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Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

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Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#211

Post by easytiger »

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…

how about, without encrypted comms, its like posting a letter by not putting it in an evelope and sticking it to the outside of a bus

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#212

Post by zizee »

andrewflnr wrote: post #100
javert wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The Constitution defines the proper form and responsibility of American government. If the Constitution falls, we no longer have legitimate government. That's historical fact. Other governments' law enforcement agencies follow the laws of their own countries (or don't). Are you saying they shouldn't do that?

Right. The point of a Constitution or whatever is to have some kind of law to follow. You don't need to worship it, it's just your axioms of government. That's your "rational way" of specifying priority #1.

oelewapperke (who is suffering from one of the worst cases of hellbanning I have seen here) wrote:

Weird that nobody realizes that the constitution does say that the government not only has the right to violate any (other) law to violate the constitution, but actually has the duty to do so. To protect the constitution (and it's application within it's jurisdiction), the president (ie. the government) has the right AND the duty to violate ANY American law except clause 1 and 2 of the constitution. To put it plainly : the ONLY thing the president cannot do to defend the constitution is to mess with elections. That's it. It also states that the president is the person making the assessment if an action is necessary (and thus, not the courts, though of course, the president can be removed from office for making a decision that either congress or the courts think was not reasonable. That does not change the fact that the president cannot be punished for implementing that action. The maximum penalty for any crime for the president is impeachment, unless this is specifically extended by congress). This is because article 2 of the constitution overrides every other law in the US, except article 1, including all following articles and amendments. If you think this sequence is by accident, you should talk to a lawyer about things like this. Sequence in laws, and the principle that earlier rules override later ones is extremely well established technique of law. What everybody seems to think these laws state, that you have extensive rights without any qualifications whatsoever, is just plainly not true. If you are a danger to the application of the US constitution within US borders, the president is not bound to any standard, nor does he have to respect any form of human rights in his attempts to stop you from doing so. If you think it is better in European states, think again. Specifically, read what the Dutch monarch is allowed to do (e.g. she can have someone killed - both her and the actual murderer go free, she can confiscate any amount of property - with no legal recourse for anyone, etc.). Similar things are true for other Euro countries.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#213

Post by white_devil »

ef4 wrote: post #27
contingencies wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assange speaks truth. You cannot deny the fundamentals of the state are violence. The US speaks already of a capacity for instant global weapon strikes within the hour. You claim it is wrong to question the system, implicitly suggesting there is no alternative. But anthropology shows clearly that premodern societies had more free time, greater material and economic equality. (Try 'Debt: The First 5000 Years'). You at…

> But anthropology shows clearly that premodern societies had more free time, greater material and economic equality. I already disagreed with the grandparent comment, but I need to criticize this too: those metrics are terrible, and we shouldn't be looking to the past for the good old days. Free time: only if you don't consider all the free time lost by all the people who died as children (extremely high premodern c…

> Free time: only if you don't consider all the free time lost by all the people who died as children (extremely high premodern child mortality).

That's only relevant if all those children died due to some specific form of government being in effect.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#214

Post by burkean »

graeme wrote: post #25
anigbrowl wrote: post #9

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…

This is a complete straw man. Assange wasn't calling for the abolition of government, nor did he say they're the only ones who do bad things. Further, Hobbes' state of nature has zero grounding in empirical fact. Which historical state of nature does it refer to?

> Which historical state of nature does it refer to?

Hobbes' state of nature is probably an ahistorical argument. That all men used to live under a state of nature is not necessary to Hobbes' argument. It is a thought experiment, showing the consequences of there not being a state, and allowing him to infer the rights of the people within the state. In terms of history, Hobbes would have had in mind cases contemporary to him when state authority collapsed and violent chaos took hold -- the English Civil War etc.

He is not arguing from history, and to dismiss his argument on that ground alone might risk disengaging from what Hobbes' was trying to get at.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#215

Post by elmindreda »

pemulis wrote: post #175
yason wrote: 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…

> I don't promote or demote filesharing per se: it's just the cutting edge where the future trends will show years before they land elsewhere and that's what it makes it so interesting. One interesting thing I've noticed that the people behind the best filesharing networks tend to have tremendous success with their later projects. Napster is the obvious one. After Napster went down, Shawn Fanning co-founded Rupture a…

The Pirate Bay people didn't create the Pirate Party. There isn't a lot of overlap between the (publicly known admins of) the Pirate Bay, the (no longer existing) Pirate Bureau that gave rise to it and the Pirate Party. This is true both in terms of people, and also frankly terms of politics, beyond the basic realisation that the status quo is untenable.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#216

Post by yardie »

Exabitionistic wrote: post #188
yardie wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the extreme amount of volume and limitations of storage space. Speak for yourself then. I've already got 10TB of storage at home in a case the size of a shoebox. It's got my entire life in it (at least every file I've created since university), but most of it is storing my movie and music collection. So, realistically your entire life can fit in a 1TB drive once you exclude videos and transcode audio. 2-4TB if you'…

They are sitting on at least an Exabyte. With multiple-Yottabytes of traffic.

You're right, I'm off by a few magnitudes. 29.7 exabytes if they use every square foot for servers JBOD. And that is with current disk tech.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#217

Post by wildranter »

Draiken wrote: post #204
wildranter wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they aren't, the difference lies on what they do with the data. While Google will use that data to show you harmless text advertisement, the FBI might use it to backup a phony case against you, that can ultimately put an end to your freedom. I'd say that's an incredible difference. Wouldn't you too?

Still, you cannot know everything they do with that data. They show us the advertises, but what else are they doing? What guarantees do we have that they do not sell or give out information? I'd stay both sides are bad. We may see them as completely different things, but you have to agree, in both sides, what we see is just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, both sides are bad.

But only one of these can lock you up in jail for whatever reason they want whether or not you're guilty. Besides, if you want to avoid having your data collected and possibly sold without you conscent just stop googleling your thoughts.

Now, the real question. How to avoid governments taking over our rights?

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#218

Post by sigkill »

coenhyde wrote: post #209
lucian1900 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will ISPs be forced to disallow all encrypted traffic? That would be disastrous. It's already possible to connect to a website over https (with a self-signed cert you've obtained through a second channel) and be pretty much certain no one is snooping. The target you're connecting to doesn't have to be obvious either.

That would be impossible. How do you define and detect encrypted traffic? Sure it's possible to block a known encryption protocol such as https. But we would get creative if that happened.

If you want to become the next evil overlord, it's quite simple really. Whitelist known traffic.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#219

Post by bwood »

zobzu wrote: post #127
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…

Here's a relevant paper called Why Johnny Can't Encrypt[1], which does an excellent job of defining understanding and usability problems with encryption. It's certainly dated, but I find that its main points are still very true today.

[1] http://www.gaudior.net/alma/johnny.pdf

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#220

Post by Ntrails »

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…

I wonder how many times goatse.cx appears in that database.
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