AP deconstructed: Why it has not happened yet, and will not

[Mirimir]

On 08/05/2018 09:35 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:
> Listen up you punks...

Thanks for that. Overall, it's a great analysis, and I mostly agree.

<SNIP>

> I see anonymity on the networks as nearly always relative and nearly
> never absolute.  To achieve absolute anonymity, an individual must
> commit "the perfect crime" by connecting to the networks once, briefly,
> by physically breaking in at an access point not personally associated
> with him or herself.

Yes, I totally agree. There is no "absolute anonymity".

<SNIP>

> AP depends on the ready availability of anonymity to thousands or
> millions bettors, and dozens or hundreds of professional assassins.
> Participation in any 'lottery of the doomed' (RIP Spain Rodriguez - and
> Trashman, agent of the 6th International) would immediately become a
> Federal felony with stiff minimum mandatory sentences.  The
> unavailability of absolute anonymity for assassins, or even half-assed
> anonymity for John and Jane Q. Public, would at best seriously degrade
> the whole program.

That's a good point about bettors needing good enough anonymity to avoid
arrest. Even so, evidence from .onion marketplaces and child porn forums
suggests that Tor is good enough for users. Where users have been
busted, it's generally followed .onion compromise, with adversaries
dropping phone-home malware. And even then, it was mainly Windows users
who got nailed. Whonix users, on the other hand, would have been safe.
Especially if they hit Tor through nested VPN chains.

Busts of some .onion sites and users have involved Tor compromise. Most
notably, exploitation of the relay-early bug by CMU researchers, who
shared their data with the FBI. And once the .onion sites were pwned,
more users got nailed. For example, Playpen.

So anyway, I'm not convinced that it's hopeless for bettors. But privacy
advocates would need to better spread the word about good OPSEC.

Adequate anonymity for assassins is a much harder problem. However,
evidence from .onion marketplaces and child porn forums also suggests
that Tor would be good enough. If coupled with good OPSEC. At least,
based on public evidence, it seems that virtually all busts involved
serious OPSEC fails. But of course it's possible that public evidence is
all parallel construction bullshit. And that the NSA nailed them all.

There's also the issue that assassins aren't necessarily skilled at
network OPSEC. And vice versa. I mean, I'm for sure no assassin :) So
there would certainly be fails. But even so, survival of assassins is
arguably not a prerequisite for workable AP, as long as there's an
adequate pool. And especially if assassins don't expect to survive.

> 2)  Large numbers make fools of us all.  AP appears to presume that
> abusive politicians. and the cartels of billionaires who elect and
> direct them, can not out-spend 'honest' participants in AP by orders of
> magnitude at need.  Well... they can.  And if required, they will.

Yeah, this has always concerned me. And I don't see a solution.

> 3)  As a general conclusion, I think that for AP to work as intended and
> usher in an age of NAP based Anarchist society - an objective no truly
> sane individual could oppose IMO - it would be necessary for only
> "honest" lotteries that deny targeting of "Libertarian" figures to
> present games.  But two can play at any game, as long as the second
> players in question happen to be filthy rich.

Right, there could be lots of AP lotteries. And so no way to control
targeting of whatever class of individuals, and of one lottery by
others. Even so, the wealthy _already_ live in anarchy. In that the
rules don't apply to them. States are just their tools. So what AP could
do is level the playing field a little.

> In real life, "Operate an AP lottery, die within weeks of announcing it
> to the public and getting enough capital under management to motivate an
> assassin."  Or in a best case scenario, pull 20 years without parole in
> a Federal prison.  That same sentence would also be available to any
> random participant who happens to get "outed" by any of several
> technical means readily available to the NSA and comparable signals
> intelligence services.
> 
> I do believe that the above factors explain why Assassination Politics
> has not been implemented in the 20 or so years the instructions have
> been floating around.  As far as I know, nobody has even tried.
> 
> Alas, for those who want to Change The World from the bottom up, it
> looks to me like conventional populist political warfare - the darkest
> of the Dark Arts - in the sense that nearly nobody outside agencies
> tasked to prevent it knows the first damn thing about how it works -
> remains the only game in town.

Maybe so. But time will tell, I suppose. If I were part of proto AP in
Augur, I'd be getting very nervous ;)