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

Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

cryptome.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 281 posts

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#231

Post by gnaritas »

baddox wrote: post #133
gnaritas wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We as individuals don't have a say in how the state works in any meaningful way. There is absolutely no difference, in practice or theory, between a "criminal" busting down my door or a "DEA agent" busting down my door. The fact that >50% of society supposedly approves of the "DEA agent" is no consolation and certainly no justification to the victim.

You can vote, and that is proportionally meaningful. Want more say, convince more people to agree with you.

You have zero say about anything criminals do.

There is a vast difference.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#232

Post by rmc »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #229
rmc wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about the Constitution. Rather, they should respect basic human rights and the principles of the Enlightenment. All this focus Americans put on their Constitution… It's part of the American mythos/story/narrative, that the USA constitution/bill of rights/founding fathers were some sort of genius people who were the first to come up with this brilliant and perfect text.

That's not it at all. "Basic human rights and the principles of the Enlightenment" have no position in American law while The Constitution is the foundation of all American law and of the actions of American law enforcement people.

Yes, legally the US constitution is king. However the US constitution was not the source of the idea that "all men are created equal" or that "no-one shall be imprisoned unless they get a fair trial", these ideas predate the US consitution.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#233

Post by sisyphism »

BoredAstronaut wrote: post #168
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…

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…

The definition of a state as a "geographic monopoly on the legitimate use of violence" is not particularly controversial.

It is the definition of a state as started by Max Weber and sociologists in the tradition of political realism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Max Weber's definition is used by wide variety of political factions, and is not a construct of anarchists\libertarians. During the Iraq War when discussing the use of mercenaries, the current President Barack Obama was quoted as stating:

"the core of our military relations to our nation, and how accountability is structured, you are privatizing something which sets a nation state apart, which is a monopoly on violence." [1]

Any action that is legitimate for the state institution to enforce, but would not be legitimate or legal for a non-state institution to enforce, derives its legitimacy from this monopoly on violence. This definition is simply stating that unlike other social insitutions, the state is the only institution which has the power to commit legal incarceration, execution, and confiscation.

The fact that non-state organization cannot impose taxes upon individuals and threaten fines and incarceration for non-payment indicates that taxation is a forcible (violent) means of appropriating revenue. If it were not, the revenue would be referred to as a donation, purchase, charity, or trade.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewQl-qAtNwQ

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#234

Post by aGHz »

gasull wrote: post #228
amazingman wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can use bitcoins to accomplish the same and you don't even need banks. The longer this fiction persists, the less chance a fundamentally decentralized crypto currency will take hold. Trusted 3rd parties will always be necessary, and that's not a de facto bad thing.

Why is this a "fiction" and why do you need banks? Why do you dismiss Bitcoin? Please explain.

He's not dismissing Bitcoin, but the idea that through Bitcoin you can "remain a pair of anonymous public/private keys". This is explained here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity (and yes, I know that the technology can theoretically support this, it just doesn't in its current incarnation).

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#235

Post by mullingitover »

>"Strong cryptography can resist an unlimited application of violence. No amount of coercive force will ever solve a math problem."

No, but most average citizens' crypto is still ridiculously vulnerable to the three Bs: Burglary, Blackmail, and Blunt force trauma.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#236

Post by eyko »

rmc wrote: post #185
pemulis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

they created a political party that's won elections in multiple countries "won elections" is a bit of a stretch. In countries with multi-seat constituancies and proportional representation, there are often minority/niche candidates.

I would say reaching the parliament, and hence being represented, is kind of a win.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#237

Post by tptacek »

chii wrote: post #152
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the government's job is to protect it's people. Even the most libertarian-minded people subscribe to that. The problem is the government has been leaning on that to expand to things that are of questionable "protection". Does millimeter-wave scanning protect you? The government sure expects you to believe it does. What about seizure of property? That will surely protect you from drugs. Why should we need a…

> people don't seem to realize any price is being paid. this hit the nail on the head, because the pain of the price isn't felt by the average person _at all_. It is only felt by people at society's margin, who may skirt the law at times. Now, someone might argue that this is actually a good result, because this will prevent laws from being skirted at all! If, or when some form of revolution is required, that necessa…

People are especially not going to care if we frame our arguments against the TSA as a symptom of the entire system being an illusion used to turn us into docile sheep while providing the illusion of protection.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#238

Post by aidenn0 »

mtgx wrote: post #2

This is why I'm glad HTTP 2.0 intends to implement SPDY's always-on encryption. It probably won't be long until governments find a way around that, especially the US government, who can pretty easily gain access to companies like Google, Verisign, and even ICANN, but it would be a good first step in the right direction. Hopefully future steps like web crypto will help increase the security of people's conversations o…

Forget Google, Verisign and ICANN. Any of these people can generate certificates that completely eliminate the MITM protection of https:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/included/

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#239

Post by zobzu »

Egregore wrote: post #191
zobzu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My idea was that public key cryptography should be done under the hood, so I created a easy to use ResoMail, but people still were not interested (or I was a bad marketer).

It uses it's own protocol/port/programs it seems. Too many people rely on email right now. Else, we could just use XMPP.

Thus the solution should work over email, and with our current email clients. S/MIME/GnuPG/PGP do, but their implementation is far from friendly.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#240

Post by baddox »

gnaritas wrote: post #231
baddox wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We as individuals don't have a say in how the state works in any meaningful way. There is absolutely no difference, in practice or theory, between a "criminal" busting down my door or a "DEA agent" busting down my door. The fact that >50% of society supposedly approves of the "DEA agent" is no consolation and certainly no justification to the victim.

You can vote, and that is proportionally meaningful. Want more say, convince more people to agree with you. You have zero say about anything criminals do. There is a vast difference.

That's simply not true. The odds of my own actions being able to prevent or interrupt a common criminal are vastly higher than the odds of a single vote affecting the outcome of any but the smallest local election.

Again, proportions simply do not matter to the victim of violence. Like I said, if DEA agent busts down my door and shoots me, it is absolutely no consolation or justification that >50% of voters approve of drug prohibition. If you propose the question "is it okay for a robber to take 30% of my paycheck as long as 51% of my community is okay with it?" most people will say "of course not!," but if you propose the exact same question, but with "a robber" to "the government," most people will say "yes of course that's okay."

Post reply on HN