An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#61

Post by ckastner » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

oasisbob wrote: post #52

This gets close to something else I've been pondering lately - how to deal with immutable data structures in the realm of GDPR. Recitations in GDPR require systems to be designed with privacy in mind. Immutable structures like the Bitcoin blockchain or Merkle trees in other applications would seem to be fundamentally incompatible with some GDPR privacy requirements. Let's say Google receives a valid right to be forgo…

> Recitations in GDPR require systems to be designed with privacy in mind. Immutable structures like the Bitcoin blockchain or Merkle trees in other applications would seem to be fundamentally incompatible with some GDPR privacy requirements.

And against whom would I claim my rights, for example: my right to be forgotten (Article 17: The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay [...])?

In the case of a distributed blockchain, who is the controller as defined by the GDPR?

And even if one could identify a controller (say, in the case of a blockchain under centralized control), there are still exceptions to the rights of data subjects. Privacy is key to the GDPR, but not an absolute.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#62

Post by jwilk » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

chaz6 wrote: post #55

ddalex wrote: post #35

So the obvious bit here is that an adversarial actor can poison the blockchain with bits that make downloading, storing and processing the blockchain a highly illegal act. This may have a chilling effect on participating in the network, thus reducing the number of nodes, and undermining the trust on the blockchain and in the coin because the reduced requirement of computing power needed to mutate the blockchain. Acco…

I thought the same thing about PGP/GPG keyservers. They are supposed to be immutable so if someone uploaded a key containing a jpeg attachment depicting illegal content, the only course of action would be to wipe every server in the network.

Keys aren't immutable. You can remove UIDs you don't like. Even if they were immutable, at least in theory, a keyserver could censor whole keys.

But apparently this is a practical problem. Phil Pennock wrote on oss-security (http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2017/q4/375):

[...] we've had keyservers in Europe shut down because of privacy demands because an append-only mesh-fill datastore can't remove keys and people send out their email address and name paired into a key and then get upset because it's out there; we're one illicit-material-in-photo-uid incident away from global shutdown.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#63

Post by greenleafjacob » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

oasisbob wrote: post #52

This gets close to something else I've been pondering lately - how to deal with immutable data structures in the realm of GDPR. Recitations in GDPR require systems to be designed with privacy in mind. Immutable structures like the Bitcoin blockchain or Merkle trees in other applications would seem to be fundamentally incompatible with some GDPR privacy requirements. Let's say Google receives a valid right to be forgo…

Simply encrypt the data and upon “deleting it” instead delete the encryption key. This is similar to concerns about backups.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#64

Post by jerf » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:54 PM UTC

oasisbob wrote: post #52

This gets close to something else I've been pondering lately - how to deal with immutable data structures in the realm of GDPR. Recitations in GDPR require systems to be designed with privacy in mind. Immutable structures like the Bitcoin blockchain or Merkle trees in other applications would seem to be fundamentally incompatible with some GDPR privacy requirements. Let's say Google receives a valid right to be forgo…

I'm not sure it's that shocking a result that data impacted by GDPR may not be stored in an immutable format, given that the law requires you to mutate it under certain circumstances.

There's probably an interesting computer science problem here in how to create a data structure that retains as many advantages as possible from the immutable data structures, but still allows compliance with the GDPR.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#65

Post by zeth___ » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #51

zeth___ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm reading this charitably as you saying that laws that criminalise distribution regardless of intent or knowledge need to be changed to recognise that with the internet people can effectively commit crimes without knowledge or intent. This is particularly relevant where distribution of material (child porn, terrorist material) is criminalised. No I am making the very simple case that a number is a number and you c…

All writing is just splinters of carbon or drops of ink. How can an element or a wster-based solution be illegal?

Are you attacking freedom of writing now? I am confused.

This is one thing that most of the free world has gotten mostly right: you can say anything you want in writing without having to fear the government.

It needs some corner cases ironed out, obviously, but for the most part you can write whatever you want and not be arrested for it.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#66

Post by VMG » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:57 PM UTC

ddalex wrote: post #35

So the obvious bit here is that an adversarial actor can poison the blockchain with bits that make downloading, storing and processing the blockchain a highly illegal act. This may have a chilling effect on participating in the network, thus reducing the number of nodes, and undermining the trust on the blockchain and in the coin because the reduced requirement of computing power needed to mutate the blockchain. Acco…

The data embedded in the blockchain can only be extracted using custom tools.

Custom tools can be used to extract any data from almost any other kind of other data, using steganography. You can extract illegal data from innocuous looking tweets, using the right tools.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#67

Post by zeth___ » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #47

zeth___ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm reading this charitably as you saying that laws that criminalise distribution regardless of intent or knowledge need to be changed to recognise that with the internet people can effectively commit crimes without knowledge or intent. This is particularly relevant where distribution of material (child porn, terrorist material) is criminalised. No I am making the very simple case that a number is a number and you c…

Wouldn't that make cyberbullying and slander even in its most extreme forms legal? In those cases often someone is being harmed (with real, flesh space consequences), despite the material being nothing more then numbers.

Slander and cyberbullying are civil law, not criminal law.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#68

Post by amelius » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #54

amelius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that we only need one number to capture all possible finite content (i.e., the number is chosen such that all binary strings will appear somewhere in the binary representation of the number). A "normal number" [1] satisfies this property. And it is believed that Pi is a normal number. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number

I’ve actually written a book on this topic: π

Can I have 1 cent for every spelling mistake I find in your book? ;)

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#69

Post by tzahola » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

zeth___ wrote: post #25

philfrasty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a tweet [1] from Vitalik Buterin on this exact topic. He was arguing that „possession“ (as in data on the blockchain) does not impose risks on others. Tweet was removed quickly. [1] https://steemit.com/ethereum/@titusfrost/ethereum-s-vitalik-...

> This entire Ethereum to me wreaks of New World Order involvement, just look at the members of the Ethereum Alliance. > Also I would suggest trying EOS which is supposed to wipe out Ethereum and hopefully will. I now fully endorse EOS as an alternative to Ethereum. > I also wanted to address the slanderous attacks against me stating that I am an "Anti-Semite" which is completely bogus. I criticize Zionists who are a…

Some quality tinfoil-hat journalism.

Re: An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]

#70

Post by jerf » Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

zeth___ wrote: post #17

Tomte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no need to legalize child porn just because you think it's necessary for "computers".

You already have hundreds of gigabytes of child porn on your computer. What you lack is a program to decode them consistently (I hope). You can read digital information in any way you please. An image is fundamentally two numbers that give you the height and width and a bunch of number triplets that give you the color values for the pixels inside. You can always find a transformation from any number to any image give…

Using logic similar to chapter six of https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , though, you can still draw a meaningful distinction between a normal JPG decoder, and your proposed JPG decoder that interprets the Declaration of Independence as illegal child porn. Your decoder must inevitably have a much higher information content in it, and is a "reduction doing all the work" in that case. So while you've got a mathematical point (no sarcasm, I understand what you are getting at), even on purely mathematical grounds I can argue a meaningful distinction; legally it'll be even easier.

Interestingly, it's a distinction that happens to more-or-less match our own intuitions about the situation, which is something interesting to ruminate about a bit.