anti-prosecution tactics. (Was Re:)

Troy Benjegerdes hozer at hozed.org
Sat Jan 18 12:34:18 PST 2014


On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 08:06:46AM -0500, dan at geer.org wrote:
> 
>  > The criminals in power have privacy. The rich who can pay have privacy.
>  > 
>  > Those below the median income have none.
> 
> 
> It has long been said that obscurity is not security (except
> that in modest doses it is).  At the same time, obscurity most
> assuredly *is* a species of privacy.  In other words, the
> quotation above has it exactly backwards.
> 
> I have written on this, which is to say that I'm on the record.
> The most recent is
> 
> http://geer.tinho.net/geer.uncc.9x13.txt
> 
> In the meantime, everyone on this list is above world median
> income (USD 1,225 per annum) and almost everyone is in the
> world's 1% (USD 34,000 per annum).  I commend Branko Milanovic's
> _The Haves and the Have Nots_ to your reading in that regard.
> 
> 
> --dan
> 

Great article Dan, thank you.

In other words, privacy is easy, give up your money, and hide in
obscurity.

Personally, I'd rather live in a world where the top 1% just publish
their tax returns, and keep live online transaction wallets that
anyone can watch.

Why does this idea threaten people so?


I'm under 40 (just barely), and I want the little brothers. There's
more money to be made, and lives lived, and the cost is some will
do what others think is a crime. Call me an 
anarcho-capitalist-green-libertarian-farmer. (Except in Minnesota,
the Democratic-Farmer-Labor big brother already owns farmer)

You're right, we're probably all in the top 1% here. I don't wish
to impose my ethics and morals on anyone else, so I feel compelled
to advocate radical transparency for most, and creative obscurity
for the punks who wish to hide from the Biggest Brother.

I think it's actually critical for whomever is the 'Biggest Brother'
(and I'm not sure if that's FaceAmaGoogle, or the NSA) to cultivate
lots of little brothers they have no control over. If they try to 
control them, it only takes one to slip through the cover of obscurity
with a disruptive innovation (or a disruptive weapon), and crash the
biggest.

The surveillance states that survive must accept and encourage
uncertainty and chaos, or be destroyed by those that do.

If one of those states makes me an offer I can't refuse (like Farmland
and Wind Turbines), and you hear about it here, I think there is reason
to be optimistic. And if you don't hear about it, ask me why. I'm not
hard to find.  
--- FaceGoog, are you listening? You need a cpunk on your payroll
.. I would rather work for the NSA, but they won't figure out they
need really good people with NO SECURITY CLEARANCE working for them
for at least a couple more years. I have more chance of one of the
NNSA/DOE open-science labs getting it.

I believe I have a lot of asymmetric leverage with the last statement(s),
and I hope some other transparency punk will formalize it in a better
mathematical/security publication than I can.



More information about the cypherpunks mailing list