August 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

PapersPlease: USA Demands to Install Physical and Digital "REAL-ID" Nazi-esque Checkpoints Everywhere
by grarpamp 18 Aug '21

18 Aug '21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_papers,_please https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnungspolizei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papers,_Please https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_co… https://papersplease.org/ Papers, Please! The Identity Project About Education Litigation Action Contact Jun 17 2021 DHS still evades review of no-fly orders Two recent court cases, and follow-up articles and interviews with the plaintiffs and their lawyers, show how the highest priority for the U.S. government with respect to no-fly orders continues to be preventing judicial review of these government decisions, not preventing terrorism. When an airline requests permission to allow an individual to board a flight, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declines to give permission, that “Boarding Pass Printing Result” (BPPR) message is communicated only to the airline, not the would-be traveler. Even the airline is not told the basis, if any, for the negative BPPR message. (The default is “No”, in the absence of affirmative, individualized government permission-to-board.) Again and again and again, when people have challenged these no-fly orders in U.S. courts, the government has chosen not to disclose or defend the basis for its decisions that these people constitute a threat to aviation sufficient to justify restricting their right to travel. Instead, the government has told the plaintiffs that they have been (although perhaps only temporarily) removed from “the no-fly list” (although with no assurance that they won’t again be prevented from traveling in the future), and then gotten their complaints dismissed in court as “moot”. Only rarely has it been possible to pursue these cases. A special law restricting the jurisdiction of the Federal courts over “orders” of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), 49 U.S.C. § 46110, has also been used to avoid fact-finding as to the basis, if any, for these orders. In our opinion this law is clearly unconstitutional. But the Constitutionality of this law has not yet been directly ruled on, and it has been the subject of little Congressional scrutiny. If the government really thought these people were dangerous, it should have gone to court sooner to obtain injunctions or restraining orders restricting their freedom of movement. If challenged, it should have defended its actions before Federal judges in adversarial, evidence-based fact-finding proceedings. The government has chosen to do neither, and has consistently responded to no-fly lawsuits by taking almost everyone with the means and will to pursue extended litigation off the not-fly list. This reflects the reality that the DHS sees judicial oversight of its actions, not terrorism, as the greater threat to its standard operating procedures. The top DHS priority is to be able to continue its practice of extrajudicial secret decision-making — disconnected from facts and based instead on fantasies of “pre-crime” predictive ability — about who is, and who is not, allowed to exercise their Constitutional rights. The stories of Ahmad Chebli and Ashraf Maniar illustrate how this plays out in real life — and how it wrecks real people’s lives and livelihoods. Read More → Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Freedom To Travel, Secret Law 1 Comment May 19 2021 A race to the bottom: DHS “Biometric Tech Rally” Today the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a competition between hardware and software vendors to demonstrate the facial-recognition systems that are most useful for surveillance and other malign uses: cameras or other sensors and facial and/or other biometric matching algorithms that can identity travelers (or other people in public places) even if they are wearing masks: [T]he 2021 Biometric Technology Rally will focus on evaluating the ability of systems to reliably collect and/or match images of individuals, including those wearing face masks. The intent is to improve the ability to recognize people without requiring travelers to remove protective equipment…. The 2021 Biometric Technology Rally will be held at the Maryland Test Facility (MdTF) in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, later this fall. Testing will be performed in controlled scenarios relevant to DHS operations…. Providers of face and multi-modal biometric acquisition systems, as well as providers of biometric matching algorithms, are encouraged to participate. Requiring travelers to remove their masks at checkpoints operated by or on behalf of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and/or other DHS components endangers travelers and makes clear that the U.S. government has put surveillance and tracking of travelers ahead of safety and health. But the way to completely eliminate the threat to travelers’ health and safety posed by unmasking is to stop trying to identify travelers, which is based on the “pre-crime” fantasy that identity-based algorithms can read travelers’ minds and predict which of them intend to commit future aviation-related crimes. Instead, the TSA should confine its searches to those intended to detect genuinely threatening objects: weapons and explosives. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Biometrics, Surveillance State 1 Comment May 17 2021 ACLU: “Digital IDs Could Be a Nightmare” As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is soliciting proposals from vendors for how to put digital versions of drivers licenses and other ID credentials on smartphones, the ACLU has released a timely and insightful white paper, Identity Crisis: What Digital Driver’s Licenses Could Mean for Privacy, Equity, and Freedom, by Jay Stanley of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, along with an executive summary in the form of a blog post, Digital IDs Might Sound Like a Good Idea, But They Could Be a Privacy Nightmare. The ACLU white paper links to some of our research and reporting and highlights many of our concerns with compelled identification, the REAL-ID Act, invisible virtual checkpoints, ID-based blacklists and controls on what we are and aren’t allowed to do, and the role of AAMVA and other “private” entities as outsourced, opaque, unaccountable, creators of ID “standards” that function as de facto laws and regulations that govern our movements and activities, but that are adopted in secret, exempt from the Freedom Of Information Act or other transparency laws, and lack basic privacy protections. or respect for rights recognized by the U.S. Constitution and international human rights treaties. We encourage readers interested in these issues to read the ACLU white paper in full. But here’s an excerpt form the introduction to the white paper, framing the issue: Read More → Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Papers, Please, REAL ID, Secret Law, Surveillance State 2 Comments May 14 2021 More DHS “pre-crime” policing, but still no real “precogs” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced the formation and rebranding of new and existing DHS components into what it is now calling the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (“C3P” in milspeak). C3P is explicitly intended to be a “precrime” crime prevention agency, and to teach and promote “precrime” techniques for predicting future crimes and identifying future criminals to other Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. According to the DHS press release announcing the formation of C3P, “DHS’s efforts are grounded in an approach to violence prevention that leverages behavioral threat assessment and management tools, and addresses early-risk factors that can lead to radicalization to violence.” C3P’s attempts to predict future crimes are to be based on behavioral patterns, i.e profiling, and on encouraging members of the public to inform on their families, friends, and classmates. According to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, future criminals “typically exhibit behaviors that are recognizable to many but are best understood by those closest to them, such as friends, family, and classmates.” The problem, of course is that the law does not permit prosecution based solely on patterns of lawful behavior. With good reason: “precrime” prediction is a figment of the imagination of the creators of a dystopian fantasy movie, Minority Report. Neither the DHS nor anyone else actually has any “precogs” (human, robotic, or cybernetic) like those in the movie who can predict future crimes, or any profile or algorithm that actually enables it to predict who will commit future crimes. “Precrime” policing should be left in Hollywood where it belongs, not allowed to infect the thinking of those who wield real-world police powers. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Surveillance State Leave a comment Apr 27 2021 DHS extends REAL-ID airport enforcement “deadline” again The Department of Homeland Security has once again postponed its self-proclaimed “deadline” for enforcement of the REAL-ID Act at airports, this time from October 1, 2021, to May 3, 2023. The latest postponement proves, once again, that the dates of the DHS threats to begin “enforcing” the REAL-ID Act at airports are as changeable as the dates in any of the threats made by extortionists or kidnappers. Today’s DHS press release is more like a ransom note than a legal notice: “If you get an ID we deem acceptable, we might not harass you as much when you fly, and we might allow you to exercise your right to travel.” It remains unclear what enforcement of the REAL-ID Act at airports might mean. No law requires air travelers to have any ID, and the REAL-ID Act doesn’t change that. The Transportation Security Administration recently posted a video showing how you can fly without ID. But today’s DHS press release implies that the DHS is contemplating denying passage through TSA checkpoints at airports to travelers who don’t have, don’t carry, or don’t chose to show ID credentials that the DHS and TSA deem “compliant” or “acceptable”: Beginning May 3, 2023, every air traveler 18 years of age and older will need a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or identification card, state-issued enhanced driver’s license, or another TSA-acceptable form of identification at airport security checkpoints for domestic air travel. Since this is a press release, not a bill proposing new legislation or a notice of proposed new regulations, it doesn’t need to say what legal basis there might be for this claim. But so far as we call tell, there is none. The DHS recently tried to get Congress to exempt its implementaton of the REAL-ID Act from standard Federal rules notice and approval. But Congress turned down the DHS proposal for exemption of REAL-ID implementation from the Administrative Procedure Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. The DHS has not yet begun any of the notice and approval procedures which would be required before it could impose new restrictions or requirements for air travel on the basis of the REAL-ID Act. We expect that today’s press release will be followed by a formal rulemaking notice that merely changes the REAL-ID threat date. But such a rulemaking will neither clarify what action is really being threatened (i.e what the TSA will really do when travelers continue to show up at TSA checkpoints without “compliant” ID), clarify what the purported legal basis would be for that action, nor, in itself, create a legal basis for any such action. Today’s DHS press release says that the change in the “deadline” will give states and individuals more time to “comply” with the REAL-ID Act. But compliance with the REAL-ID Act was, and still is, optional for both states and individuals. What the postponement by the DHS of its self-imposed “deadline” really does is give the DHS itself more time to come up with a legal justification for its threatened actions — or to withdraw its baseless threats. It also gives Congress more time to repeal the REAL-ID Act. Don’t be intimidated by DHS and TSA threats. Regardless of what self-imposed DHS deadlines come and go, with how many more postponements, you will still have the same right to travel without ID that you have now. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in REAL ID 4 Comments Apr 21 2021 DHS wants to put REAL-ID drivers licenses on smartphones The Department of Homeland Security has published a Request For Information (RFI) from vendors and other stakeholders regarding standards for drivers licenses and other IDs stored on smartphones or other mobile devices to be considered compliant with the REAL-ID Act of 2005. Responses to the RFI are due by June 18, 2021. The amendments to the REAL-ID Act signed into law at the end of 2021 included provisions authorizing the DHS to certify digital ID credentials as “REAL-ID compliant”. That certification can’t happen, though, until the DHS promulgates new regulations. The RFI published in the Federal Register this week is not formerly part of such a rulemaking, but appears to be part of the preparations for it. A “mobile ID” would consist of a certificate digitally signed by a state department of motor vehicles. The RFI contemplates a process through which “individuals would electronically send identity verification information to the DMV to establish their identities and ownership of the target device.” No explanation or justification is provided for why or how a digitally-signed certificate would be, or should be, bound to a specific device, rather than simply provided as a file that can be stored on any digital device or storage medium. It’s just as easy to loan a smartphone or other mobile device to another person whose appearance is similar as it is to loan a physical ID card to another person. A drivers license rarely needs to be displayed, and in the form of a wallet-sized plastic card it can be kept in a relatively secure pocket or compartment of a purse. A smartphone, in marked contrast, is likely to be frequently consulted and carried in a location on one’s person that is much more exposed and vulnerable to snatch-thieves than one’s wallet. A smartphone is already, for many people, vulnerable as a single point of failure for identity and password management. Binding a digital ID to a specific smartphone appears likely to increase the risk and exacerbate the consequences of smartphone theft as a method of identity theft. The RFI says that the DHS is considering incorporating the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators Mobile Driver License (mDL) Implementation Guidelines (April 2019) in the DHS standards and regulations, and the DHS seeks comments on those AAMVA guidelines. But those AAMVA guidelines are posted only on the “members-only” portion of the AAMVA website, and aren’t available to the public. In the past, when we reposted specifications for the AAMVA’s national REAL-ID database that AAMVA had posted for years on the public portion of its website, AAMVA not only moved those specifications to to the members-only portion of its website, but asserted their copyright and threatened us with litigation to get us to take them off our site. The DHS notice purporting to invite the public to submit comments on a secret document, not available to the public, that might be incorporated into DHS regulations, exemplifies everything that is wrong with both secret law and the outsourcing of “lawmaking” to entities such as AAMVA that are nominally private and not subject to Federal or state freedom of information, public records, or open meetings laws. There’s no indication in the RFI as to when or how the DHS plans to move forward with the separate rulemaking and approval procedures that will be required if it is to follow through on its threats to start turning away would-be air travelers at TSA checkpoints if they don’t have REAL-ID approved ID or don’t have or show any ID. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in REAL ID, Secret Law 3 Comments Apr 14 2021 More support for court challenge to TSA impunity Two months ago, the last time we checked in on Sai v. TSA (now Sai v. Pekoske) — the landmark challenge to the TSA’s attempt to avoid ever facing a Federal trial over its checkpoint procedures — the disabled, pro se plaintiff had been given what seemed an impossibly short deadline by the 1st Cicruit Court of Appeals to file “hypothetical” objections to whatever “orders” the TSA might have issued that adversely affected them, without knowing what those orders might be. Since then, we are pleased to report, things have been looking up for Sai and for all those who would subject the TSA to the rule of law. Jonathan Corbett, Esq., who has brought a series of lawsuits against the TSA on his own behalf and that of his clients, stepped in to represent Sai pro bono, and got a small extension of time. Of necessity given the limited time and resources, the brief filed on Sai’s behalf on April 2nd greatly narrows the issues presented. But it continues to challenge the TSA’s claim that its checkpoint procedures can’t be challenged or brought to trial in U.S. District Court, but can only be “appealed” to Circuit Courts where no fact-finding can be conducted and what constitutes the “record” to be (deferentially) reviewed is defined by the TSA itself. Sai also continues to challenge the TSA’s attempt to withhold self-defined “Sensitive Security Information” from disclosure in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Further strengthening Sai’s case against TSA impunity from trial or judicial fact-finding, the Institute for Justice — which is moving forward with its own challenge to systematically lawless TSA practices — has intervened in Sai’s case against the TSA with a friend-of-the-court brief and a request to participate in oral argument before the Court of Appeals. We fully endorse the latest arguments made by both Sai and IJ, and look forward to having them given the consideration they deserve by the 1st Circuit panel. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Secret Law Leave a comment Apr 12 2021 Connecting the DHS to the airline industry A Request For Information (RFI) posted on a website for Federal government contractors gives a glimpse into the degree to which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has embedded itself into the information technology infrastructure of the airline industry. The RFI for Services to Electronically Transmit Airline Data was posted April 5, 2021, by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Responses from potential vendors are due by April 19, 2021. CBP says it is “conducting market research to gain a greater understanding of the full range of available options for services for obtaining names and related information of passengers who are arriving and departing the U.S. on commercial airlines.” Although the RFI was put out by CBP, which surveils and controls international air travel and cargo transport to and from the US, it appears to contemplate integration with the parallel systems used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for data-driven surveillance and control of domestic US air travel as well. According to the RFI: CBP is evaluating transmission options for air carriers to use in compliance with these requirements. The vendor must have established connectivity with the airline community. The vendor must be able to test and certify with the air carriers, the vendor, CBP and TSA as required. For those unfamiliar with the “parallel universe” of airline IT and data communications networks, this RFI might best be conceptualized by analogy to the specifications for the equipment — revealed by whistleblower Mark Klein — that was installed in the facilities of AT&T and other telecommunications companies to provide real-time copies of message data to the National Security Agency (NSA). While the NSA receives metadata about the movements of our messages in the form of telephone calls, email messages, Web browsing, and other Internet traffic, CBP receives metadata about the movements of our physical bodies, whenever we travel by air, in the form of, according to the RFI, “Passenger Name Records (PNR), air cargo manifests, advance passenger information (API), passenger manifests, and other airline-related data.” The TSA receives a similar but somewhat different dataset of all domestic airline flights in the form of Secure Flight Passenger Data (SFPD). The RFI requests information from vendors that already have “an available global private network primarily used by the aviation industry to enable the aviation industry to send/receive API, PNR, and other information to CBP and other entities.” The gateways provided by these vendors would also, presumably, position these vendors to serve other governments wanting to surveil and control air travel while using common gateways to connect to airlines without having to connect to each airline separately. As the NSA did with telecommunications companies, CBP embeds itself in vendors’ data centers and message switching hubs: The contractor shall provide the following to permit the electronic transmission of airline data to CBP’s computer network and host systems: Provide Ethernet Internet Protocol (IP) connections to the contractor’s private global network. CBP routers are located on vendor’s premises. Contractor provides physical space at their datacenter(s) to include ¼ communications rack to house DHS/CBP co-located equipment that connects to the contractor’s private global network. Unlike the “black boxes” installed in AT&T and other telecommunications and Internet switching centers to send mirror copies of messages to the NSA, the CBP/DHS connection to the global airline reservation cloud is bidirectional. The role of the DHS is not limited to passive surveillance, which would require only a unidirectional data feed. DHS exercises positive permission-based prior restraint and control of the issuance of each boarding pass, which requires reliable real-time transmission of Boarding Pass Printing Result (BPRR) permission messages from DHS to airline check-in counters and Web check-in systems worldwide. Currently, each airline has the option of connecting directly to CBP for bi-directional transmission of PNR and API data and receipt of BPPR messages through a virtual private network using CBP-specified protocols and vendors, or connecting to DHS through one of two vendors approved by CBP to act as intermediaries: ARINC or SITA. Read More → Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Freedom To Travel, Surveillance State 1 Comment Apr 08 2021 TSA posts video showing how you can fly without ID For years Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials and their state government collaborators have been repeating the big lie that all airline passengers must have government-issued ID credentials. That lie has been included in TSA and DHS press releases, airport signage, and Tweets from the official DHS and TSA accounts. This public relations lie has been disclaimed, over and over, in TSA and DHS court filings and sworn testimony. But now it has been contradicted on the TSA’s official Twitter feed. Tonight the TSA Tweeted a video showing some of the ways you can fly without “acceptable” ID or without any ID at all. If the TSA deems your ID “unacceptable”, you can still fly if you can show two or more pieces of suitable (according to the TSA’s ecret non-rules) although “unacceptable” ID. The TSA video also shows that even if you have no ID at all, you can fly if your answers to questions relayed by phone by the TSA’s ID Verification Call Center match the information in the (secret) file of information that has been linked to you by the commercial data aggregator Accurint (originally part of the discredited “Total Information Awareness” program but now a division of Lexis-Nexis). No ID at all, much less “acceptable” ID, is actually required to fly. So changes in REAL-ID Act regulations or TSA/DHS orders to airlines as to what ID is “acceptable” are irrelevant to whether you have right to fly without ID. Nothing in the REAL-ID Act negates this right. In the screengrab above (one minute in), the video) shows a traveler filling out a copy of TSA Form 415, “Certification of Identity”. The TSA has been using versions of this form illegally since at least 2008, without ever having obtained the approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) required before any collection of information such as this by a Federal agency. The TSA has twice said it intends to seek approval from OMB for Form 415. But in the face of our objections, the TSA has yet to request, much less obtain, that approval. It’s unclear whether when the TSA will actually do so. To avoid having to give public notice of its planned information collection or respond to our objections, the TSA tried to get Congress to enact a special airport exception from the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). But Congress declined to do so. It’s unclear whether and if so when the TSA will actually apply to OMB for the required approval, or what additional illegal actions it may try to take in the meantime. All use of both Form 415 and the associated questioning of travelers continues to be in violation of the PRA. As we noted in 2008 when the TSA first started asking travelers to fill out the form later labeled Form 415, the PRA provides an absolute defense against any sanctions the TSA might try to impose for refusing to fill out this unapproved form or cooperate with the TSA’s “20 questions” game of ID verification security theater. Travelers can and should say no. Fly without ID, and exercise your right to remain silent. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Papers, Please, REAL ID 3 Comments Apr 07 2021 4th Circuit panel rejects rights to travel and to due process In one of the worst court decisions on the right to travel since Gilmore v. Gonzales, a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the decision of a U.S. District Court in the case of Elhady v. Kable that the U.S. government’s system of extrajudicial administrative blacklists (euphemistically and inaccurate called “watchlists” although the consequences for the people who are listed include much more then merely being “watched”) is unconstitutional. The decision comes in a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of blacklisted Muslim American travelers in 2018 by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). It folows a disturbing trend of decisions in similar cases by courts in the 6th Circuit and the 10th Circuit. According to Gadeir Abbas, the CAIR attorney who has led the national campaign of lawsuits (many others of which are still pending) against post-9/11 blacklists, CAIR plans to petition for “rehearing en banc” by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals: A three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit reversed a historic U.S. District Court decision that declared the entirety of the watchlist unconstitutional. In doing so, the judges ignored the dire consequences experienced by American citizens placed on the watchlist and took a dim view of what the Constitution requires. We are disappointed in this decision, but we remain undeterred. The fight is not over. CAIR will now ask the entire Fourth Circuit to review the case. The 4th Circuit panel gets off on the wrong foot by declaring that it is reviewing a challenge to a “system vital to public safety”, despite the absence of any finding by the District Court to that effect or any evidence in the record to support such a claim. In fact, watchlists/blacklists are based on anything but actual dangerousness. If an individual were actually demonstrably dangerous, the government could and should either arrest them or apply to a court for an injunction restricting their dangerous actions. But the government has never done that with any of the people it has blacklisted. The 4th Circuit panel opinion is dismissive of almost every aspect of the right to travel or of due process. It finds that government-imposed travel delays of hours or perhaps even days aren’t sufficient interference with the right to travel to constitute a legally-cognizable infringement of the right to travel, and that denial of air transport is Constitutionally insignificant because, “Plaintiffs can travel internationally by boat.” Despite acknowledging that the blacklists/watchlists were “created by executive order” and not by any Congressional action, and that the Terrorist Screening Center “receives around 113,000 nominations annually and around 99% are accepted,” the 4th Circuit panel finds that no judicial review of these decisions is necessary. Relying on an outdated history of entry and exit procedures when an intercontinental journey took weeks, and a delay of hours or days would only lengthen the journey time by a small percentage, the 4th Circuit panel brushes off the detention (in many cases at gunpoint), interrogation, and search of the plaintiffs. “Delays and inconveniences at the borders are… as old as the nation itself…. The experiences alleged by plaintiffs do not rise to the level of constitutional concern…. Given the government’s broad power to control movement across the nation’s borders, the burdens experienced by plaintiffs are not infringements of ‘liberty’ within the meaning of the Due Process Clause.” We join CAIR and the many friends of the court who fiuled briefs in support of the plaintiffs in Elhady v. Kable in looking forward to en banc rehearing and reversal of this ill-founded decision. Edward Hasbrouck Posted in Freedom To Travel, Secret Law Leave a comment Post navigation ← Older posts Challenging ID Demands IDP explores and defends the fundamental American right to move freely around our country and to live without constantly having to prove who we are or why we are here. (More) Recent Posts DHS still evades review of no-fly orders June 17, 2021 A race to the bottom: DHS “Biometric Tech Rally” May 19, 2021 ACLU: “Digital IDs Could Be a Nightmare” May 17, 2021 More DHS “pre-crime” policing, but still no real “precogs” May 14, 2021 DHS extends REAL-ID airport enforcement “deadline” again April 27, 2021 Search Search July 2021 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 « Jun Categories Biometrics (60) Buses & Trains (25) Freedom To Travel (561) Papers, Please (372) REAL ID (109) RFID (22) Secret Law (322) Secure Flight (75) Surveillance State (404) Uncategorized (2) Archives Select Month Meta Log in Entries feed Comments feed WordPress.org Top / Home / Contact Us / Donate Now Entries (RSS) / Comments (RSS) Papers, Please! is copyright © 2020 by The Identity Project Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

1 1

Cryptocurrency: PriFi Bringing Needed and Requisite Privacy to DeFi
by grarpamp 18 Aug '21

18 Aug '21

Privacy Without DeFi Is Boring, DeFi Without Privacy Is Predatory One does not need a transparent blockchain, all that is needed is a coin whose software and by extension operation are formally verified thus trusted by all to do the right thing, effectively just as BTC does today by default. https://www.coindesk.com/privacy-without-defi-is-boring-defi-without-privac… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d02F3udh9sc Dawn of Private Defi @ ETHCC4 Developers have traded riches for user privacy. It's time to return crypto to its roots. In the pursuit of excitement and growth, the crypto community has largely relegated privacy to the back burner of blockchain innovation. Such a transition is not only antithetical to the very ethos of decentralization, but myopic and regressive in the extreme. To succeed in replacing traditional finance, digital assets and the cryptographic protocols that support them must manifest decentralized architecture that both facilitates permissionless exchange and confers unequivocal fungibility to all financial instruments via privacy-centric protocols. Alex Shipp is the head of business development at Offshift, a privacy-focused derivatives platform. In reality, the subtle, systemic benefits of privacy – important though they may be – pale in comparison to decentralized finance’s (DeFi) provocative double-digit APYs and non-fungible token (NFT) auction markets, which have reeled in the attention and capital of cryptocurrency’s mass market, leading elite developer teams and venture capital resources to follow in suit. Now, DeFi is advancing at the expense of privacy-focused initiatives, which only continue to sink further into the backdrop. DeFi presents an enticing opportunity to make untold fortunes, while privacy-centric architecture can only offer broad social and economic benefits that take form over time and rarely pay. For now, the problem remains: DeFi and privacy stand diametrically opposed in the modern landscape of cryptographic innovation, as the presence of each demands the exclusion of the other. Edward Snowden’s words from Ethereal 2021 speak to the imperative of private decentralized finance (PriFi) more eloquently than any others could: The internet already allows us to do tremendous things, but it’s being controlled – it’s being exploited. And the financial aspect is where a lot of this control is entering through […] we can permit people to act without permission and privately in this space, in which I think […] alt-coins need to be private, or they are failing. This is my position. DeFi’s next frontier PriFi platforms establish a tech-o-nomic standard that dissolves the existing trade-offs between DeFi and privacy. The PriFi Standard encompasses all of the following components: A basis in decentralized, sound money Truly decentralized financial applications Uncompromising privacy On-chain architecture Close, but no cigar To this point, there have been many earnest attempts to establish genuine PriFi platforms in the crypto space, but none has yet to hit the mark. Privacy coins Monero, Zcash, and others have developed independent blockchains which confer privacy as a solitary value proposition. As per their intention, users remain siloed, unable to interact with the rapidly evolving DeFi landscape and totally isolated from operations involving credit and derivatives. Privacy coins allow individuals to store wealth securely in the event of an economic catastrophe; like bitcoin, they are havens, not solutions. Off-chain private DeFi In the effort to bring privacy to DeFi, a number of projects have begun building privacy-centric DeFi platforms on standalone blockchains, a compromise of sorts between the privacy coin model championed by Monero and the DeFi innovation at the forefront of everything crypto. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of private DeFi, off-chain initiatives impose a host of trade-offs and limitations which can only be surmounted by conquering incumbent public blockchain ecosystems and absorbing their communities. In this regard, building a privacy-centric DeFi application off-chain is like giving out loans denominated in Alex-dollars (believe me, I’ve tried): It aims to fix a credit problem by inventing new money. The path to cultivating a robust user base for one’s credit instruments is a long and arduous journey on its own. Building an independent blockchain, on the other hand, requires the development of a robust, battle-tested consensus mechanism, a globally decentralized ecosystem of validators, and a community of adept developer teams. Secret Network, Incognito and Haven are among the ambitious platforms building their own privacy-centric financial universes from ground zero. More power to them. On-chain mixers and tumblers Applications like Miximus and Mobius divide and shuffle public tokens through a network of random addresses in order to dissociate them from their original owners. Though useful tools, these types of applications operate with digital assets that are fully public, and which ultimately land at new public addresses. They are neither a complete nor a sustainable PriFi solution, as they do not provide for truly private ownership. Layer 2 private DeFi Aztec Protocol, whose EIP 1724 was one of the first to publicly conceive on-chain privacy, supports certain applications of decentralized finance in the Ethereum ecosystem. However, by virtue of employing a ZK-Rollup, Aztec’s obfuscation process takes place on a layer 2 with a code that is closed source, and by default not trustless (see: Offshift’s proprietary research). If monetary and economic history have revealed a single, incontrovertible lesson, it is that systems that can be exploited will be exploited. Unequivocally, we need a robust, comprehensive and inclusive PriFi solution, one that is fully decentralized, that is uncompromising in protecting user privacy, and that operates fully on-chain – on layer 1 in the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. There are to be no if’s, and’s or bridges. The way forward Technically speaking, PriFi composes a suite of emergent, decentralized applications that facilitate advanced, on-chain financial operations while fully protecting user privacy and minimizing tradeoffs with transparent, public incumbents in the DeFi space. PriFi applications release privacy from the burden of mutual exclusivity, so it can become an accessible and affordable feature that does not demand technical savvy. Pragmatically speaking, modern internet infrastructure is both a gift and curse. While blockchain-based systems have produced tremendous advancements in the realms of property ownership, money and finance, they sit atop highly exploitative systems designed to streamline surveillance, systematic wealth extraction and censorship. PriFi is the one-stop, one-click, opt-out that any freedom-oriented individual can access and use. Read more: Public Opinion Shifts on Big Tech and Privacy During Pandemic Really, it’s all or nothing. Without PriFi, the prospects of sound credit – and therefore of a world where individuals are endowed with freedom and communities with stability – there is very little that will be able to curb the encroaching wave of authoritarianism from enacting technocratic systems of mass surveillance that absolve privacy and ordain censorship and centralized control as global norms. PriFi means returning crypto to its privacy-centric roots without holding back innovation, so developers, engineers and entrepreneurs at the cutting edge can create and build freely without disconnecting from the purpose that seeded their journey in the first place. PriFi means stepping forward boldly into uncharted territory without leaving your principles nor your people behind; it means adventure without recklessness, innovation without sacrifice, freedom without chaos, evolution without regression. Privacy without DeFi is boring. DeFi without privacy is predatory. PriFi is the way forward.

1 0

Freedom without anarchism is privilege and injustice - Bakunin
by professor rat 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

Cypherpunks are all about privacy for the poor and transparency for the powerful - Taylor ( Later echoed by Wikileaks ) Privacy Without DeFi Is Boring, DeFi Without Privacy Is Predatory - Shipp https://www.coindesk.com/privacy-without-defi-is-boring-defi-without-privac…

1 0

Re: [liberationtech] Fwd: ACM DGOV Special Issue on New Trends in Building Digital Government in China Call for Papers
by grarpamp 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

On 8/16/21, Doug Schuler <douglas(a)publicsphereproject.org> wrote: > Just a reminder that the due date for submissions (full papers or > commentaries) to the DGOV journal (ACM) special issue on "New Trends in > Building Digital Government in China" is August 31. Please forward this to > people or lists where it might be of interest. It's critical (at least in > my opinion) that alternative voices end up being included. "Government" and "Democracy" are nothing but failure. Building a digital version of them only screws you harder. Any honest analysis of China's use of DigiGov against its people and freedom will prove that, as will any honest look at the history of world. "Alternative voices" that call and advocate for more and bigger Govts, and now dgital versions of same, are in reality pure evils seeking further and total oppression of free human beings, the stamping out of human freedom, computerized cataloging command control censorship gatekeeping scoring arbitrary lightswitch shutdowns kills and more, they are expressly against the attainment of and living in an actual state of "liberation" and freedom. They are propagandizing and lying to you about that fact. It's shameful that a list that claims to be about "Liberation" spends most of its time literally censoring freedom and advocating for tyrannical regimes known as government and deployment of computing paradigms to further prop it. Clearly the ACM is not about computer science, but is about supporting "trends" in power to controlling and destroying human freedom, murdering free people by guise through "building" more Govt "laws", entrenching new global "Parliaments" of Kingly Tyranny, 24x365 "Intelligence" to pre-empt message against and crush freedom, etc, calling it "Common Good" among other of power's apologist BS. Wake up. Fight back. > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Soon Ae Chun and Beth Simone Noveck > Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 11:00 AM > Subject: ACM DGOV Special Issue on New Trends in Building Digital > Government in China Call for Papers > To: <douglas(a)publicsphereproject.org> > > *ACM Digital Government: Research & Practice* > *Special Issue on New Trends in Building Digital Government in China* > > *Guest Editors* > Zhenling Liu <liuzl(a)haut.edu.cn>, Henan University of Technology > Liang Ma <liangma(a)ruc.edu.cn>, School of Public Administration and Policy, > Renmin University of China > > [image: journal cover image]The in-depth application of emerging > technologies such as the Internet, big data, and artificial intelligence is > bringing about a new round of digital government advancement. Data > intelligence technology integrates government affairs data, promotes the > digital transformation of governments at all levels, and realizes precision > social governance. Digital government is changing the traditional > governance models and providing strong support for the modernization of the > national governance systems and governance capabilities. Meanwhile it also > creates new opportunities, and environments for the development of > democratic politics. > > The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has strengthened the Chinese government's > embrace of "using big data to improve and modernize national governance," > and has advanced the development of digital government in a more > comprehensive, systematic, and precise manner. This special issue will > focus on the use of new technologies and new methods to create a new model > of digital government to stimulate discussions and theoretical > contributions by the global digital government research community. > > For questions and further information, please write to: Zhenling Liu > <liuzl(a)haut.edu.cn>. > > *https://dgov.acm.org* > > You are subscribed with: douglas(a)publicsphereproject.org > Unsubscribe > <https://optout.acm.org/unsubscribe.cfm?re=douglas@publicsphereproject.org&r…> > > Douglas Schuler > douglas(a)publicsphereproject.org > Twitter: @doug_schuler > > Public Sphere Project > http://www.publicsphereproject.org/ > > Mailing list ~ Collective Intelligence for the Common Good > * http://lists.scn.org/mailman/listinfo/ci > <http://lists.scn.org/mailman/listinfo/ci>4cg-announce* > > Creating the World Citizen Parliament > http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2013/creating-the-world-c… > > Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution > <http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/> > > Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (book) > https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/liberating-voices

1 0

The Next Web: Here’s how hackers are cracking two-factor authentication security
by jim bell 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

The Next Web: Here’s how hackers are cracking two-factor authentication security. https://thenextweb.com/news/hackers-cracking-two-factor-authentication-secu…

1 0

9to5Mac: US Senate bill would legally require Apple to build a backdoor into iPhones
by jim bell 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

9to5Mac: US Senate bill would legally require Apple to build a backdoor into iPhones. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/16/us-senate-bill-would-legally-require-apple-t…

1 0

Karl Semich as the East-German border-guard on cypherpunks
by professor rat 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

He reminds me a bit of Trebor... Trebor Scholz grew up in East Berlin https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Trebor_Scholz Probably looks like Andy Muller-Maguhn

3 2

all
by V.I.Lenin 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

Or is it a dialogue who kept how many nodes in the beginning))))

2 1

ban professor turd pro2rat@yahoo.com.au
by Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

As the turd himself has noted, government agents (like itself) have no rights. I see no problem with banning the thing that spams govcorp propaganda from pro2rat(a)yahoo.com.au

2 1

Truth names
by professor rat 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

If I understand Godel correctly any system may be logical or complete - but not both. It follows with a geometric logic that ' Truth ' follows the same power-law. So any system based on ' Truth ' may thus be endlessly debated - perfect for timewasting, gasbags - or come complete with lies. Perfect for 'pristine ' frauds like Julian Rand Paul Assmange. Truth lies "... philosophy as practised nowadays is a waste of time and philosophers a waste of space. More precisely, he wrote that philosophy is ‘dead’ since it hasn’t kept up with the latest developments in science, especially theoretical physics. In earlier times – Hawking conceded – philosophers not only tried to keep up but sometimes made significant scientific contributions of their own. However they were now, in so far as they had any influence at all, just an obstacle to progress through their endless going-on about the same old issues of truth, knowledge, the problem of induction, and so forth. .." https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy Truth threats Fuck off Karl.

5 5