Thanks for the living hell, and question about OpenSSL

[Eric Cordian]

Tim May wrote:

> You don't need to take our word for it--you need to see why modern 
> cryptography avoids trust issues almost completely.

Like mathematicians saying "Trust Us, no algorithm exists which can factor
the 309 digit product of two large distinct odd primes in a few seconds on
a cheap PC?"

Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems to me that public key
cryptography is fundamentally a trust-based system. With the rise of the
Internet, and almost all crypto being done by people who do not physically
meet to exchange keys, almost all crypto is public key crypto.

Therefore, almost all cryptography (at the present moment) is based on
trust.

And it's trust based on the "It doesn't exist, because if it did, I'm so
smart I would have found it by now" paradigm, which I've never regarded as
being particularly reliable.  (Insert comments about simple algorithms
whose direct derivation lies just slightly beyond the limits of human
ingenuity here.)

With regard to the utility of digital cash.  Digital cash will never be
useful for funding retaliation against The State unless its use is so
widespread that the problematical transactions are drowned out by noise.

Since sheeple will always pick convenience over security, and The State,
through regulation, controls what will be convenient, digital cash will
never achieve widespread use.

The wild success of PayPal, even as it embargos some customers cash for 6
months over their political views, and the long list of failed anonymous
payment ventures, should drive this point home to even the most dense.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"