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Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

decentralize.today

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Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#11

Post by tomp »

> Earlier this year the Brazilian government used the courts to block WhatsApp for 72 hours as it seems they did not like being unable to peer into the private communications of their citizens. This happened again just a couple of weeks ago and it seems what the government cannot control should be blocked or even banned.

It's very hypocritical when an American criticises foreign "corrupt, oppressive" governments for "peering into private communications" by using public legal means against US corporations, whereas the US government has done exactly the same thing (using legal and illegal means) but you just didn't know about it (because most Internet companies are based in the US).

[I'm not sure that the author is an American, but there are undoubtedly many Americans that share this attitude.]

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#12

Post by martinko »

tomp wrote: post #11

> Earlier this year the Brazilian government used the courts to block WhatsApp for 72 hours as it seems they did not like being unable to peer into the private communications of their citizens. This happened again just a couple of weeks ago and it seems what the government cannot control should be blocked or even banned. It's very hypocritical when an American criticises foreign "corrupt, oppressive" governments for…

Remind me, was that before or after they enabled end-to-end encryption?

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#13

Post by martinko »

jbpetersen wrote: post #5

Article is actually a lengthy pitch for YAC$ (yet another cryptocurrency) It's another anonymized coin that appears to have fancy chat/marketplace support in the main wallet application as a flagship feature.

Indeed, I'm actually surprised it is on the top of the front page, given the lack of content.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#14

Post by iamdave »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
maglavaitss wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that raises a flag and makes people think and consider alternatives to FB, Google, printed money, etc, is good activism. Whether it's from the couch or the armchair, is irrelevant.

FB, Google, printed money One of these things is not like the others.

I don't think their point was to make precise and completely congruent analogues of these three topics.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#15

Post by lsiebert »

I worry about specific implementations of software for decentralisation. You can ban or block an app, arrest it's creators, but it's a lot harder to ban a protocol that has a number of different implementations. Maybe there isn't enough resources for that, maybe encryption and privacy tech is hard enough that more than one implementation isn't possible at this moment, but I think it should be a goal.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#16

Post by rini17 »

Has anyone of these activists ever considered the appalling inability of average person to manage private keys properly? Whether it is Bitcoin, pgp, whatever else, using private keys on own hardware where noone else has access to is absolute prerequisite of successful decentralized crypto. Yet the privkeys keep getting leaked,stolen,lost(including Zimmermann's pgp key),cracked(due to generation by buggy software) without any good solution in sight.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#17

Post by kbart »

martinko wrote: post #12
tomp wrote: post #11

> Earlier this year the Brazilian government used the courts to block WhatsApp for 72 hours as it seems they did not like being unable to peer into the private communications of their citizens. This happened again just a couple of weeks ago and it seems what the government cannot control should be blocked or even banned. It's very hypocritical when an American criticises foreign "corrupt, oppressive" governments for…

Remind me, was that before or after they enabled end-to-end encryption?

Since WhatsApp is virtually a blackbox, their word for end-to-end encryption means nothing. Few 'bugs' in implementation and you have a nice backdoor.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#18

Post by pjc50 »

iamdave wrote: post #14
pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB, Google, printed money One of these things is not like the others.

I don't think their point was to make precise and completely congruent analogues of these three topics.

It's more that I don't want sensible concerns about privacy in online services diluted by monetary theory that's at best "fringe".

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#19

Post by dnzm »

kbart wrote: post #17
martinko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me, was that before or after they enabled end-to-end encryption?

Since WhatsApp is virtually a blackbox, their word for end-to-end encryption means nothing. Few 'bugs' in implementation and you have a nice backdoor.

> Few 'bugs' in implementation and you have a nice backdoor.

Just one would be enough, methinks.

Re: Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual

#20

Post by tim333 »

martinko wrote: post #12
tomp wrote: post #11

> Earlier this year the Brazilian government used the courts to block WhatsApp for 72 hours as it seems they did not like being unable to peer into the private communications of their citizens. This happened again just a couple of weeks ago and it seems what the government cannot control should be blocked or even banned. It's very hypocritical when an American criticises foreign "corrupt, oppressive" governments for…

Remind me, was that before or after they enabled end-to-end encryption?

It's kind of complicated. There were Brazilian bans in 2015 and 2016. Whatsapp has had encryption since 2012 but it was a bit half arsed. It now seems good. I guess the courts could still order the metadata of who's been calling who though. It's a bit unclear what exactly the courts did order.
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