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

[Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2020 15:27:32 +0100
Peter Fairbrother <peter at tsto.co.uk> wrote:

> 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.


	So where's your demonstration? 

	What I said is not even an argument, but an observation. Govcorp gets a lot more 'value' out of cryptography than govcorp's subjects. 

	I provided one glaring example and I'll repeat it once more. All of the malware/firmware* that runs on 'embedded systems' EVERYWHERE is 'cryptographically signed' to prevent users from controlling their own hardware. And now 'progressives' have 'smart' light bulbs that are connected tho the Internet of Shits, aka the arpanet, aka the NSA. Cryptography is used to lock the hardware and to secure the communications between the devices and the NSA.  What a brave new world.
	

*pcs, retardphones, cars, fridges, 'private' surveillance cameras, dildos, barbies, you name it.


> 
> 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.

	That's  another assertion for you to prove. 


> 
> 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."


	pgp is fine. The problem is the enviroment and users. And the users are only half to blame since they have been 'educated' by their enemies. 

 
> 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.

	the software may be less than ideal but I don't think that's the reason why remailers are not used. The problem is again education.


 
> 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

	yeah bitcoin has some very suspicious flaws. The scalability problem has been completely dismissed by 'satoshi' when he said that a few gigabytes in blocks PER DAY would be handled by 'specialized hardware in datacenters'...aka the NSA. And of course the fact that all transactions are public and linked looks kinda...bad...from the point of view of privacy.

	granted now there are things like monero...with even worse scalability problems. 


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

	bittorrent is a centralized protocol that was created so that some assholes could sell advertsing through websites like the pirate bay. From a technical point of view bittorrent is (a lot) worse than p2p networks like gnutella. 
	
	there is still some 'pirating' done with torrents, which is a good thing, but overall the torrent protocol has little to do with cypherpunk principles. 



> 
> 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.


	so you never heard anything about 'mass surveillance'

> Apple's encryption 

	and that's got to be trolling...
	

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