VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

141–142 of 142 posts

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#141

Post by otterley » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #140

otterley wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going in circles here. Here's the thing: the law looks to intent. If the sole purpose of issuing these things is to evade regulations by coming up with something that's not designated a currency but otherwise operates like one, no amount of jumping up and down and screaming "it's not a currency! don't call it a currency!" isn't going to make it something other than a currency. Courts aren't dumb and they don't…

Most non-currency things can be sold for currency. What makes BAT more similar to a currency than those things?

I'm totally speculating here, since I'm not intimately familiar with the pertinent regulations, but I think it's not going to be about the token's inherent properties as much as the mechanisms surrounding it.

With a token such as a laundry/car-wash token, an amusement ticket, or a Disney Dollar, you can't get cash back from the issuer. Once you buy them, they're yours forever, unless you can find a third party to give you money for them. The fact that you can (try to) sell them on eBay to a willing recipient doesn't make them currencies.

So I think it comes down to who controls the exchange. If it's a third party with no connections whatsoever to the issuer, then it's unlikely to be considered a currency. But if the issuer is also operating the exchange, or has a connection to the operator, then I think it's going to look a lot more suspect in the eyes of the law.

Again, this isn't legal advice - consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.

Re: VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN

#142

Post by noah-kun » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

earenndil wrote: post #18

noah-kun wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tor is funded by the US government, probably as a way of disseminating US propaganda during government overthrows. When conducting psyops, governments sometimes block the online channels the US uses. With them also controlling so many nodes, they can use Tor for surveillance.

Tor is funded by the us government. Why is very unclear. They may have backdoored it. They may be using it for surveillance. They are probably not using it to disseminate propaganda (they can do that over traditional channels). However, the likeliest reason (imo) for funding tor is simply that they need it themselves. There's a famous--and possibly apocryphal--anecdote from a security researcher who met an FBI agent…

It was revealed the FBI poses as Russians when doing their digital operations; maybe that's what they meant.

Tor absolutely spreads US propaganda. The "clear net" does too. The utility of Tor is that it prevents that clear net propaganda from being firewalled.

In the case of Hong Kong, we know who funds the terrorists. They meet with them in person and have been photographed, and the US makes no secret of how much they spend on terrorism in Hong Kong. But I still wonder how guides and instructions are given to the right people. Having read many CIA documents written to terrorist groups, I do wonder how they send these to HK terror leaders in the digital age. Tor is a candidate. Number stations, I kinda doubt.

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