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Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

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Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#121

Post by mylittlepony »

nl wrote: post #118
mylittlepony wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the downvoter show his face and elaborate? Thanks

I wasn't the downvoter, but I suspect they may have been pointing out you are missing the forest for the trees. "The people" don't need detailed explanations about why one form of technology is "more secure" than another. Instead they need motivation to care about security from their government.

Yes I understand that. But in my case, even being into computers, and wanting privacy, I dind't even know where to begin. A friend of mine told me he is in that exact position right now: he doesn't bother, because he does not have a full picture, and thinks he won't be safe should the government decide to target him. Here's another case: someone I know needed to protect some data and store it. I gave him fool-proof steps on how to do that, and explained how it worked. How did it end? He just stored everything unsafely in a pendrive and took it with him everywhere, he even sleeped with it. Granted, he was safe from a warrant to confiscate his PC, I concede that. But it was a pain and he probably had deleted the files from the PC insecurely, so it was in vane.

Security and "being able to sleep" is more about understanding, and less about installing things on your PC. If everyone suddenly started encrypting their emails, of course we would be safer. But nobody is going to bother doing that, if they don't really feel safe (because they don't understand how safe they are, or which risks they are taking).

TL;DR - To sum up, even if you get people to want privacy, there is quite more work to do after that. People have lives to live, and if the cost of privacy is becoming a security expert, in most cases they won't bother.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#122

Post by gnaritas »

baddox wrote: post #58
ef4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is a non sequitur: states are necessary, therefore states are not systems through which coercive force flows. If you want to argue that states are necessary, fine. But call a spade a spade. Can you imagine a state that doesn't wield violence? That's what a state is . The lack of clarity on this issue leads to a lot of bad conclusions. When we argue that the state should solve any particular problem, we…

> Can you imagine a state that doesn't wield violence? That's what a state is. That's part of what a state is, but it's more than that. A state is a violent organization that has managed to convince the vast majority of society that its violent actions are acceptable. In any conceivable society (state or no state), you will have violence. The difference between "criminals" (druglords, thieves, rapists, etc.) and "gov…

> A state is a violent organization that has managed to convince the vast majority of society that its violent actions are acceptable.

Got that a bit backwards there. A state is a violent organization formed by society meant to enforce the rules of said society. We prefer the state to criminals generally because we have some say in how the state works or find its rules preferrable to the criminals.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#123

Post by ahelwer »

spindritf wrote: post #4

> The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. I agree with Moxie Marlinspike on that, we were preparing for fascism but got social democracy[1]. Assange is still preparing for fascism. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk

This was a really great talk. Thanks so much for posting it! Lots of things I had not ever considered before, and the OTR model is really neat.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#124

Post by wissler »

sliverstorm wrote: post #116
wissler wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the principles are common knowledge. Of course they matter.

I think his deflection of your question suggests he was using them as rhetorical literary devices.

Insightful. ;)

Yes, I was surprised by his responses, I thought his initial remark was great, but people mean quite different things by those lofty abstractions.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#125

Post by georgeorwell »

neilk wrote: post #97
georgeorwell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks :) I don't think it's a conspiracy theory, I just think that the way he frames it is a bit overly dramatic. Personally I just try to stay relatively anonymous and I operate under the assumption that whatever I say or do is basically public information. I can't be bothered with encryption when I'm talking to my friends because those conversations usually consist of things like, "Where do you want to eat?"

I see, so you think if you just try to be as boring as possible, then you have nothing to fear from surveillance? Good luck with that. What if the world changes, and yesterday's orthodoxy is tomorrow's heresy? This used to happen in the old Soviet Union, all the time. What if, unknown to you, you are friends with a guy who the government doesn't like? This very thing happened to Maher Arar - actually it was two hops…

Why would I mention anything except boring stuff over an insecure channel? Why would I even assume that secure channels or trustworthy conversation partners truly exist? As for Arar, like it or not, it seems like his problem was that he was born Syrian.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#126

Post by harryh »

harryh wrote: post #82
beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

Distributing a OTP encrypted ciphertext ahead of time doesn't accomplish anything because the ciphertext can be translated into any plaintext you want by choosing the correct key.

A practical demonstration of this BTW (in scala):

  def otp(s: String, key: String): String = {
    def base64decode(s: String): String = {
      new String(new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(s))
    }
    def xor(a: Char, b: Char): Char = (a ^ b).toChar

    val s2 = base64decode(s)
    val k2 = base64decode(key)

    val sb = new StringBuilder()
    for (i
So releasing the ciphertext into the wild accomplishes nothing.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#127

Post by zobzu »

acabal wrote: post #18

I agree with the sentiment, but Assange's prose is a little dense. Maybe it's OK for his target audience, as I assume the layman won't be reading cryptome.org. What we really need is a champion to explain in relatable, plain English why encryption is essential even for mom and dad, and to explain it in a more mainstream venue. I think a big reason why people don't encrypt mail, etc., is because: 1) they don't know wh…

The main reason I think, is because its hard.

Either you use a 3rd party service to encrypt, its easy and also extremely dumb (since its not end to end encryption).

Either you use PGP or SMIME and guess what: it's too hard. Their design is fine. I especially like GnuPG (PGP), but the UI, even in CLI, is terrible, terrible!

Most people don't even understand that a GnuPG keychain generally contains 2 private keys, not one (one for signing, one for encryption!) or the concept of master signing key and subkeys.

These concepts are relatively simple, but their use is hard. Terribly hard.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#128

Post by bluedanieru »

wissler wrote: post #124
sliverstorm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his deflection of your question suggests he was using them as rhetorical literary devices.

Insightful. ;) Yes, I was surprised by his responses, I thought his initial remark was great, but people mean quite different things by those lofty abstractions.

How about the both of you rub those brain cells together and see if you can organize a cogent point. Otherwise, piss off.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#129

Post by georgeorwell »

jeremyjh wrote: post #115
georgeorwell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe his point is that taken to its logical conclusion, states are able to do all of the things that they do because there is inevitably the consequence of violence for non-compliance. All of your examples result in violence for disobedience: destroying infrastructure, breaking laws, ignoring subpeonas. A core idea is that property ownership requires the threat of violence to work; don't pay your rent but don't…

Regardless of whether a state exists or not, the only meaningful definition of "property" includes a threat of violence. It is not meaningful to say "this is mine" without the implied threat of violence against those who would take it - whether carried out by the individual themselves or outsourced to the local emperor. Without property there is not commerce, there is not agriculture, no civil growth and development…

As for your first paragraph, of course. I was just pointing out how things are with states, but you're right that for property it extends to individuals. As for your second, communism begs to differ, but it hasn't done so admirably in the world...

http://dbzer0.com/blog/private-property-vs-possession

It would be nice if a society could exist that wasn't reliant on violence and also not suck, but I'm not sure if it's really possible.

Oh and "this is mine" has meaning in the context of a relationship where one party will simply be upset if the object is taken and the other party cares enough about them not to take it for that reason, even though there is no threat of violence if they do. This is how many couples and families work.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#130

Post by consciousness »

artichokeheart wrote: post #94
mtgx wrote: post #13

I think this is very relevant here - interview with the NSA whistleblower, William Binney, on how NSA is storing every post people are making online, so they (and FBI) can use it later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM No wonder NSA and FBI want warrantless access to private companies by lobbying for new laws like CISPA, and trying to build backdoors in services like Facebook, Skype, Twitter etc. They want…

"But their #1 priority should always, always, be respecting the Constitution, and not trying to skirt around it. And I think they've forgotten all about that long ago." That's the irony of the whole American security apparatus. They are in place, nominally, in order to protect American citizens rights to live with the freedoms inherently granted to them by the Constitution.

^ This -- nailed it.
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