;) On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 09:49:33PM +0100, rysiek wrote:
OHAI,
Dnia czwartek, 16 stycznia 2014 14:25:51 Troy Benjegerdes pisze:
So please tell us, oh enlightened one, what is the threat model?
Because I would say the exact same thing about those who badmouth privacy advocates and privacy itself: obviously those in power have vested interests in violating privacy, be it for monetary, or political gain.
They have vested interests in convincing the unwashed masses that either "privacy is dead", "privacy is not needed" or "privacy is impossible". So that they can more easily spy upon us all, and so that it gets that harder for privacy-conscious people to maintain their privacy (as that is an ecology, if you do not maintain your privacy, information about you might help somebody to deduce information about me).
I would say that the vested interest is more clear in the above than in what you stated. So please tell me, what do I not see, or (if I am "working for the man"), where's the cash that I must've gotten for my services over the years?..
I'm going to trust you when you say you are an advocate for all the right reasons.
Cool. :)
I also like to trust, but verify. I cannot verify without invading your privacy, and since that's important to you, I won't.
Not true. You can verify my public actions, my public statements. What matters in the end is if the result is right. If my actions, my statements were conducive towards better privacy or bettering of our common human condition, one can assume with high degree of certainty that my reasons were right. If not, well, woe is me.
The vested interests absolutely would love us all to believe privacy is dead, but will not themselves give it up, making for an extreme imbalance of power.
And information assymetry. That's why we have to build our own tools and use them to guard our own privacy.
pgp and gnupg are 'pretty good'. Bitcoin is a disaster because the vested interests appear to have achived complete regulatory capture through FINCEN and the Banking Secrecy Act
I, on the other hand, am a person. I am not, however, particularly private, because it costs me too fucking much in terms of money, time, and paranoia to actually test and verify that shit I think is supposed to be private actually is.
Well, there is always the element of trust. I have to (I don't have the time, money, etc to verify myself) trust my hardware and software to some extent.
But I *can* choose hardware and software in a way that should make that trust better founded. Free software, open hardware. I use an "ancient" Nokia N900, which is by far not ideal, still much better than any iPhone.
I can make listeners' lives harder. And I do.
What I want is for private cypherpunks and transparent cypherpunks to respect each other's values and spill the secrets of the fuckers who say privacy is dead but will only themselves give it up in the cold grip of the grave.
Abso-fucking-lutely! Still, I would like to know what is the threat model you were talking about. I don't see how advocating privacy and anonymity can be sinister -- apart from using these terms in context that these terms have no purpose other than muddying the waters (i.e. "privacy of government agencies or corporations").
-- Pozdr rysiek
The cost of privacy is the threat. There's a lot we can do with things that are Free, as in Freedom (software). I think there's also a great advance waiting when a viral-freedom copyright license (GPL/AGPL) cryptocoin can figure out how to clearly express the cost tradeoff of doing verifiably secure anonymous transactions vs what it costs to just tell the world you are sending $20 to your grandma and making sure it gets there. The problem with bitcoin is all the developers who know what they are doing are now part of the 1% that benefits from exploiting privacy asymmetry. I can't trust someone talking with forked tongue about how cryptocoins are BOTH a serious business currency, AND protect your privacy. -- Troy