[cryptography] To Protect and Infect Slides

John Young jya@pipeline.com
Wed Jan 1 05:37:16 PST 2014


Jake's, Assange's and others' emphasis at 30c3 was to pursue
technological offenses rather than futile expectation of political,
financial and legal controls of spying which inevitably confirm
what spies do, for it is in their interest to support spyin and
secrecy to maintain hegemonic, heirarchial institutions under
"the rule of law."

Reminder, at the origin of cypherpunks there was a crackdown
on encryption as a munitions. That skirmish was thought to
have been won. Now Snowden has revealed that victory
was a delusion, the real one-sided battle was fought
surreptiously in secret, not only by contaminating crypto
but by development of bypasses, implants, backdoors,
booby traps, ruses, scams, bribes, dual-hatted contracts
with crypto-hackers.

Can an openly avowed combat on the technologies of political
control (1) work or will it be demonized, fought by secret
underhanded means? Public debate deployed as a ruse in
the 1990s as now.

(1) An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control

http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm

This combat is about far more than crypto and coders must
be supplemented with all the discplines of science and
technology which are now serving industry and the
"lawful" hegemons.

30c3 advocated a direct attack on these means, not wait for
the public debate to be rigged in favor of the hegemon with
PR, propaganda, lobbying, bribery, contracts, scare stories,
terrifying incidents, the customary dirty fighting and tricks of
spies and "defense" industry.

Is that technological attack on the political, financial, legal
hegemon likely to succeed? Or will the crackdown on
armed (technological) dissent become as violent as it has
in the past?

There is a likelihood encryption will be restricted, by fiat,
by planting weaknesses, by covert attacks, by technological
bypasses, by rigged failures to create doubt of effectiveness.

That was the way CryptoAG operation was run. Now the RSA
ploy is operative. Is the effect of Snowden to be a series
of ploys and ruses. Worse, hop on board the paranoia train,
is Snowden a disinfo op for leaking gobs of ruses?

Musings:

A singular feature of hegemons is that they are dominated by
"self-regulating organizations" which set the terms and conditions
of the ruling entity, assure enforcement of the rules, and perpetuate
themselves under "self-regulation."

These are successors of royalty which instead of divine right,
backed by military power, they invoke the "Constitution," a law
which distinctively empowers "lawful" behavior according to the
rules of the hegemon.

No wonder the US promotes constitutional government around
the planet, backed by military power, most often by denigrating
other forms of government.

A striking parallel is the rise of the clerics in Europe as an alternative
to religious hegemons. From clerics came lawyerly self-regulating
hegemons. A new religion hidden within supremacist judges' black
robes.

Enough of lawful self-regulation in secrecy, unpunishable by
lawful means. Justice is out of control, prison populations stuffed,
bloated law enforcement and spies raiding the public till, private
spies, cops and mercenaries worse than the official, or
indistinguishable.

Back to the military which backs the hegemons. Technology
controls its effectiveness, thus the need for the hegemons to
control manufacture, distribution, ownership and application
of military means. Concentration of wealth through government
regulation, economic and tax policy, and military supremacy
reifies special privileges and exculpations for the enforcers
of law. Law->taxation->enforcement->informants->spying->
assassination->military action.








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