Not sure if an arms race with the NSA will really help. But of course the most obvious weaknesses need to be fixed, but they have an arsenal of so much more powerful stuff and what is leaked yet will be much less then a tip of an iceberg (and most some years old).

The arms race of the US with the USSR was (beside other stuff) probably ended by a shortage of resources, as all that race consumed a lot of resources but did not produce anything. So unproductive investment was maybe one of the reasons why the USSR collapsed. Some folks say th US is also close to a collapes if you look to the debt, artificial money supply and the enourmous spending in military.

I think efficiency and creativity (productivity) could be one of the key factors to fight against.
Truth is more efficient then lies. Openness unfolds creativity and strict hierarchies are not working well in advanced fields like in science.

Julian Assange (http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.html) described in that interview why a small organisation like wikileaks can resist agains an attack of an army of 10 000 Pentagon agents.

"...This is a continuous striving that people have done for a long time. Of course, there is many individual battles that we win, but it is the nature of human beings that human beings lie and cheat and deceive and organized groups of people who do not lie and cheat and deceive find each other and get together... and because they have that temperament, are more efficient."

"But there is another way of leading, and that is leading through values instead of command and control. And when you lead through values you don't need to trust people, and values and the number of people who can adopt the value, there is no limit on the speed of adoption."

I love that part:
"Most wars in the 20th century have started as a result of lies. Amplified and spread by the mainstream press. And you go, well that is a horrible circumstance, that is terrible that all these wars start with lies. And I say no, this is a tremendous opportunity, because it means that populations basically don't like wars and they have to be lied into it. And that means we can be truthed into peace. "

The whole interview is super interesting to read (and to see the dumb questions of E. Schmidt & co.) and has also some parts about bitcoin and visionary applications out of it...


Another issue is that I think that NSA control delusion seems pathological. Like the German Democratic Republic monstrous spying program did not correlate to any rational reasons but rather was an expression of a pretty sick mindset. But I am not sure about that point. Maybe they have some "masterplan" to use all that data to feed a new quantum artificial intelligence machinery in the future…
If its only pathological, how to fight that?


Hacky new year to all of you!



Am 31.12.2013 um 17:22 schrieb Drak <drak@???>:

> Gobsmacked.
>
> The NSA has essentially baked themselves into the fabric of the internet.
> I was really amazed about 'diode' attack being "beat the speed of light" by being able to transmit a spoofed response faster than the requested website can, to the target.
>
> Our big concern should be the ability to modify internet traffic at scale with "deep packet injection" - especially downloads.
>
> E.g. bitcoin-qt is distributed over plain http at sourceforge.net. bitcoin.org is also http only so the links could be altered.
>
> Applebaum says that TLS is effective in blocking this attack.
>
> I think it's imperative we lobby all wallet providers to make their sites https only and to use download sources which are https. This would severely hampers large scale attacks.
>
> The NSA "Exploits Everywhere" campaign leaves the doors open to others who find the exploits (and they have been according to the video).
>
> Drak
>
>
>
>
> On 30 December 2013 22:19, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:
> Don't lose hope :) We're here 1 brick at a time. That you, I and others
> are talking about a new reality is a start. People are already buying
> drugs online. The small and powerful live off the large and disenfranchised.
>
> On 30/12/13 22:15, Manfred Karrer wrote:
> > Probably many of you have already seen that video of Jacob Applebaum at the CCC:
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0w36GAyZIA
> >
> > I was not so much suprised by many NSA activities we heard about in that year, but that is really, really SHOCKING!
> >
> > That changes for me also the view I had about Bitcoins security. The NSA can by 100% break the system if they want (they have 1000s of attack vectors). I was not so sure about that before.
> > So as we cannot fix all the technical weaknesses leading to this digital 1984 nightmare in what we are living, we certainly need to fight also on the political side.
> > I was thinking before technology could just make old school politics or power structures obsolete, but I am not so sure about that anymore. They have created with the NSA a monster in the worst sense of that word, and to beat them on the technological side seems to me naive (after I saw that video).
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
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