My understanding of cypherpunks is that they are/were a group of people trying to defeat evil things such as, indeed, Clearview and using their deep knowledge of cryptography to counter the use of digital technologies by a fascist power (imagine the Third Reich equipped with computers...)
Tracking/Controlling people isn't really knew but let us say there was always ... ways to escape... to find another land, another ID, where there was no question.
Think about the fictional character of Jean Valjean in "Les Misérables"(the book by Victor Hugo) ...
As a convict he wore a mark on the arm, identifying him and had his infamous condition as a former forcat noted in his passport. This doesn't prevented him to become a notable, a rich entrepreuneur named Monsieur Madeleine.
The action is at the beginning of the XIX century in Post-revolutionary France.
Now imagine the same man in ... 2020... an escaped forcat... how can he live?, how can he change his identity? How can he transfer funds? Anything he will do, any move he will make will be noticed, tracked, recorded. The law enforcement will look at him everywhere , in all possible databases and if he wants to have a new French passport "the hard way", he shall have to tamper protected memory and insert false the records inside a biometric passport, which is extremely difficult. Corruption and social enginering may not work any more and making fake French passport should involve deep knowledge of cryptography...
Who can do this? Only Cypherpunks.
It can be argued that only 'criminals' should care about changing their identity but if you are targeted by a fascist regime, getting a new ID is a question of life and death.
yet to my understanding, escaping and defeating the net which is building itself, making the world as a gigantic jail, should be the mission of cypherpunks, or to whatever organization that would succeed to them.
Imagine a real fascist power taking control of the entire planet , how much time they need to seek and destroy opponents or individuals listed as potential dangers? maybe just one hour...
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On Monday, 29 June 2020 г., 21:44, Karl <gmkarl@gmail.com> wrote:
Just adding on here,
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My understanding of Cypherpunks is - as per their Manifesto - that they are trying to build privacy in a world where privacy is becoming a crime.
I thought recently that the biggest 'weapon' against a fascism regime would be to create the inability for that fascist regime to track, locate, monitor and spy someone.
in the words of every hacker ever: "What's your threat model?"
nation state attackers are fairly infallible, unless you're personally gifted and/or well resourced...
There are different degrees of being targeted. If you can stay uninteresting, there is still lots of value. (it's also quite inspiring to see targeted people using privacy technology, as not everyone is free to: and I imagine this helps talk to others without endangering them)
I walk in the street right now. Nobody knows who I am.
check out Clearview AI - and remember this is a commercial, non-classified effort!
Note that many are pausing on facial recognition now due to authority abuse. The OP would be a dot in a database who might be wearing a coronavirus mask and is associated only with where he walks.
My SIM card isn't linked to any ID (true).
check out "The Find", and other techniques that are designed to work against burner phones; they attack pattern of life data exhaust across all cell tower radios in addition to targeted attacks against specific baseband chipsets of "selected" targets....
Sounds like you need a lot of additional data to build a profile.
My phone cannot track me because it hasn'\t a GPS and so on ...
note that tower based triangulation is nearly as effective as GPS, in terms of geolocation privacy risk.
Effective, but less effective.
I like to keep a phone on hand bought from some physical store that sells a lot of them, with its antennas and ideally radio chips removed or grounded, before it is first turned on. I like to add a chain inside and keep the device chained to me. I have seen such devices do freaky things one learns to prevent, like update their system time over bluetooth. I have found them to be reliable secure storage for now.
I know that with the time that sort of life will be harder and harder. Hence I feel it is a noble task to build a system where people can live a normal life and stay anonymous - as they want.
indeed! as mentioned before:
first deploy encryption to kill passive Eve's ears.
then keying Hardened end-to-end to avoid active Mallory in the Middle.
finally, harden Physical Security against burglary and rubber brutes...
All things people have worked hard on but not quite normalized. Don't forget EMI.
Interesting enugh soon there will be Quantum crypto, and maybe NSA has already it.
How long can we trust these good old programs such as PGP? RSA wouldn't last a long time against a quantum computer ...
side benefit of privacy enhancing technologies like Fully Homomorphic Encryption: they're resistant to quantum attacks (e,g. Post-Quantum ready crypto :)
Karl
There is proof inside many peoples' electronics. Proof that a marketing group would contract development of a frightening virus. A virus that responds to peoples' keystrokes and browsing habits, and changes what people see on their devices. A virus that alters political behavior en masse, for profit.
There is proof inside many peoples' electronics. Proof that a marketing group would contract development of a frightening virus. A virus that responds to peoples' keystrokes and browsing habits, and changes what people see on their devices. A virus that alters political behavior en masse, for profit.