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Re: [tor-talk] comparison of Tor and Kovri in regards to deanonymization attacks
by grarpamp 07 Dec '18

07 Dec '18

> - I2P can be attacked with far less resources than Tor; Moot when $10k is probably enough to Sybil at least some small fraction of either of them. > - Tor is deeply researched and various attack types and problems have > already been solved; So if Tor is done, why don't you start writing grants to reseach, advance, and solve some of the undone, equally applicable, and necessary problem space of mixnets and other potential designs, instead of continuing to throw [government] money at Tor's curve of diminishing returns. > - Tor is larger as a network with more capacity, and more diversity; Start advertising, using, analysing other types of networks then. > They also have different purposes so they cannot be directly compared on > absolutely every feature Why do so many reviews keep implying this copout, "B network doesn't have X feature therefore B sucks"... of course networks are different, unique features are not detractions they're just incomparable items, go compare and analyse the similar features then. Both Tor and I2P generally claim their non-exit modes to be anonymous advanced designs resistant to attack. Go compare and analyze that. If you don't like the results, go start new designs. Reviews can even conform features... users can actually torrent internally over both, and exit over both... analyze that. Many orthagonal features are modular ideas embeddable in any decent network anyway, so they're not necessarily unique, only a matter of doing it, if sensible of course. > - I2P is more oriented for traffic inside the I2P network (e.g. you > cannot browse cnn.com anonymously via I2P). Yes you can, you just have to find or be an exit outproxy service and configure it manually. >> I would summaries the success of Tor over I2P with these points: Government: Initialed the Tor design, put in Decades of $Millions of controlling interest funding, and programmed Marketing. Throw those kind of resources at I2P or any other network and they would be relatively equal contenders too. Throw Voluntary versions of those kinds of resources at any network, and it might be a bit more novel and free to go up against the backer of the "successful" one above. >> - Tor has a modified browser which is a fork of firefox-esr called Tor >> Browser Bundle which is easy to click and run with Tor. I2P until now >> there is no official browser supporting it and user needs to do the >> configurations manually. So stuff I2P inside TBB's work and call it IBB.

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Re: [tor-talk] comparison of Tor and Kovri in regards to deanonymization attacks
by grarpamp 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

>> I was curious for Monero dev's rationale to pick I2P over Tor >> Whatever I've seen online doesn't strike me as particularly convincing. Same could be asked of Zcash strong cryptographic ZKP style currencies users often using Tor. As well as a handful of other cryptocurrencies explicitly advertised and designed to use with Tor. >> Whatever I've seen online doesn't strike me as particularly convincing. >> Is there published research in regards to deanonymization attacks against >> both Tor and I2P Some are here, some are in sites of other messaging systems... https://www.freehaven.net/anonbib All overlay networks currently in production are massively vulnerable to at least two classes of attack by sufficiently interested and capable adversaries... 1) Sybil a) This requires people to actually use PKI to make and use assertions and identities and to punt the results they get from their deep social anal probing of each other in real life as operator peers worldwide... into the consensus, DHT, or whatever mechanism each network uses for node approval and selection. b) Also requires complete ongoing analysis of all known physical and logical metadata and behaviour of the nodes themselves. 2) Global Passive Monitoring The US NSA, Global and Regional Telecom Corporations, and other Entities Worldwide, acting both separately and together, have a complete passive and active view of the internet from at minimum the Global Tier-1 ISP Level, including significant analysis and recording capabilities therein. Yet everyone still stupidly fails to execute at least a few of the seemingly available and reasonable countermeasures... a) Encrypt Everything. Automatic, on by default, strong crypto suites, forward secrecy, tofu, psk, rekeying, whatever works best, etc... both... 1) By and between end to end users, same for server to server... 2) On all physical network links worldwide, every port automagic and independant... fiber, copper, radio, etc... embedded in the network hardware itself via RFC, IEEE, etc b) Deploy fulltime network fill traffic aka chaff, to fill the committed capacity that each node provisioned itself into the [overlay] network with, dynamically yielding room for and upon native traffic. This applies both to, logical nets 2a1, and physical nets 2a2, above. c) Politics, Anarchism, Cryptocurrency Crowdfunding, and whatever else works to uproot and route around persistant known bad actors. 3) Etc Nobody seems to want to do much on the above, to actually shape those into effective global project efforts, to deploy any sufficient mitigation finally therein, therefore the vulnerabilities shall remain. #OpenFabs , #OpenHW , #OpenSW , #OpenDev , #OpenBiz , #CryptoCurrency , #Anarchism , #SybilBusters , #EncryptEverything , #FillEverything ... the list gets longer. Anyone can launch rockets these days. So there is no reason any of the above and more can't be done. Go build and launch some rockets.

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Lé Guardian "Jealous AF on CNN", clinches Fake News Cup -
by Zenaan Harkness 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

[PEACE] Reply-To: In-Reply-To: <20181130125754.p7kro4odxzr2b2jg(a)eye.freedbms.net> On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 11:57:54PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote: > On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 12:07:04PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 05:48:02AM +0000, jim bell wrote: > > > https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/28/assange-wikileaks-prosec… > > > Philip Agee. > > > > Entirely apropos and an interesting story to boot. > > > > Just as the Jews have their spyware and flashmob "counter > > anti-semitic" apps: > > > > The software, called the Anti-Semitism Cyber Monitoring System, or > > ACMS, is "the most advanced development in the world for monitoring > > anti-Semitism in real time," the ministry said... > > https://www.timesofisrael.com/diaspora-ministry-unveils-system-for-tracking… > > > > https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-running-campaign… > > > > https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-spyware-was-used-to-tr… > > https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-spyware-used-against-saudi-arabian-di… > > https://www.mintpressnews.com/saudi-arabia-secretly-purchased-250m-spy-pack… > > > > > > in this day and age a CIA-agent (and NSA, FBI etc) identification app > > would be relatively easy to create - turbo charging what Agee did in > > the '70s. > > > > For example one obvious group are the legacy stream media plants, > > Luke Harding and or Dan Collyns (is that a real name, Collyns?) for > > two face planting manipulator examples to start with: > > > > > > The Guardian Faceplants As Manafort's Passport Stamps Don't > > Match "Fabricated" Assange Story > > https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-29/guardian-faceplants-manaforts-pas… > > > > …WikiLeaks immediately fired back at The Guardian - betting the > > paper "a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort > > never met Assange." > > > > This is going to be one of the most infamous news disasters > > since Stern published the "Hitler Diaries". > > — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018 > > > > > > It is evident that those who proclaim "Russia hacked the USA's 2016 > > elections" are compromised, idiots, (CIA or Hitlery) agents, or some > > combination. > > > > A problem with human "annotations" if you like is the problem of > > "the tyranny of the mob" which it times of stress descends into witch > > hunting lynch mobs - so empower that at your peril, > > > > yet on the other hand, evil only thrives in secrecy and the Satanists > > seem to corral an extraordinary large number of humans into the "eff > > the optics of the Butcher of Benghazi and her oral lynching of a 12 > > year old (at the time) rapee, I'm With Her" - this level of mass > > programming is truly impressive, shocking, etc. - evidently many > > folk simply don't think, they are CNNPCs, MSNPCs, as in literally. > > > > Exposure, transparency, truth and facts must be the fundament of any > > sane "community or tribal grouping" (politics), and so from this > > foundation, turbocharging publishing of empire-embarrassing facts as > > Agee and Assange have done, and the trasparency that a "CIA and other > > agent crowd sourced identification" app would bring to the table, > > despite any possible, or even probable, problems, are necessary and > > important, with the benefits far outweighing those potential > > problems. > > > > Besides, the hypocrisy of Western "democracy" ought be utterly > > exposed and crushed into the dark halls of history - as humans at > > least trying to think about things (and to whatever limited the > > degree we actually achieve something resembling "thought"), we owe it > > to ourselves and future "try to think"ers to clean out the rot. > > > Chapter 2 of Assange, Luke Harding and Dan Collyns of MI6, sorry I > mean The Guardian, and the neurotic moronic revenge charges being > concocted to Send A Message in the style of CNN's "offers your can't > refuse" - impressive in its chutzpah, brazen disregard for all > decency and even any remote hint of righteousness: > > > PCR Fumes "There Is No Case Against Assange, > So Lies Replace Evidence" > https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-29/pcr-fumes-there-no-case-against-a… Oh ... yeah. You know you love it! The Guardian's Reputation In Tatters After Forger Revealed To Have Co-Authored Assange Smear https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-06/guardians-reputation-tatters-afte… Names to remember, folks: Luke Harding/CIA Fernando Villavicencio/CIA MSM Is Getting Weirder, More Frantic, And More Desperate By The Pussy^BDay https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-06/msm-getting-weirder-more-frantic-…

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Facebook’s internal documents show its ruthlessness
by jim bell 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/05/facebook-internal-emails-documents-mark… [partial quote follows] As expected, the UK Parliament has released a set of internal Facebook emails that were seized as part of its investigation into the company's data-privacy practices. The 250-page document, which includes conversations between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other high-level executives, is a window into the social media giant's ruthless thinking from 2012 to 2015 -- a period of time when it was growing (and collecting user data) at an unstoppable rate. While Facebook was white-listing companies like Airbnb, Lyft and Netflix to get special access to people's information in 2013, it went out of its way to block competitors such as Vine from using its tools. When Twitter launched Vine, the app had access to Facebook's Friends API, which let Vine users see which of their Facebook friends were using the then-new app. But after approval from Zuckerberg himself, that access was cut off. "Unless anyone raises objections, we will shut down their [Vine's] Friends API access today. We've prepared reactive PR, and I will let Jana know our decision," Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice president of global operations and media partnerships, said in an email at the time. Zuckerberg replied, "Yup, go for it." [end of partial quote] Jim Bell

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snowden and the billionaire monkeys on our back
by John Newman 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

Long interview with guy who just wrote a book about faux-philanthropic leaders of the new gilded age (or something ;) https://www.truthdig.com/articles/silicon-billionaires-are-the-lethal-monke… Interesting part where he described Snowden talking to a bunch of these people, this "clash of ideals" - " [... snip ...] I mean, you have an amazing scene where they’re listening to Edward Snowden on some Transatlantic communication; he was also listened to at the TED Talk and so forth. And at one point, they think hey, he’s one of us. And he tries to set them correct, no, I’m not out to rip people off, I’m out to help their freedom. AG: I went on a cruise ship called Summit at Sea for 3,000 or so entrepreneurs who believe they are changing the world. I was interested in what happens when you have this kind of density of people who are convinced that they’re making the world a better place, and that growing their businesses is how you make the world better, and you make the world better by growing their businesses. This total idea of the win-win. And one of the events was the talk by Edward Snowden via videoconference from Russia. Chris Sacca, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley who’s been very, very successful, was his interlocutor. So Chris kind of stood on stage looking up at this big screen asking Edward Snowden questions. And this hasn’t really been reported ever, so it’s kind of new in the book. And the scene where Snowden is talking and explaining this kind of powerful vision of why he did what he did–he kind of gave an explanation of it that I hadn’t heard before, which is that he is convinced that the opportunity to dissent, to call out something untrue in a society, that that act requires a certain freedom to think thoughts, exchange ideas with others that are not visible to the government. If we live in a world in which every communication is surveilled and interdicted, potentially interdicted by government, we’re going to live in a world in which change becomes very hard to make. Because as soon as someone has a truly heretical idea, they’ll be neutered; if not in the United States, then certainly in many countries. It was a very interesting vision, and as he started describing, well, the way I’m going to do that is I’m going to build all these tools that would allow dissidents to actually operate more freely. A communication tool so you can message without getting caught, a Facebook “like” tool so you can socially network without losing your privacy, some kind of tokenized identity so you can make clear to different websites that you’re the same person without revealing which person you are–various things. Snowden was describing the creation of all these things because he wanted to live in a world in which dissent of the kind that he made is possible, in which it’s possible to go up against power and not be interrupted in that quest; that’s his motivation, his goal. And what was so fascinating to me, given the cultural collision between this man who deeply believed, whether you like him or not, in sacrifice and in taking a risk for what he felt to be the greater good, who believed in fighting the power structure–he was standing there talking to these 3,000, or you know, however many were in the room–kind of entrepreneur types, whose biggest goal is to, like, make $1 billion in a way that serves humanity. And it’s like they couldn’t process him; they couldn’t process his set of motivations. And so Chris Sacca says, wow, you sound like you’re designing a lot of tools that, they sound like apps, or startup–do you want to build a startup? I mean, there’s a lot of people here who would like to be your investor. Snowden just looked at him, puzzled, like–what are you talking about? I’m talking about freedom and heresy and truth, and being a dissident, and how a society corrects itself from manifest injustices through allowing people who have an uncomfortable truth to tell it. And you’re talking about startups? And it was just this wonderful collision between someone who believes in real changes, and these people who kind of believe in the pseudo-change that lines their own pockets." -- GPG fingerprint: 17FD 615A D20D AFE8 B3E4 C9D2 E324 20BE D47A 78C7

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Scientific American: Is the U.S. Lagging in the Quest for Quantum Computing?
by jim bell 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

Scientific American: Is the U.S. Lagging in the Quest for Quantum Computing?. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-u-s-lagging-in-the-quest-…

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Hand over encrypted data.
by jim bell 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

Australia poised to force tech firms to hand over encrypted data https://finance.yahoo.com/news/australia-poised-force-tech-firms-hand-over-…

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Most Security Assertions Dangerous [Re: YouTube via Onion Services]
by grarpamp 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

In a thread... https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2018-December/044709.html on... > http://kgg2m7yk5aybusll.onion/ > http://axqzx4s6s54s32yentfqojs3x5i7faxza6xo3ehd4bzzsg2ii4fv2iid.onion (noting that all onions can be physically located by determined adversaries, thus failing another commonly sold security assertion) > https://github.com/omarroth/invidious > - Its free software and the code is available for install/checkup. That assertion is irrelevant in the security context of the thread so far, and it's dangerous advice. As with protonmail and all the other fakeass encrypted email websites... the JS code is loaded by the browser from the web service itself, there is currently NO trusted way for the user to independantly audit that the code they end up executing in real time *from* the service matches the code *in* any repo, or for the user to choose to ignore the service code and load and execute any repo code of their choosing instead. > Youtube is made by a dick company to humanity called Google, which is > funding their services by stealing/collecting users data. So the JS The current code load model is a nasty exploit waiting to happen, does happen (Hushmail, NIT's, etc), and simply should not be trusted, no more than GOOG and FB the dicks, themselves, indeed. Or Java, ActiveX, Flash, and whatever other "secure" crap some scam tries to push into your pathetically insecure and untrusted exec platform. Sure Invidious Onion is fun, probably has some merits and use cases, and even simple html could be an exploit, and users can run it all in a sandbox, etc. But let's not say there's any trusted link between the running and repo codes, nor that any sufficient set of people have looked at, and signed over, most codes, or are even allowed to... [1]. Also, clicking on any video listed on the onion frontpage index initiates at least three connections straight to google instead of the proxy onion. That's not clean. > Plus you can watch the videos without the need to allow any JS. > this particular YouTube frontend/proxy seems to be > more focused on offering an alternative viewing experience rather than > privacy. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl ... those and a few others readers can find and post here. [1] You can't even say those for the release iso's of OpenBSD, FreeBSD, the Linux's, etc... back to their claimed source code repos... because either those repos have no internal cryptographic roots or hashes to sign over or with in the first place, or some process in the path from there to the iso's is not reproducible or cryptographically chained. Same goes for Apple, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, ARM, Government, etc... You're all still woefully fucked therein because you keep buying the Kool-Aid, and refusing to demand, fix, ignore, or eliminate them and their issues. #OpenFabs , #OpenHW , #OpenSW , #OpenDev , #OpenBiz , #CryptoCurrency , #Anarchism The list of requisites to even get close to improving the situation grows...

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Cryptocurrency: Why America Cannot Regulate Cryptocurrency
by grarpamp 06 Dec '18

06 Dec '18

https://hackernoon.com/why-america-cant-regulate-bitcoin-8c77cee8d794 Why America Can’t Regulate Bitcoin Hearings on Bitcoin and its derivatives are being held in the USA on a regular basis, and invariably the expert witnesses fail to properly describe the actual processes going on. If they used the correct language and excluded all analogies, the only possible conclusion would be that America cannot regulate Bitcoin under its current legal system. The Constitution guarantees the inalienable rights of American citizens, and therefore Bitcoin is a protected form of publishing. The only way Bitcoin can be made regulable is if the Constitution is changed; and that does not mean adding a new Amendment, it means removing the First Amendment entirely. Inevitably the anti-Bitcoin protagonists will face a robust and ultimately successful legal challenge that will remove the possibility of any sort of “BitLicense” or interference from the CTFC, FinCEN or any other agency. It will also remove any possibility of interference at the State level. The consequence of adhering to the basic law of the United States will cause America to become the centre of all Bitcoin business for the entire world. Let me explain why this is the case. Some say that Bitcoin is money. Others say that it is not money. It doesn’t matter. What does matter are three things; that Bitcoin is, that the Bitcoin network does what it is meant to do completely reliably, and what the true nature of the Bitcoin network and the messages in it are. Bitcoin is a distributed ledger system, maintained by a network of peers that monitors and regulates which entries are allocated to what Bitcoin addresses. This is done entirely by transmitting messages that are text, between the computers in the network (known as “nodes”), where cryptographic procedures are executed on these messages in text to verify their authenticity and the identity of the sender and recipient of the message and their position in the public ledger. The messages sent between nodes in the Bitcoin network are human readable, and printable. There is no point in any Bitcoin transaction that Bitcoin ceases to be text. It is all text, all the time. Bitcoin can be printed out onto sheets of paper. This output can take different forms, like machine readable QR Codes, or it can be printed out in the letters A to Z, a to z and 0 to 9. This means they can be read by a human being, just like “Huckleberry Finn”. At the time of the creation of the United States of America, the Founding Fathers of that new country in their deep wisdom and distaste for tyranny, haunted by the memory of the absence of a free press in the countries from which they escaped, wrote into the basic law of that then young federation of free states, an explicit and unambiguous freedom, the “Freedom of the Press”. This amendment was first because of its central importance to a free society. The First Amendment guarantees that all Americans have the power to exercise their right to publish and distribute anything they like, without restriction or prior restraint. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. This single line, forever precludes any law that restricts Bitcoin in any way. In 1995, the US Government had on the statute books, laws that restrict the export of encryption software products from America without a license. These goods are classified as “munitions”. The first versions of the breakthrough Public Key Encryption software “Pretty Good Privacy” or “PGP”, written by Philip Zimmerman had already escaped the USA via Bulletin Board Systems from the moment it was first distributed, but all copies of PGP outside of the United States were “illegal”. In order to fix the problem of all copies of PGP outside of America being encumbered by this perception, an ingenious plan was put into motion, using the first Amendment as the means of making it happen legally. The source code for PGP was printed out. The original print out of the PGP source code. It’s as simple as that. Once the source code for PGP was printed in book form, it instantly and more importantly, unambiguously, fell under the protection of the First Amendment. As a binary, the US government ridiculously tries to assert that immaterial software is a device, and not text (software or “binaries” is text that can be run on devices). Clearly the idea that software is a device is patently absurd, but rather than waste money arguing this point in court, printing out PGP removed all doubt that a First Amendment act was taking place. The printed source code was shipped to another country, perfectly legally and beyond challenge, and then transferred to a machine by OCR (Optical Character Recognition, a software tool that can turn a printed page into a text file, removing the need for a person to manually type out a printed page), resulting in a PGP executable that was legally exported from the United States. The direct analogy to Bitcoin should be vividly clear to you now. PGP and Bitcoin are both: Pieces of software that can be rendered as printed text on paper Software that generates unique blocks of human readable text Designed to generate text that is 100% covered by the First Amendment The purpose of PGP is to absolutely verify the identity of the sender of a message and ensure that the message was not read or changed in transit. The purpose of Bitcoin is to absolutely verify the ability of the owner a cryptographic key (which is a block of text) that can unlock a ledger entry in the global Bitcoin network. Both of these pieces of software are messaging systems and services that absolutely fall under the First Amendment in every aspect, from the source code used to generate the software clients that do the message signing to the text the compiled clients generate, send, receive and process. Bitcoin is text. Bitcoin is speech. It cannot be regulated in a free country like the USA with guaranteed inalienable rights and a First Amendment that explicitly governs publishing. Bitcoin and PGP generate messages that are initiated by their users. Each of the messages that are generated by these two pieces of software are unique. The only bodies of law that could possibly be invoked regarding their output and source code are Copyright and Patent law respectively. The Bitcoin source is not copyrighted and the core idea of it is not Patented, and in any case, none of this has anything to do with the nature of Bitcoin messages. Copyright gives the generator of these texts privileges under the law imposing fines on someone copying your message without your permission, but that law has nothing to do with exporting or imposing a tax on the messages themselves, and of course, forbidding the copying of your Bitcoin payment message rather negates the purpose of using Bitcoin. Taking all of this into account, if any legislator, regulator, three or six letter US agency or other bureaucrat dares to try and regulate Bitcoin, they will be on a hiding to nothing. A legal challenge will be mounted, and will have to be mounted, because if the State can legislate against a single piece of software that generates messages, a legal precedent will be created allowing the US government to regulate all software no matter what it does. Bitcoin’s operation is fundamentally no different to what all email, text messaging and internet connected software does; relay messages. The only difference is in the software that tracks how the messages of the sender and recipient relate to each other. Email is no different to Bitcoin, save for the fact that a record of the sender and recipient and content of your email is not stored in a public ledger one against the other. We know it’s stored in a private database, but that’s another story. Wink wink. Here is another example of case law proving that this reasoning is correct. In Bernstein v. US Department of Justice it was established that code is speech and is protected by the First Amendment. This absolutely and unambiguously applies to Bitcoin, with eerie parallels to KYC/AML in Bitcoin. The unconstitutional ITAR requirements are exactly the same as asking Bitcoin traders to register as “Money Transmitters” and seek licenses before they can be paid to transmit text to the Bitcoin network for publication on the public ledger. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Bernstein’s favour, and ruled that software was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government’s regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional. It is clear to see that Bitcoin falls squarely into the category of protected speech, there is no way around any of this, and the US courts must come to the same conclusion for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is protected speech, and the case law says so explicitly. The position that Bitcoin is money is fundamentally wrong, and systems like it have existed for many years without gaining the attention of any three letter agencies. Take for example FarmVille, the massively popular farm simulation game on Facebook. >From Wikipedia’s entry on FarmVille This hugely popular game is no different to Bitcoin in nature. FarmBucks exist in a closed system, just as Bitcoin does. The only difference is the size of the space where the messages are being sent, and in the case of FarmBucks, the number of users and transactions (messages sent) was large. FarmVille had 83,760,000 monthly active users and not a single one was subjected to KYC/AML to exchange fiat for FarmBucks or FarmCash. Why not? What happened to that money? Why weren’t FinCEN or SEC all over that game as they are on ICOs? No one can explain this adequately. This example is very useful as a tool to pull back the curtain on the people who assert that Bitcoin is a money and is fundamentally different to a money kept in a game. All the rationales they use (mostly in the form of run on sentences) to explain the difference are inaccurate, and never address the fundamental processes; if they did, they would have no choice but to conclude that Bitcoin is no more subject to regulation than FarmBucks or PGP are. Clearly, allowing legislation to touch Bitcoin means that any software of any kind will suddenly be liable to arbitrary and unethical restriction. It will set a precedent that will be devastating to all software development in the USA, and software is the means by which everything is run, communicated, exchanged and ordered in modern society. In fact, it is impossible to run a modern society without software. Twitter for example, could find itself being regulated; it transmits messages that are no different in nature to the messages that Bitcoin transmits; the only difference being the publicly maintained ledger and application of the messages. In fact, twitter could turn itself into a Bitcoin company quite easily by adding a few fields to its message JSON schema to include a Bitcoin address for each of its users, adding a page to its client and running its own Bitcoin server pool. Would that extra text suddenly transform Twitter into a different company? Would that suddenly change the nature of each Tweet that is sent on their network? How is having a Bitcoin address integrated into your Twitter account different to making a promise by hand on Twitter to your followers or in a direct message? Essentially, Bitcoin allows you to make written contracts with people without knowing them or signing paper; the network and software takes care of identifying and fulfilling the promise, all with cryptographically signed pieces of text. What the people calling for “BitLicenses” are asserting is that because Bitcoin right now has a particular use, it should be exempted from the basic law of the United States of America. That is completely insane, and will have unintended consequences that would be absolutely disastrous for the American economy since almost everything today is mediated by or touches software. On the other hand, if Bitcoin is left to flourish and the market allowed to define the services and means of setting the value and resolving disputes, Bitcoin as an ecosystem will be extremely robust and widespread, just like the internet is today, after having grown for twenty years without any regulation or oversight from the State. Furthermore, as I have said previously, the country that does not enact Bitcoin legislation will become the starting and endpoints of all Bitcoin transactions globally by first mover advantage. All other jurisdictions will see Bitcoin passing through them untaxed, and there will be nothing they can do about it, as Bitcoin is an unassailable peer to peer network. We have seen a similar phenomenon with the legal position of encryption in France. SSL was regulated in France until Dominique Strauss-Khan removed the restrictions. They knew that “French e-commerce” would take place inside “le pays Roosbeef” if it were not possible to secure French websites with SSL on demand without friction. American Bitcoin businesses (since the endpoints will be in their jurisdiction) will be taxed on their profits, and this will be a percentage of the trillions of global transactions made on the network for every conceivable and inconceivable purpose. The same is true for any other country. The United States looks set to cripple itself by enacting “BitLicenses” and declaring by fiat that Bitcoin is a currency, or a commodity or legal tender. As I describe above, Bitcoin is none of those things by nature, and the myriad number of applications it can be put to is only just being discovered. Our project Azteco is but one of them, with the potential to reach the billions of unbanked people in the world, and provide them with an easy way to access internet e-commerce, world-wide, with a system that makes payment fraud impossible. The potential benefit to the unbanked and the websites that sell goods on-line and the jurisdictions where those websites operate is without precedent. Only a fool would do something that could harm the advent of this transformation. No legislature will be able to keep up with the advances in software that are taking place; there are too many developers and efficient tools in the wild all over the world, all with equal access to the market. The best the State can possibly hope for is to tax new businesses that use the new tools as they emerge, and encourage entrepreneurs to incorporate in their jurisdictions. If America wants to drive away Bitcoin developers, exchanges and new businesses, by all means, do so and take the consequences. There are many other places in the world where fast internet pipes have been laid and where the government is not so backward. Skype was founded in Estonia, not Silicon Valley, and this is for a reason. All the big Bitcoin exchanges are outside of the USA. There is a reason for that. No one wanting to start a Bitcoin business is planning to move to New York from anywhere, because they know that their business models will immediately come under attack. For those of you who are frightened of a free market in Bitcoin, rest assured, all the laws that currently exist to do with fraud, theft, misrepresentation and everything else, continue apply to all people and corporations who use Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not make laws or your personal or corporate obligations moot. When you deal with a company, you retain access to the law and recourse to it. When someone makes a promise to sell you goods with Bitcoin, that promise is not nullified because you are paying with Bitcoin. Good Bitcoin businesses will build dispute resolution systems the way that eBay and Amazon have, so that you never have to go to court to obtain justice if there is a problem. Online, reputation is everything, and bad reputations can destroy your credibility and customer base over night. This is a far more powerful incentive to do right, which most people do by default in any case, rather than some arbitrary and absurd “BitLicense”. All the “BitLicenses” in the world could not stop MTGox from having a software problem, and no law can bring back the money lost either directly or through the disruption the event caused by the software error. Once again, entrepreneurs powered by the internet make life easier and better, not laws and regulations. Regulation does not make software correct; developers do. I have one recommendation for anyone advocating that there should be a “BitLicense”. Don’t waste everyone’s time and money and resources knocking down this stupid idea. The EFF has better things to do with their time than teach the PGP “Munitions Case” lesson all over again. If it goes to court, your side will lose, and as a consequence, America will lose its head start as all Bitcoin entrepreneurs flee the USA for environments that will allow them to innovate, grow and prosper. And what can the people who want a “BitLicense” forced on the public say? That they don’t trust themselves? That’s patently absurd. That they do not trust their competitors? If it’s the case that their competitors are not good actors, then the good actors have a market advantage, and remember; a license cannot protect the public from fraud or provide any guarantee of any kind, it can only distort the market. What these “BitLicense” advocates actually want is a guaranteed market advantage. They want to prevent the “Golden BB” entrepreneur that might destroy their business, they want to slow down and stifle innovation, so that they can become the entrenched and unassailable gatekeepers. They want to bar new entrants to the market. It simply will not work. And it’s un-American. The American legislature must let the American dream flourish and extend its power to Bitcoin, or it will be compelled to obey the law, and this has started to happen. Two judges in the USA have now found that Bitcoin is not money, and have thrown out “Money Laundering” charges against two men: U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott ruled in a money laundering case in Buffalo, N.Y. that bitcoin is more like a commodity and is not a form of currency, according to a local news report. He recommended the money laundering charge be dropped against the defendant since bitcoin isn’t money. In another money laundering case last year, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler stated it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, that bitcoin has a long way to go before it is the equivalent of money. Bitcoin is not money. KYC/AML should not apply to it at all. The Hugh B. Scott ruling is highly significant, because it directly contradicts the idea of BitLicence. And lest there be any doubt, all of this, including legal remedies for breach of promise, applies to “ICOs”, which are also nothing more than text stored in a database. The fact that they are called, “Initial Coin Offerings” is irrelevant to the underlying processes, and it is not illegal to parrot the language and terms of finance, which are not trademarked or copyrighted. The Hollywood Stock Exchange wasn't deceptive because it called itself a “Stock Exchange”. Opponents of Bitcoin and ICOs have no good arguments, and the threadbare pretexts for regulation they’re able to synthesize are as flimsy as fiat.

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Cryptocurrency Libertarian Operation: Big Easy Book Bomb to hit all of New Orleans
by grarpamp 05 Dec '18

05 Dec '18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0eE8Cn0Dvs https://steemit.com/freedom/@adamkokesh/operation-big-easy-book-bomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAa270d5z2o https://duckduckgo.com/?q=adam+kokesh+big+easy+book+bomb 204,000 copies of "Freedom!" to be delivered January 4, 2018 to all residents of New Orleans. Published on Dec 4, 2018 We've been working on this for over three years and it's finally happening. FREEDOM! is coming to the ENTIRE city of New Orleans. Between January 4th and January 11th, every residential mailbox in the city will receive a copy of FREEDOM! That's over TWO HUNDRED AND FOUR THOUSAND (204,000) copies! Thanks to all of you who made it possible to get to this point, and especially our sponsors for this project, including Bitcoin.com, Dash, and SmartCash. It brings me great pleasure (and significant relief!) to announce that Operation Big Easy Book Bomb has been completely funded and organized. All that remains is execution. This is historically unprecedented, and arguably the largest explicitly Voluntaryist event ever. I started writing FREEDOM! while in prison for civil disobedience. It's about how we can make the world a better place by getting rid of government. There are already over 50,000 copies in circulation and it's been downloaded over 3 million times. The version being delivered to the residents of New Orleans is a special edition printing. We've added a letter in the front cover from me explaining our presidential campaign’s plan to peacefully dissolve the federal government, the World's Smallest Political Quiz, a plug for the Louisiana Libertarian Party, acknowledgements of the many people and organizations that helped make this project happen, and of course postage on the back cover. This book bomb is just the first of many. We plan to replicate this all over the country (the world if necessary!) until the desired effect is achieved. In order to be able to repeat this, we need to make sure it's as successful as possible. We want to make sure that when the books gets in peoples' hands, they know that everyone else in the city got the same book at the same time. We'll be printing thousands of signs, hiring a polling company, contacting media outlets, and organizing a boots-on-the-ground effort to maximize awareness of the event. While we have already spent about $131k on the printing and mailing and have most of what we need for on the ground efforts, your donations would help take this to the next level right now. More signs, more ads, more free bumper stickers, more travel expenses for volunteers who want to help. More people who read the book. More converts. More freedom. Yeah. You get the idea. You can donate by PayPal or crypto at thefreedom.fund. We also need volunteers to help with yard signs and chalking. If you can be there at all to help at any time from January 1st to the 13th, please reply to this email or hit up our volunteer coordinator, Elijah Gizzarelli. (Elijah(a)thefreedomline.com) To kick things off for the weekend, we'll have a very informal FREEDOM! Family meet-up at NOLA Brewing, 3001 Tchoupitoulas St, New Orleans, LA 70115, from 7-9pm on the night of January 4th. We'll be organizing "sign-bomb" teams and giving out big piles of FREEDOM! signs, sidewalk chalk and assignments for territory to cover. If you would like to attend the meet-up, I do ask that you RSVP by emailing Elijah. (Elijah(a)thefreedomline.com) Now's the time to get excited! Peace and Love, Adam Kokesh Want to help me finally free America from the federal government? http://KokeshForPresident.com/ Get the MOST IMPORTANT BOOK EVER for FREE in every format including audiobook at http://thefreedomline.com/freedom/ Please support FREEDOM! by liking and sharing this video, subscribing, and sharing! Then for everything else: http://TheFreedomLine.com/ Help end government by getting away from government money with BITCOIN! This video is brought to you in part by http://bitcoin.com/

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