Topic: Did the cryptography revolution begin too late? - page 7. (Read 11437 times)

Here is the bigger question.

We already have FreeNets.
We already have Bittorrent for filesharing.
We have BitCoin for money.
DNS in progress
Any more already implemented or being implemented?

Can we decentralize governments, crowd-funding/crowd-sourcing, etc? What can't we decentralize at this moment?

It won't help that much, it's quite easy to block all Tor bridges.


I have a hard time imagining services being provided to a not-so-geek audience by such means...

You are making an excellent point.  I was also listening to the latest "Thinking Liberty" podcast, and they mentioned this same thing.  The fact that us internet users do not actually own the wires and switches that make up the internet is a serious issue.  Of course having a democratic government take over the internet from the corporations would probably make things worse.  The crux of the problem is that the current structure of the internet is not a p2p, but rather extremely hierarchical with the major corporations and the governments controlling the backbones.  I think the solution is that 'we' actually need to start wiring up our neighborhoods ourselves.

UK can now demand data decryption on penalty of jail time - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/10/uk-can-now-demand-data-decryption-on-penalty-of-jail-time.ars

That kills bitcoin, freenet, and Tor in the U.K.  If it is on your computer and you are believed to hold the key, you could go to jail for 5 years.  If this law was further modified to require you to have all keys to encrypted data on your computer, then it further hampers freedom.

Crypto is a tool. What is most important is the infrastructure -- the physical network, which is owned by companies and governments. The networks we build upon them (tor, bitcoin, torrent, etc) are still ultimately vulnerable. If your ISP decides to make your upstream 1kbps, then you are effectively a "content consumer" and no longer a peer in a network. Carrier grade NAT (more and more common) can also essentially cut you off from participating in p2p. These trends have been apparent for many years now.

I didn't belive you, but apparently it's true that China is getting better at blocking Tor. "Here's a graph of returning users to the Tor Network from China":



So looks like they blocked the regular channels a little over a year ago, but according to blog.torproject.org, "most Tor users in China switched to non-public relays, called bridges, over the past few months. Interestingly, the GFW has also started blocking some of the more popular bridges":



So what that means, is we should help out our chinese bretheren and setup a Tor bridge.


This is when Steganogrphy - the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message - comes into play.  Basically you have to embed your cryptographic messages inside 'whitelisted' communication channels disguised as legitimate media.

Controlling the infrastructure is more important than anything else. This is analogous to workers controlling the means of production.

http://www.libertyandsolidarity.org/node/104

This interesting read explores some of the dynamics involved with the many facets of crypto-anarchism. It looks at the issue as a class struggle. Bitcoin is specifically mentioned. I should also note that none of the ideas here are new. These issues have been discussed since the early 90s.

Yeah, but, you know, the cypherspace needs a physical space to exist... The Chinese government is already successfully blocking Tor, for example. Yes, Chinese geeks manage to escape, but once a technology becomes popular enough to be more accessible to not-so-geek folks, then the government can always block if they are really determined. They could go as far as creating a "whitelist" sort of blocking instead of the blacklist model they use right now. (by whitelist I mean you block everything with the exception of a specific list, instead of allowing everything with the exception of a specific list)

It's complicated... but anyway, I also think that cryptography+p2p networks will help society a lot, for sure.

Where's the "Like", "Thumbs Up", or "+" button on this simple machines forum?  So many great quotes here...

True.   Governments are powerless in cypherspace.  There are no guns nor jails there.   Force in cypherspace is mathematics, and thanks to free software, it belongs to whoever wants to use it.

^^^ WIN.

Yes, the cat has been released out of the box.  PGP has been released to the public.  All networking standards by the IEEE are open.  It is too late for the government to turn back.  It will be an epic battle, but we will prevail.

It will be an epic battle, but we will prevail.  Our social structure is evolving to a decentralized nature.

I like your line "The cypher-sphere creates a place of freedom and anonymity that is guaranteed by mathematics and not the whim of an elected official."  I may steal it. 

One of my great fears, and I'm sure some of you share it, is that an oppressive and dictatorial style of government will become the norm and that these local governments will have supranational structures imposing on them the equivalent of one world government.

One of the ways that the people can remain free is by privately controlling the means of communication. The internet is for instance 99% privately owned. The entire government portion can be shut down to tomorrow and the world might not even notice. Unfortunately the political class specialize in showing up to a private party late and then shouting "lets get this party started!" as they impose rations and regulations on previously content happy party goers. I suspect this is why they call their groupings "parties"

The internet has not escaped their attention and obviously we see their fingers in everything. They shout terrorism and child pornography to high heaven but forget that the people themselves are vested in eradicating child pornography and that terrorism is mostly aimed at governments (directly or indirectly).

Cryptography of course makes the common man stronger than the NSA. Thanks to communications protocols based on redundancy and privacy ensuring software it has become possible to read your e-mail from almost anywhere with more secrecy than the US military can apply to its top secret documents. Thanks to cryptography applied to VPNs I can bypass "US only" restrictions and access sites like Hulu.com. The cypher-sphere creates a place of freedom and anonymity that is guaranteed by mathematics and not the whim of an elected official.

My question:
Do you think we will prevail or will government grow until it crushes its host?