Part 2: Cryptography vs. Big Brother: How Math Became a Weapon Against Tyranny - YouTube

[Peter Fairbrother]

On 16/10/2020 00:55, Zenaan Harkness wrote:

> [...] the noise of Juan's anger is perhaps what makes it sometimes difficult to hear him, but it seems his position is that "all tech that gets created, gets used -more- by the fascist MIC regime dominating us all" and the obvious conclusion from this apparently correct observation is "so why the hell would you create more, or promote, any such tech?"
> 
> This argument (if I've paraphrased Juan correctly) is quite compelling - it's not obviously wrong.

I don't think that's really Juan's argument, but if it is there are at 
least two flaws - first, the assumption that "all tech that gets created 
gets used -more- by the fascist MIC regime" is demonstrably wrong.

Second it is incomplete - to a large extent cypherpunk has prevented the 
formation of a "Ministry of Truth" - if only through the publicity, but 
see below as well.


Where the argument has some tangential validity is in that that all of 
the five main "successes" of cypherpunks don't actually work - they fail 
to deliver the promised anonymity or confidentiality reliably on the 
individual user level.

These "successes" are first PGP. Whether it would have worked or not I 
don't know, but no-one wrote decent software for it, and it failed the 
eighth law - "A system which is hard to use will be abused or unused."

Second, remailers, which could be effectively anonymous if they were 
widely used. Again user-friendly software is missing, which decreases 
the anonymity set and thus the anonymity to the point where it is dubious.

Third, BitCoin, where scalability is a problem, the interface between 
technology and people is left to the clueless users, and where there is 
a huge publicly available ledger. Any cryptocurrency where the coins are 
not indistinguishable is never going to provide

Fourth, BitTorrent, which doesn't really provide any anonymity - quite 
the opposite.

Fifth, TOR, whose shortcomings are too well-known for me to have to 
enumerate them here again.


But these and other now-becoming-mainstream crypto technologies like 
Apple's encryption have raised the bar against the creation of a 
"Ministry of Truth" where all of everybody's data and conversations are 
available to the Ministry.

Actually I suppose it is now more a case of "anybody's" rather than 
"everybody's".


Peter Fairbrother