variable is choice. There are many variables which can factor into people justifying immoral actions at any given time. Its easy to demonize others whom you disagree with, but you would do well to understand that the reality is not as simple as 'us vs. them'. Every single actor on the world stage has their own reasons and motivations for what they do. Not all of them align with your personal wellbeing.

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

#126

Post by tambienben »

spurcell93 wrote: post #109
tambienben wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I concede to your point. I should probably have used different language.

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

#127

Post by kafkaesq »

linkregister wrote: post #113
kafkaesq wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think he had more technical capability than a typical SharePoint administrator at the time of his leaks.

Well again there were several journalistic pieces at the time that summarized his work both for the CIA and as a contractor that (taken together) make it pretty clear that, while he's not like some domain expert, his crypto and security skills (before the leak) went significantly beyond that of a typical sysadmin. And again, they're pretty easy to find my keyword searching and the like.

I flubbed the detail about the VPN though -- apparently all he did for Poitras was set her up with a (significantly) enhanced mail drop.

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

#128

Post by honestlyreally »

AgentME wrote: post #110
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.

And here's Peter later talking about his doubts due to the AMT backdoor, with responses from Zooko.

https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/861726383730503680

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

#129

Post by neuro_imager »

the_stc wrote: post #124
geofft wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I am unable to judge zcash and must rely on other cues. So when the founders seem to be saying they're OK with backdoors, it makes me think hey, given the chance maybe there's something they could do. Anyways once they get mandatory shielded transactions I'll look at it in more depth and see if I can get comfortable.

A couple questions:

- Aren't zerocoin and zerocash two different currencies? Did you mean to say zerocash in your previous comment?

- If what Matt Green is saying is true, is there a way to create a backdoor in Monero or any other new crypto that comes along?

- One of the reservations that I have around z-cash is the "don't roll your own crypto" mantra even if you are an experienced, academic cryptographer? Is z-cash inherently more risky because its using newer crypto?

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

#130

Post by EGreg »

flatfilefan wrote: post #68
EGreg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony. There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h... Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like…

"If they blacklist your address, your "permissionless" currency starts looking a lot more like a frozen bank account." Interesting aspect. Could you please clariy _who_ could blacklist _what_ address? It's not exactly clear what you were referring to.

Why the mining pools of course. Who's gonna broadcast your transactions if not the miners who solve the hash?
Post reply on HN