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Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

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161–170 of 281 posts

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#161
very platonic, but totally oblivious to "rubber hose cryptanalysis" ...unless you have a group of fanatically loyal people at the core of your "freedom protectors" group and the "engineers" that implement your cryptography systems part of this group, force and bribery will always win.

...and if you have a group of people truly loyal to freedom, then you don't need much crypto anyway ...just spoken words, physical transfer written/printed papers or usb sticks (this is how bin laden supposedly communicated his speaches if I remember well, right?) or other media and a brotherly handshake...

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#163
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#164
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…

The FBI's actions aren't in any way different then Google. Who also crawl the Internet and download every post people make.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#165

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…

Violence is a valid perspective through which to understand all that a state is. This is true. The existence of the state is to provide mechanisms to regulate violence so that it can be directed in a moderately controlled fashion; this has been true from village chieftains to imperial legions to the FBI and KGB. This can be a useful perspective, but it's rarely actually used to any intellectual benefit: people genera…

I think it's important simply to be aware of how things work. I certainly wasn't advocating libertarianism or even any other political position.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#166
post #158
post #144

In maybe five to ten years, the internet will effectively split in two. There will be major, commercial service providers such as Facebook-type social media hubs, major news sites but there will also be an invisible internet that is everything internet used to be, and in addition to that encrypted, anonymous, and untraceable. How it shows most prominently at the moment is file sharing. Setting the endless copyright d…

Just as a thought experiment, what do you think of an alternative reality in which even more of reality is transparent - including the operations of commercial, political, and other entities? Preferably collated and maintained by the community rather than centralized entities, crucially; somewhat akin to a shared wikipedia. The thing that worries me about this push towards encryption and anonymity is that it does aff…

I don't think the transparent reality would work. For thousands of years people are known to gather in the back of the woods to hatch plans that must be kept secret before the execution. That's just how people want to deal with a part of the things in their lives.

The secret might be a terrorist plan, a plan to open a new business, a plan to rob a neighbouring village or a plan to arrange a surprise birthday party. You never know, but people like their privacy. Even before the internet and telephone people could talk to other people to arrange things to come, while in the outside it just looked like the folks are walking around the town.

A transparent government and officials would be nice but I think that would never happen either. There are always matters that must be processed with confidentiality in the first stages, or the system just wouldn't work. Consider the old-fashioned hard-boiled journalism: people will talk if they can remain anonymous and confidential, and by talking they can prevent something worse from happening.

Limiting the secrecy of government/public sector affairs to a certain, absolute period of time might work, though. Things should be public as soon as they're finished.

I think that equal anonymity and confidentiality is better than the current world where most people are not anonymous and the powers to be can snoop on the rest and yet retain their own confidentiality in their actions.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#167
Even the strongest encryption is only as strong as the will of the person who knows the key. And what if the state decides to enforce controls over access to encryption algorithms and software? What if it's a crime to use unbreakable encryption?

The only defence against tyranny is the effort of a sufficient number of people, with the will and means to resist, choose to actively support freedom and dismantle tyranny. Specifically, people in power: politicians, judges, lawyers, and police. If the people who run the state, and exert force in its name, prefer tyranny, then tyranny is what we'll get. And that's exactly what happens when those who oppose tyranny abandon the state those who support it.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#168
post #23

First, recall that states are systems through which coercive force flows. Factions within a state may compete for support, leading to democratic surface phenomena, but the underpinnings of states are the systematic application, and avoidance, of violence. Land ownership, property, rents, dividends, taxation, court fines, censorship, copyrights and trademarks are all enforced by the threatened application of state vio…

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…

How do you measure the is-ness of the state? By it's budgetary expenditures? Many existent states (like Canada) have relatively small military budgets. For them, wielding or even threatening to wield violence is not their primary reason for being. Their primary reason for being is to ensure the health and welfare of their citizens, and they do so not by threat of violence, but by collection and distribution of taxes and passing of laws.

The vast majority of people in most democratic societies do not require the threat of arrest and imprisonment to follow the majority of laws. Assuredly there are minor disagreements about which the validity of certain laws, and many people cheat a little here and there. But when the majority of citizens believe that the majority of the law, and the state which imposes it, is unjust, you have an authoritarian government, and a revolution is inevitable.

It might also be worth noting that even if, based on budgetary spending, the US government is primarily an institution of the force and its display, most of that is happening outside of US soil. Most of it, in fact, is deployed in protecting sea lanes for the benefit of shipping and the people who rely on it: namely, everyone on Earth. I'm not American, and I don't like everything about America, but I'm damn grateful for the fact that the American government is funding the security of the machinery which keeps food and goods flowing around the world, since a lot of people where I live (Canada) would have difficulty surviving the Winter (and maybe even in Summer) without it.

To what extent global commerce and trade are just or unjust is another question, but I suggest it can be addressed on a case-by-case basis, and that the vast majority is far more beneficial than detrimental to everyone involved.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#169

I feel that we have to understand that using technology to fight legal battle never is the right answer. As soon as the government sees a particular technology as a hinder, threat or even an inconvenience, they can legislate against it. This holds true for encryption, VPNs and all other technological "saviours" that internet evangelists keep ranting about. The truth is that the only reasonable thing to do is to becom…

I generally agree with you that there is no technological solution to these issues, not on a broad scale at least. Educating everyone about using encryption isn't going to fly because as soon as it becomes effective, they will legislate against it.

But I wonder what shape any political activism could have. Maybe this cryptography movement should be seen as just that, a way to force a political debate and make any political activism relevant.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#170
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…

You know, people keep repeating this assumption that the NSA stores every post that people make online. Maybe someone should do a quick back of the envelope calculation to see how feasible that actually is?

My guess is that it's nowhere near possible given the amount of network traffic coming into/out of the US and current hard drive storage technology. IMHO the extreme amount of volume and limitations of storage space should create a necessity to be at least somewhat targeted in scope.

Not sure why people don't use common sense a bit more often...

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