was: Re: Cryptography Imaginary Property: Formalities of Cypherpunk
On Jan 13, 2015, Troy Benjegerdes
Otherwise you would find yourself in an interesting world where applying encryption to data (both of which are not property, right) magically transforms something immaterial and "not-property" into "property".
If I have an image I took of my farm, turn it into digital bits, and put the DVD in a safe, so nothing can copy it, it's my property.
If encrypt the image, and keep the private key in my safe, so nothing can copy the original image, it's my property. Now maybe I install some robots with guns to defend the safe too....
This provides a potentially interesting corollary with money and currency in terms of how it is conceptualized and conceived, as to what threats or dynamics may or may not exist, in a given framework or vantage. For instance, someone could imagine based on the default discourses available that paper currency has maximal autonomy in comparison to electronic money or currencies. And so that money (a physical thing) could be put into a safe inside a private dwelling and stored or exchanged outside the banking system, etc. Say for instance a person has ten dollars saved in a safe and they use that money at a local cash register, as if it an anonymous transaction at the level of monetary exchange. (The maximal gap being the legal trading or exchanging of paper currency for other items outside retail channels, where there is no middle-man infrastructure for the transaction, such as a cash register or other technical infrastructure or accounting apparatus.*) Someone might believe that the paper currency is only trackable in a retail setting by networked CCTV cameras and receipts and "traffic analysis" or other correlations between income and expenditures in a background calculation, not involving bank notes themselves. And in some sense, a notion of ~privacy may accompany use or storage or carrying of paper currency, as part of this view, where its function is in proportional support of their own material existence, proof-of-work in some abstract yet most tangible sense, as if truth realized in material form. Identity and all sorts of dynamics tied to how much a person has, can wield, what it is used for, perhaps the most vital variable in a given life, enabling lifestyles or great suffering depending on this relation. Yet what if the idea of money is not accurately conceptualized in the same terms applied to other things, that may be subsequent or dependent upon this relationship between people and 'their' money. What if for instance the symbolically protective safe with an electronic latch has a hidden money counter embedded in its circuity that is equivalent to technology of smart meters, where contents inside the safe could be read remotely, if there were nanoscopic RFID tags for tracking paper currency yet not identified as such because it involves a covert infrastructure. So for instance a secret agent could prowl the streets reading the interior condition of peoples private finances, legal or illegal, whether connected to mortage or real estate payments to banks or landlords, or the IRS keeping tabs on the real score for targeted populations. Something like this could be feasible, yet what would it mean if 'the information' connected to the paper currency or material object or thing as actually covertly modeled as data and as such was being tracked and monitored systematically over time. The modeling of money at this level of individual granularity then would be possible to analyze and review similarly in terms of cash register exchanges, if hidden RFID money counters were installed within these _networked devices where the receipts are centrally accounted for in today's profiling culture, as part of a threat monitoring environment. So where a person uses their currency could then indicate pathways through a economic or financial ecosystem which money laundering then would seek to short-circuit or avoid interaction with. The idea then that this material stuff may have a hidden information or data connected with it that involves its modeling and tracking that is accounted for in other unknown dimensions, as this relates to issues of rights, and potentially covert means of control and hidden power to shape events, via knowing something about the cards other players are holding. For instance, if a landlord were to use an illegal device to read the private bank accounts in real-time to determine maximal rent to charge tenants, this could apply a form of pressure that may otherwise have a different balancing due to abstract aspects of these relations. Having more information could lead to more power or even a power imbalance or one-sided accounting, which seems to be the game at the large and small scales, how all of this is accounted for. In conceptual terms, a worldview seemingly exists that perceives the world within previous centuries of physics, whereby a person inside their dwelling is not effected by others on the outside of this boundary, such that the walls and locked doors and windows that seal and secure the enclosure is capable of keeping out unwanted forces via this "physical barrier" that is immediately perceived by the senses. And yet this can be illusory form of protection. It is similar to the view that someone cannot tell what another person is thinking, including if they are lying, if they do not divulge information. That the true condition or state cannot be read or accessed otherwise, such as via ESP or mind reading whether by natural means (psychic) or technological (brain scanning as mind reading). So too the dwelling, like the safe, whereby the issue involves a paradigmatic change in conceptualization, and in turn, a recontextualization of the event and assumptions. In this way, paper currency in a non-electromagnetic evaluation cannot have these other covert dynamics functioning, whereas if it is allowed or rather acknowledged as the physical reality (Einstein/Maxwell, 18th-19th century onward) then this is the foundation for these various global infrastructure-related systems that are at the core of physical development of civilization, yet modeled or perceived inaccurately or insufficiently in terms of their "informational or data" dimensions and dynamics, for how such things more likely exist, in the day to day. Thus assumptions may exist about a certain level of autonomy that are nowhere near accurate to the condition 'things' are being mediated within or forces and dynamics and pressures that are interacting in what could be geological terms, at macro-scale. Whereby mountain ranges are built up and ice ages occur within realms of finance and connected ecologies, desertification, migration patterns, which could then be tracked via money, down to fine grain individual particles (citizens), which then gets into potentially metaphysics whereby fluid dynamics or other issues of geometrical stacking or whatnot could be used to determine how to shape situations at an abstract level, as the primary 'reason' or approach for societal human problems, via quantification and such modeling, which could be wildly inaccurate in terms of what is going on, and involve brute force dynamics to push changes through or keep things moving via crude if not unwieldy techniques that perhaps function as religion in their unchanged, yet heightened religious state, where financialization is high theology. In other words, it is to structurally associate the probable case that bank notes today are thoroughly tracked as a system, and likewise as mentioned, the biggest gap would be the distance between these notes and the surrounding infrastructure, for when they become pingable and enter back into the exchange system, perhaps not unlike tracking meteors that leave observational orbits then return at a later time. It would seem this is most closely comparable to assumptions about Schroedinger's cat, whereby a person may assume the 'thing' (in this case a feline, a living being) cannot be "known" without direct observation within a contained and secured area. Yet, this ignores the issue of entanglement of information and data, prior to placement of the cat in an isolated location (ie "safe"). If the cat were modeled in various informational terms, it could be remotely read beyond this limiting boundary, say if its state was connected to that of another cat and there were certain parameters that mapped to each other diagnostically, whereby what may amount to physical intuition or embodied knowing may indicate whether the cat still existed the same beyond a given boundary or not, via signs of another entangled entity that is thus read in terms of these diagnostic signals. Or, that an RFID chip in paper currency could be remotely read and tracked via infrastructure and in this way indicate the nature of events within a protected boundary, at a distance, as well as in dimensions otherwise not accounted for. And that this is basic, that paper money has an informational dimension (serial numbers, etc) associated with, and in this way also is entangled and involved in a centralized data modeling, whereby some of the most valuable information available would be tracking these 'things' that may be viewed as personal property by some, potentially, as related to their work-output or value as citizens, correlated with their importance, ego, lifestyle. In some sense, money as the highest truth in some peoples lives, the ultimate way of tallying the score. So if all of this is ignored, and then an issue like cryptocurrency is developed in a simpler context, as if _electronic money reliant upon a thoroughly surveillance based infrastructure would be able to sustain an anonymous monetary system or electronic currency, it could also be heavily reliant on ~beliefs in strong cryptography to allow for such a model or barrier to others interests or these larger state dynamics, and thus issues such as not knowing who the author of Bitcoin actually is could be taken on faith that all of this is still beyond the control of others or tracking or in-depth accounting due to boundaries and barriers presumed to exist in a certain viewpoint of these parameters, whereas if recontextualized in an electromagnetic context, if paper money were being thoroughly tracked within infrastructure, how likely is it that electronic currency could physically, tangibly exist beyond these same thresholds of control that collapse towards the same central management and evaluation of such structural interactions. Perhaps it is only experimental, yet what about the idea of not having the concept modeled correctly in terms of issues like property or security, whereby such barriers or boundaries may not feasibly exist yet are relied upon to rationalize what the ongoing and prevailing dynamics are. What if rose colored glasses are needed for the true believers. It just seems that an issue like privacy that is mapped to electronic currency is least likely to exist, far moreso than paper currency yet with the same issues of returning to a system to cash out or exchange the electronic currency, where end-points or junctures allow this accounting to take place, very probably in unknown dimensions that exist beyond any known literature or experience of users who are not vetted in top secret or other technologies or capacities, yet that are the foundation for the entire system these devices, tools or processes are built and function within, and rely upon. The circuit, the switch, electrons, processors, networks, that themselves are entangled to other things likewise and also thoroughly accounted for. It is to question what if the data model for something like Bitcoin exists beyond the Bitcoin data model, as this impacts issues of privacy, anonymity, exchange, as this relates to a more accurate threat model, that may not yet be accounted for in the dimensions or dynamics that actually exist, and perhaps cannot be due to related security issues involved. Is cryptocurrency potentially a mirage in such a context, if entanglement could be occurring in ways otherwise not recognized or revealed. And if this taken into account, how might issues or privacy or security be reevaluated, and how might public or private pressures exist if this were the case and could be exploited or used as a basis for blackmail or social engineering, out of view of its own represented view and ideals. It is not to second-guess the need for electronic currencies, though it is to wonder if auditing of transactions occurs only within tiny finite sectors versus system wide, as is likely the case with bank notes as this also directly relates with material development. It seems this is a conceptual issue related to 'things' in general, where bank notes are a particular category of example. And yet if taking into account the prime importance of money as data, and this structural entanglement that everything is mapped and relies upon and also functions within, in terms of forecasting and looking backward, then when a CD-R is ripped into files and its data is secretly tracked, is it not also entangled in some way to these other issues of copyright and mediates issues of privacy, similarly to assumptions with money, and in a literal sense, function as money via data that is monetized in other terms, and then dealt with differently or otherwise, beyond the limits or barriers or restrictions. Or moreso perhaps, an electronic-book that is sold for a certain amount and is restricted and has features to prevent file copying and distribution, and when this occurs, remains structurally entangled in other hidden dimensions of viruses and trojans or otherwise that then grant access, feasibly legally via loopholes enabled once a condition of use has been past or ignored, that then activate other dynamics, growing an alternative network of surveillance and monitoring and essentially auditing around these issues. And how closely is this relates to issues of paper currency that is tracked that then becomes increasingly electronic-in-nature, such that files are functioning as currency or that data is monetized, in legal and illegal realms as well as inbetween where challenges occur. In a non-electromagnetic viewpoint certain arguments could be made about what is occurring, yet that could be limited in their evaluation of the actual structural and non-negotiable dynamics involved in the default scenario, if unacknowledged or ignored. In this way, a larger threat exists within electronic payments and currency itself if not accurately perceived, because existing imbalances could be made structural and normalized without addressing the power imbalances built-into the technology, which may never be allowed to be recognized due to security and secrecy laws, and thus further infrastructuralization of money, into electronic data, then could lead to the securing of these hidden and oppressive dynamics that can function in unjust ways, for the furtherance of hidden power, by default of the ongoing scenario being extended without critical review in the terms necessary to acknowledge and limit such threats, instead of going along with them. One scenario is the small transfer of cash for a birthday gift, that in certain monitored frameworks of bank notes could lead to overzealous accounting of onesided power relations, where a landlord is trying to recoup that birthday money as part of their own profit model, while ignoring any such accounting of their own dubious gains in exponentially more egregious and literally criminal terms. In a paper currency model, they could RFID-read banknotes in a private safe and use that as leverage against a person in power politics, as hidden advantage and argument for administering and managing a tenant on 'their property'. Thus, they demand a piece of the birthday cake and view it as stealing if not gaining their share of the money. The IRS could be this way too, if corrupted to the degree necessary to prey on the poor. It is one scenario to have this occur in paper currency, in an informal economy in a context of small gifts or rituals that are the bedrock of culture and community, though it is another to transfer this menacing dimension into an electronic context, whereby no distinctions would be made if extending the existing dysfunctional evaluation of tax and revenue in highly politicized and disadvantageous terms in regards to ruling classes and underclasses, as warped power exchanges then become solidified in default practices of ubiquitous electronic taxation or other subversive unacknowledged dynamics based on hidden access to monetary or other profiling data, to enforce power structures of some over others, beyond government regulation or as government in its fallen state, of a despotic state preying on its own citizens. In this way, the small gift for a birthday in this electronic context likely would be taxed and a piece of the birthday cake would be removed for the state if not the overzealous landlord, and further erode what little autonomy or privacy exists in peoples lives as human beings who exist beyond a context of money or are not defined or beholden to it as the highest truth, which instead would become the case, where such data accounting (monetary or otherwise, event-based, history, tracking, offenses, relations, finances, etc) would be this 'currency' and map to every action and area of life and determine fate itself, where the labyrinth of the day to day eventually captures everyone. This seems to be the underlying condition and issue with electronic money, not as a form of detached utopianism if not hedonistic lust for unregulated or accounted for money, in some sense or applications, and instead the foundational technology to enable the grid to activate in its higher informational and interconnected dimensionality, as one form of culture or another, human or antihuman, and this in a context of a developing global to local police state that is thoroughly tied into and has vested interests in surveillance technology 'being right', or a view that is by default assumed correct due to its institutionalization and further systematic progression, that everyone should follow and will need to obey. An inaccurate modeling of crypto in such a scenario could actually be leveraged to promote not prevent these dynamics if not accurately accounted for. This is the problem of ideology and answered questions where presumptions are wrong and instead lead away from truth, not closer to it, the more and more dialogue, discussion, or actions occur in these ungrounded terms. (It is somewhat akin to a scenario of someone with a supercar delivering pizza, say a Bentley or Ferrari, versus someone in a used or inexpensive vehicle trying to work their way into a sustainable career, either this job a step or allowing a certain income zone whether livable or not. How might the issue of tipping occur, for instance, in one scenario or the other. Is a thousand dollar tip the minimum for a 15 dollar pizza, if lux. There is something about this scenario that does not add up in normal terms. And this is much like crypto today, electronic money, and other issues involved privacy and copyright. I cannot explain the analogy, though it is similar to the unknowability of electronic bank cards themselves and issues of accounting for funds. In a context of electronic money, people could receive 'free income' who are part of a connected group, in mirroring to the unemployed lower classes, yet in a middle-class or upper-class scenario and no one would be the wiser if it was a inside job, of a particular political group. There would be no way to find out unless on the inside of it. It is this kind of scenario that could play out in a warped rules of accounting, today focused on those on welfare cheating everyone, when it can be occurring in exponentially different ways at higher income levels, where huge subsidies are occurring on the backs of others lower, including at the price of their health and subsistence, to allow people to have their wine collections and second homes, and many cars, and yet feasibly contribute little or function in only ordinary terms while receiving disproportionate gains due to institutionalized corruption. That is the standard in electronic money, potentially, supporting such dynamics if not accounting for, protected by magic cryptography.)