Jan. 13, 2021
CD4: Censorship, Privacy, and Open Source Software with J9Roem and benthecarman
Join Matt Odell as he sits down with J9Roem and benthecarman
EPISODE: 0.0.4
BLOCK: 665779
PRICE: 2885 sats per dollar
TOPICS: Censorship, Privacy, and Open Source Software
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00:00 - The importance of privacy in an increasingly digital world
26:21 - The impact of KYC on privacy and personal security
43:05 - The role of open source software and funding for developers
48:48 - The significance of privacy and censorship resistance in projects like Tor and Bitcoin
01:08:00 - The trade-offs between privacy and convenience in messaging apps
01:32:00 - The risks of centralized platforms and the need for alternatives
01:45:30 - The importance of privacy and decentralization
WEBVTT
NOTE
Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 3/17/2024 4:34:21 PM
Duration: 6329.678
Channels: 1
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Category because that's what that is.
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39,000.
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Where's it going?
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I mean, can you play the clip in 2,012 and 13 when it was at 200 and everybody was laughing at me on CNBC every time I would talk about Bitcoin?
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Where is it going? It's probably going to a 100, then a 150, then 200,000.
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In what period? I don't know. 5 years, 10 years, but it's going there. And the reason is because every time you see
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all of this stuff happening,
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it just reminds you that, wow, our leaders are not as trustworthy and reliable as they used to be. And so just in case,
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we really do need to have some kind of, you know, insurance we can keep under our pillow
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that gives us some access to an uncorrelated hedge.
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And it's going to eventually transition to something much more important, But for right now, you're just getting all these data points that prove this thing. It's just the fabric of society is frayed.
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And until we figure out how to make it better,
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it's time to just have a little, schmuck insurance on the side, and everybody's running in. It's just an incredible thing. I could never have imagined it. Good to be a schmuck, I guess, if you got if you got
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Hey, Freaks. It's your boy, Matt Odell.
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Sorry about that little technical mishap we had there.
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Thank you for joining us on the rebroadcast.
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This is Citadel Dispatch episode 4.
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I'm joined by my friends,
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Janine and Ben Decarman.
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I'd like to welcome them here to the show. I wanna thank all the freaks for joining us live.
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Without you, we couldn't do this show.
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And it's been a pretty crazy week, so the topics I wanna cover mostly the focus I really wanna have here
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is on censorship,
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privacy, and open source software because I think these last few weeks have really highlighted to a lot of people what the 3 of us,
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have been talking about a lot lately, which is the need for more ship resistant tools and platforms,
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available to individuals.
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So
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with that being said,
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let's get this party started.
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Janine, do you wanna give a brief intro,
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on how the freaks,
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what what your focus has been in the last few years?
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Yeah. Hi, everyone.
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For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm an investigative
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journalist and privacy researcher.
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Middle of last year, I started a newsletter called,
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This Month in Bitcoin Privacy. So if you want to specifically know about
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anything,
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related to privacy in Bitcoin, that's what I focus on.
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I also do other work, but that's mainly the Bitcoin stuff. I also
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have a shout out to, John Spahary for reminding me.
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Worked on wallets recovery with,
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with,
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I
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just
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my brain is a bit dead right now.
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Yeah. Worked on recovery,
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which helps with,
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which which helps with,
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if you have issues, like, importing your,
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your keys or your seed to other wallets and and are struggling with that, it kind of explains why that's the case and what which wallets are compatible with each other.
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That's great. And,
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no don't don't worry about being a little frazzled here. I think we all are, after my little technical issue there.
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Ben, how should people know you?
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Hey, guys. I'm Ben. I've been in Bitcoin for,
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like, 3 years now, and I've been doing Bitcoin development for about
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2 years ish now. Started at, like, Bitcoin Core,
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just basic stuff, and then worked out with Sabi for a while. And then for the past year, I've been
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at doing, discreet log contract stuff.
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Thank you for introducing yourself. I just put the link to this month in Bitcoin privacy,
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Janine's most recent, newsletter,
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into
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the comments.
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Everyone should go check that out. I really have been enjoying them. So thank you for that, Janine.
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I guess let's just jump right into it.
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We had
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the sitting president of the United States got removed from,
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from Twitter completely forever.
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And I think all of a sudden, people are starting to realize
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that if it can happen to
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one of the most powerful people in the world,
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then maybe it is actually happening
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to much,
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you know, much more vulnerable people,
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all the time.
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And,
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let's I I think I think I think it'd be good to shed some light on on what this particular issue is, this idea of deplatforming,
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this idea that that you can basically remove someone from an online platform,
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and and what are the implications of of that for us going forward?
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Yeah. It's been a real crazy week because it it wasn't just, like, the present. It was, like, lots of,
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other things. Like, Ron Paul's, like, page got removed off Facebook and, like, seeming and, like, some, like, even some, like, stuff from the left got removed
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that, like, seemingly was unrelated to Trump. So it's been, like, a huge purge from
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social media, and it's like I don't know. I think, like, Gab and, like, Mastodon have been getting huge
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influx of which is good to see.
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So,
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the
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the issue is bigger, I think, than so so so I'm I'm gonna how do how can we unpack this? Let let's unpack this a little bit because we had we literally had Parler, right, which is one of these competing Twitter
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like, services. I guess it was it was a relatively new service.
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It had,
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you know,
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it it was it was a very amateur hour type of operation they seem to be having over there. They didn't have very good security,
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policies in place. But besides all of that, Amazon, AWS,
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removed
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Parler from their service. They deplatform
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them from
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the actual cloud servers. You know, Amazon's cloud servers are running
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a a large majority of the Internet,
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and Parler's operations were part of that, and they removed Parler from there. And then app before that happened,
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Apple and Google removed them from the App Store. So we have we have multiple different things happening. Right? We have
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we have, like, platforms on platforms on platforms. Right? So so, like, for
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so so you have the individual user who is being hosted on a platform. You have that platform, which is then also is being hosted on a cloud server somewhere, and then you have the actual app distribution, which is going through these controlled walled gardens.
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And wherever you have the central point of failures is where you you tend to see pressure happen.
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So
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let's unpack it even further than that. Janine, now she's no longer having cat problems. Janine, why is free speech important? Why is the ability for anyone to to interact
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interact freely online
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so important.
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Yeah. Just to insert really quickly, I blanked on Rodolfo Novak's name because I was staring at my cat about to push something off of a bookshelf.
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So,
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that is fixed now.
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But yeah. So I actually gave a talk in December,
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called financial
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cancel culture about the link between freedom of speech
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and money, and how censoring
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financial access,
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and also just limiting financial access in general
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can affect,
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speech.
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And so,
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yeah, I definitely think that in terms of,
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recent events, but also I mean, I I covered
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mainly events that happened just in November December in my presentation, and there was quite a lot. I focused on that because there was just so many
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examples that I could give.
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Obviously, the most prominent one that most people know about is,
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when WikiLeaks,
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published the
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diplomatic cables.
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And then,
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you had various payment processors
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and even banks,
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kicking them off.
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Not for any real,
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explicit reason in most cases,
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and not saying no whether there was any pressure, but I think it's reasonable to assume that there was pressure at a very high level to do so.
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But even if there wasn't,
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that without Bitcoin existing,
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I could I think I could reasonably say that WikiLeaks itself may not have continued to exist after that point,
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or at least it would have been significantly harder because they're at the moment,
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I think they're still relying on,
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basically other institutions to accept donations on their behalf, which,
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you know, that works, but it's not the best.
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So in terms of journalism, which is my focus,
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I definitely
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see the value in
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in having a money that is censorship resistant because,
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like,
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WikiLeaks is and a lot of other people now are skilled in, you know, finding ways to at least make their platform censorship resistant. There's a lot of different methods for that that don't
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have anything to do with Blockchains
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despite many attempts at that in recent years.
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But a lot of them haven't really looked at money. And I think,
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you know, examples like WikiLeaks, but also others,
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they're the only people who have really considered that and actually been willing to
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experiment with things like Bitcoin, which is, you know, back in 2010 was so much smaller, and that was, you know, it's always this rumor that,
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part of the reason that Satoshi went quiet is because one of the last messages he, she or they posted was about
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the, hornet's nest being kicked in terms of WikiLeaks possibly accepting donations in Bitcoin.
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And weirdly enough, I still think that a lot of Bitcoiners
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have that fear of even talking
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about, the case
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or trying to link Bitcoin with that in any way, which is unfortunate because I feel like, you know, if one organization
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if you can't even talk about an organization accepting Bitcoin, is Bitcoin really censorship resistant?
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If you're afraid about that.
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Yeah. I mean, I I I think that's an excellent point. And
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and the
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you you touched on something that was that that is really key there, I mean, for us as Bitcoiners, which is that
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oftentimes,
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the financial aspects are what gets squeezed first.
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And
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if if if if you're able to defund a particular movement, you're able to prevent them from raising funds, you're able to prevent maybe a independent media
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personality
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or individual
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from monetizing their work,
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then you're able to essentially censor their speech even if you're not stopping the specific speech because you're making it so that they,
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they're not able to fundraise. They're not able to support their operations.
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But
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this is
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a
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a phenomenon that we've seen growing
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more and more over the years. I mean, most recently,
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I think a a big element of, the financial censorship side,
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has been
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I think it was called Operation Chokepoint, which was against, I believe, sex workers and,
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marijuana businesses.
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And and these type of businesses are are
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and and you see the trend here. Right? The trend is is you basically
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put a business or entity in a bad light. You you you equate WikiLeaks with with terrorism
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or,
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foreign governments. You equate marijuana and and sex working with, you know, illegal distasteful activities, and then you're it's easier for you to go and censor them.
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And and that's exactly the MO we've seen,
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on the speech platform. So so it comes down to what is the solution here,
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as our as our lives get more and more digital. And is is that solution really,
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as some have said, like, competing platforms. Right? So if Stripe censors you, well, do you go to Cash App? Or if Twitter censors you, do you go to a Gap?
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Alternatively, we've seen that because of the way our our our tech situation is set up, our tech infrastructure is set up. There's so many choke points that prevent those companies from even competing in the first place. So I would argue,
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and I I think you guys would tend to agree with me, that the real the real solution here
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is some type of tech based solution. We we basically need networks and protocols and tools,
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that that can't be censored by an individual, whether you like it or not.
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And that's the only real way to to protect speech and or and to tangentially to protect privacy, I would say, is the same thing.
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Ben, what are your thoughts here?
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I completely agree. Like, I mean, I think, like, this week kinda proves how much, like, competing platforms, like, isn't really the solution because, like and there's, like, that picture from, like, Fox News of, like, 20 different platforms that banned Trump. And then, like, we saw, like, the actual Twitter platforms, you know, like, Parler. Like, it got delisted from both app stores, and a d AWS stopped hosting them. So, like, you can try to create a separate platform, but it's still, like, it's still another central point of failure that you're relying on. It's just a different central point of failure. So, like, building a actual decentralized alternative where you actually have, like, censorship resistance and not just relying on some other party
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is a much better alternative. And,
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I think we're people are recognizing that a lot more now, and
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there's hopefully some people are waking up and realizing, like, we need to build these, like, censorship resistant platforms or protocols,
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for things, like, other than money.
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So I think, like, an interesting way of framing it,
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is is
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is this idea, like, the when you when you see this this censorship coming from a,
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a a central body,
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it it tends to be the playbook tends to be to do 2 things, to identify critical participants,
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and then pressure those participants. So I I think when you're looking at tools,
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that are trying to
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help further the goals of censorship resistance.
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I think, like, the two main things that we can benefit from is is
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making it more difficult to identify the specific participants.
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And even if you do identify the participants, make it so each in participant doesn't have, you know, any kind of real significant power over the others.
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Otherwise, you can find 1 and you and you can pressure them.
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And so
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a key element here
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is free open source software. Because if if if we do not have free open source software,
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then you always have some kind of centralized company,
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sitting here and operating,
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whatever tool you're using, such as Twitter, and that company can get pressured.
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I was hoping, Janine, that you could,
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help enlighten the freaks, you know,
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why why open source is so much more powerful,
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and and why is it why it's basically
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absolutely essential,
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for us moving forward.
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No worry if you disagree with me.
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Well, one thing I thought was interesting. I don't know if you guys
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looked at the notice
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that BitGo received
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that, you know, they had,
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basically
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violated US sanctions
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because they had supposedly,
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hosted wallets for users that were connecting from
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the banned countries like Iran and Syria and such.
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I thought that was interesting because
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that happened around or that notice was published within days of a similar notice that was in the complete opposite direction from GitHub,
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which for anyone who didn't see in 2019, there was this controversy because
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GitHub was suddenly limiting,
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access to
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developers from Iran,
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and they were citing US sanctions as the reason. And interestingly,
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very unless
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I can't remember the date when it was posted. It was the last week or so. But,
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they posted an update saying that they had actually applied for a license
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to be able to offer their services in Iran.
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And the argument that they gave was that they basically said that the freedom of information
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benefits
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of making their services available for developers there should it was greater than the
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need to impose
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to basically deny it on the basis of imposing economic sanctions, which I thought was really interesting because,
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basically, it was saying,
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you know,
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the the the value of,
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you know, offering these services and having people from Iran contribute to open source software
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was,
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was outweighed or it no. It it outweighed the
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the desire for the government to restrict that.
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So I thought that's interesting that those two things happened at the same time even though they went in completely opposite directions.
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Right. With GitHub, they actually got a they got approved. Right?
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Yeah. They they Yeah.
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Yeah. Their license got approved, and they say that they're going to apply for licenses for other countries. At the moment, they just have Iran.
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But, yeah, it's unfortunate
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that the same argument can't also be made for money, but,
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obviously, money is perceived as much more
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political than simply software,
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hosting,
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unfortunately.
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But, I would argue that
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Right? Very similar.
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I, well, I was surprised about BitGo, or I was surprised about GitHub? No. BitGo, what didn't surprise me, and we can get back to that. But but the the, you know,
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the reversal on GitHub allowing
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Iranians I mean, I I was pleasantly surprised at that, but I I did not I don't think that's something that we can really expect
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going forward. Right? It caught me off guard.
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Yeah. I mean, I yeah. I wasn't expecting it. I mean, because as everyone
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should know by now, GitHub is owned by Microsoft.
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So I'm guessing that the reason they were able to do that was maybe Microsoft
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stuck its giant foot in there and said that they wanted to support it. I have no idea what stance Microsoft,
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may have taken in those kinds of negotiations, but, I mean, it is good
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that,
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that that argument that they made was successful,
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because I didn't even know that
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I didn't I wasn't even aware that you could actually apply for a license
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to
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basically
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ignore the sanctions under certain circumstances.
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But, I was surprised that
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it sounds like they made the argument that,
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it's it's important for,
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spreading
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intellectual freedom or something.
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No. Yeah. I mean, a 100% great to see that.
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You did have you do have a good point there that it kinda hits both ways. Right? These big companies,
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it's it's more likely
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in in some
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in some ways, it's more likely that they can, you know, bend the rules in their favor,
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and get a carve out for themselves for Iranian users in this case.
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But then other times, I I they're almost bigger targets,
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and that they'll be more likely to have to comply because,
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because they are one of the largest companies in the world,
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and and the governments have more leverage over them.
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Like, sometimes I want you you see, like, these smaller
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a lot of times, you'll see, like, these smaller start ups, and they might not do any kind of geo blocking. And then once they get bigger, then they have to.
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Just to go back to BitGo,
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that's really interesting because
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what we're seeing here is is basically it was a non custodial wallet with BitGo. It was a noncustodial Bitcoin wallet. They weren't holding anyone's Bitcoin,
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but they were providing,
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infrastructure.
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And,
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so they knew the IP addresses of their users. And and one of the issues is is using IP addresses
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to mass classify users is that you can use a VPN
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to,
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you know, fake an IP address or have a different IP address,
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located in a different country. So what happens after that is what we usually see is justification of KYC, which is which is mass data collection of users to make sure,
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that the user is who they say they are and to censor appropriately.
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Ben, you've been you've been awfully quiet over there.
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You you wanna talk to the freaks a little bit about why, you know, why KYC concerns us so much?
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And it says, like, KYC is like a it's a double edged sword where, like, one, you're, like, you know, you're giving up this info that
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now, like,
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you, like, you don't wanna give up. Like, if you're just giving us info to Ditko or whatever, like, they can
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use this information against you, and, like, you shouldn't need to do that. It's a huge hassle, and you're, like, putting yourself up for, like, risk because, like, we've seen countless times where, you know, Bitco could get hacked, and now they're selling this data on the market, like, what we saw with Ledger earlier this,
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like, few months ago where now, like, there's just a huge,
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entire database of people that own Bitcoin
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and, you know, they have their, like, their house address and phone number and full name and, like, if you had something like that where it's if you're doing it even full KYC, we're giving up
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a something like a driver's license or a Social Security number, now you can be at risk for, like, someone stealing your identity and then someone could, you know, open up credit cards in your name and, like, really screw things up. And, like, it's a huge problem in America. I think, like, a quarter of Americans get their identity stolen in their lifetime, which is utterly ridiculous. And, like, that's thousands of hours that people are spending not only, like,
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getting wasted by, like, having to deal with that, but then, like, the like, if they don't catch it, they could actually, like, ruin parts of people's lives. And, like, these people
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have no reason to be able to give up this information. Like, you know, I should be allowed to use BitGo services if me and BitGo want to use it, but,
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you know, some people don't like that.
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Yeah. I think there's kind of 2 aspects to KYC that are harmful. The one is,
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the one aspect is for people who even have
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information
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relevant to KYC to begin with, which is that, you know, once you enter that, you're as you said, you're at risk of,
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identity theft. You're at risk of things like, the ledger data breach happening where,
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you know, potentially
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thousands to 100 of thousands of people,
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if they didn't
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use,
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you know, if they didn't obfuscate their identity somehow or obfuscate their,
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shipping location, whether that's a,
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in a lot of cases, it was probably a home address,
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then you basically open yourself up to anyone with the motivation to come and find you with the knowledge that, you know, you have some interest at least in a,
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volatile,
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asset.
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The other aspect of KYC is that from the start, it blocks out anyone who doesn't have the identity,
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documents necessary to participate in the system by going through the KYC process. Like, if they don't have it, they don't even get the choice of whether to participate because they don't.
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They whether to make that, take those privacy risks. They just don't have the option. So that's also an issue.
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And so, you know, at on one hand, that means, you know,
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you're, you know, financially censored in the sense, and your speech in effect can be censored as well if you've not if you're not even allowed to join these platforms because you don't have the right
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documents.
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But then also, you can be censored
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if
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you say something that is not acceptable to that platform, and they don't wanna host it anymore, and they kick you off.
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Yeah. Like, that it's like a huge deal where, like, now, like,
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say if I I don't know. If if you're a sex worker and you have to and you wanna use, like, someone's service, like
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like, if I'm, like, wanna have a wall at Bicco, it shouldn't matter, like, what my job is. Like
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but if you have to, like, submit an ID, they could, like, do some cross check and be like, oh, this person does this job that we deem
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inappropriate, and now they block you from the service, which, like,
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they shouldn't
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be like, they shouldn't have to know who I am and, like, they shouldn't need to be able to do all that stuff. Like, it's it'd be so much
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better for, like, both parties if they could just ignore that and just, like, offer the service and honestly.
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Well, I mean, that's the thing. Right? It's, like, all these arguments are made,
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that it's to protect the users,
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or at least we often hear that.
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But, ultimately,
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this data collection is ineffective,
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because criminals can buy,
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KYC information, fake information. They can steal fake information.
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All that information
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find usually, it it you should assume that it's gonna leak,
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because companies have hard time securing that information.
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So so, really, it's
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not only does it put users in in massive risk in terms of their private data,
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but
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it's not even effective because it creates this loop where that private data is such a honeypot,
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that it can then be used to circumvent any kind of,
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compliance
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benefits that they so called compliance benefits that they could possibly get out of it, that they pretend they can get out of it. Ideally, if we were talking about protecting the user,
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that that that service, that company, that tool should know as little as possible about them.
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Compounding that on top of that, we have a Internet model,
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a monetization model on the Internet
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that that is the main monetization model that's gotten widespread use is really,
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the monetization
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of user data and advertising to them.
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So, you know, many of our most profitable companies
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not only are are required by regulation to collect intimate data on us, but they actually have an incentive system in place
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to to make money by collecting additional data on top of that.
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And then I I I don't even know where to put this, but, Americans know about the Equifax leak, which the Equifax hack, where we weren't even customers. They were just a third party company
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that just, you know, automatically takes data on every single American.
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So we just have these systems in place that,
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that prioritize data
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collection over data protection.
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And it's just us.
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So, I mean,
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another thing that's been happening,
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So, I mean, a key element here, I think, is privacy. I think I think it it all it all comes together. You can't really have proper censorship resistance
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without without privacy,
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without some elements of privacy.
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And you can't really,
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I guess, you could get privacy without censorship resistance,
400
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maybe. But I think I feel like if you have privacy, then you're almost you're you're almost censorship resistant inherently.
401
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What do you guys think about that relationship between privacy and censorship resistance?
402
00:29:38.665 --> 00:30:03.875
I agree with that. Like, if you don't know who I am, like, it's a lot harder to censor me, like, based off, like like, it was impossible to censor me based off who I am. Like, you can't if you don't know what my job is, you can't censor me because I'm a sex worker, because, you know, I deal drugs or whatever. So you'll you'll always get that inherent censorship. Now if they could do, like, extra analysis, but you're still, like, always enhancing that. And, I mean, that's always just gonna be a net benefit.
403
00:30:07.500 --> 00:30:09.519
Yeah. I think I mean, in terms of,
404
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if if you think of privacy as, you know,
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if if you first do threat modeling and figure out what your threats are in privacy and
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because I think that's part of the promise that and it's something I'm going to kind of
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talk about,
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for the Bob meetup, but I can go into the gist here, which is that,
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I kind
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of am annoyed with the way that people
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a lot of people respond to me when I say I'm researching privacy or I'm a privacy searcher because
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usually the first question I get is
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why why does privacy matter? And
414
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I think that has to do with the fact that people don't think of privacy as information security.
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And, I mean, information security is a lot broader than just privacy. It's also about authentication and integrity.
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But
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privacy is a big part of that, and if, you know, if someone calls himself a security researcher, you don't you don't see them getting asked why is security important.
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And so if people started thinking about privacy
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as a strategy for security,
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then I think they would understand
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that that question is kind of
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weird,
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to get asked
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because, yeah, I
425
00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:34.340
I I definitely think that
426
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having
427
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I think, you have to have some privacy in terms of I actually use the the the German term, because in in Germany,
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they don't have
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privacy really in the constitution. They have what's called informational self determination,
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and that's the idea that you should be able to
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decide
432
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who has access to your information or at least have knowledge of who has access.
433
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That's actually in their constitution.
434
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And I find that a lot
435
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better in terms of explaining to people what privacy is, like, the scope of it, because if it's about,
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you know, volunteerism
437
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and making
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being able to make decisions about who has access to your information and having control over it,
439
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then I think people will appreciate privacy a lot more if it's framed in that way and not just I'm hiding stuff because that's how most people, I think, see privacy is that you have to,
440
00:32:30.205 --> 00:32:32.545
you know, you have to go dark and,
441
00:32:33.405 --> 00:32:36.780
you know, interact with people in a very limited way. But
442
00:32:37.180 --> 00:32:40.160
I think that that's a very that's like a narrow
443
00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:42.960
section of what I think privacy means.
444
00:32:49.025 --> 00:32:49.525
I
445
00:32:50.305 --> 00:32:54.560
yeah. So, I mean, that that's a that's definitely a very a very good point,
446
00:32:55.360 --> 00:32:58.820
that I've struggled with myself is is do people actually
447
00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:03.220
does the average person care enough? I mean, I I think
448
00:33:04.904 --> 00:33:09.005
I I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. I think and I think, ultimately,
449
00:33:10.345 --> 00:33:14.120
in our society, we've kind of found ourselves in this weird
450
00:33:16.260 --> 00:33:16.760
situation
451
00:33:17.060 --> 00:33:18.820
where privacy is actually
452
00:33:20.295 --> 00:33:21.835
the default is the opposite,
453
00:33:23.015 --> 00:33:27.595
unfortunately. And and and and that wasn't always the case before. It's it's mostly
454
00:33:27.895 --> 00:33:28.635
tech enabled.
455
00:33:29.540 --> 00:33:32.120
Our our our world has become more and more digital.
456
00:33:33.299 --> 00:33:34.360
And, you know,
457
00:33:34.660 --> 00:33:36.840
I mean, a perfect example is is
458
00:33:37.985 --> 00:33:41.445
the status quo was if you spoke in your house about something,
459
00:33:42.625 --> 00:33:46.405
it was only heard by, like, you and your family members and whoever was in the house.
460
00:33:46.990 --> 00:33:47.490
Now,
461
00:33:48.110 --> 00:33:51.250
for a large number of people around the world,
462
00:33:52.430 --> 00:33:55.730
they have Internet connected microphones that they plugged in themselves,
463
00:33:56.485 --> 00:33:58.184
to provide them additional conveniences.
464
00:33:59.205 --> 00:34:03.465
So that's not it's no longer the status quo. Right? It's it's it's almost
465
00:34:04.310 --> 00:34:08.730
the the people who are seeking privacies are the outliers. You have to, like, go out of the way.
466
00:34:10.710 --> 00:34:14.825
Yeah. There on that subject, there was a very interesting talk at CCC,
467
00:34:16.965 --> 00:34:19.465
about, I think it was specifically about Amazon's
468
00:34:20.005 --> 00:34:22.025
oh, no. I think it was Siri, actually.
469
00:34:22.405 --> 00:34:22.645
And
470
00:34:23.210 --> 00:34:26.829
yeah, a lot of people, they kind of see Apple as, oh,
471
00:34:27.130 --> 00:34:32.509
I mean, actually, the researcher who presented justified her continued use of Siri personally
472
00:34:33.195 --> 00:34:35.935
as to say Apple's business model isn't,
473
00:34:36.955 --> 00:34:38.335
isn't to sell your data.
474
00:34:38.955 --> 00:34:42.575
And that's to I I would debate that. I would say it's
475
00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:43.460
true
476
00:34:44.080 --> 00:34:47.380
in the larger context of all the other companies who are
477
00:34:48.320 --> 00:35:01.930
doing and creating similar products, But I would definitely recommend watching that because a lot of people think, oh, the the Alexa only turns on or is engaged when you give the call the call phrase, like, hey, Alexa or hey, Siri, or whatever.
478
00:35:03.190 --> 00:35:04.970
And it turns out that's not the case.
479
00:35:05.510 --> 00:35:08.330
She actually tested it on her own house and family,
480
00:35:09.035 --> 00:35:11.775
and it was getting triggered by, like,
481
00:35:12.155 --> 00:35:12.655
random
482
00:35:13.035 --> 00:35:16.174
laughter, random conversation that you couldn't even hear
483
00:35:16.555 --> 00:35:17.375
in the recording.
484
00:35:18.620 --> 00:35:23.120
So if anyone I hope no one has those. I would never have one of those devices.
485
00:35:23.820 --> 00:35:27.440
But anyone who does, you might want to check that out because
486
00:35:28.125 --> 00:35:31.345
it is picking up a lot more than you think it does.
487
00:35:32.204 --> 00:35:35.244
I think I think what a lot of people don't understand too is it's not like,
488
00:35:36.230 --> 00:35:44.915
you know, you have your assigned FBI agent listening on your Alexa device. It's like, these companies have, like, some of the smartest people in the world working on, like, data collection and data analysis. Like,
489
00:35:45.775 --> 00:35:55.880
your Alexa is just, like, streaming some data to the Amazon servers, and it's going through this, like, this complex thing they wrote that's doing analysis. And that's where you're, like, losing, like, privacy
490
00:35:56.180 --> 00:36:09.515
and other aspects like that. It's not like, you know, even if, like, quote unquote, the government doesn't care about you, like, you're still losing something here. And, like, it's still something you should be protecting that, like, you know, Amazon doesn't need this data from you and you have no reason to give it to them.
491
00:36:11.734 --> 00:36:12.234
So,
492
00:36:12.810 --> 00:36:17.150
I mean, there's a there's a good point there in terms of Amazon telling,
493
00:36:17.930 --> 00:36:18.430
individuals
494
00:36:18.810 --> 00:36:19.870
that it's only
495
00:36:21.165 --> 00:36:22.305
collecting information
496
00:36:23.165 --> 00:36:24.945
under a specific set of circumstances.
497
00:36:26.045 --> 00:36:28.865
That brings us back to the open source software,
498
00:36:29.670 --> 00:36:30.170
conversation.
499
00:36:30.630 --> 00:36:32.970
In that, we can have tools,
500
00:36:33.910 --> 00:36:39.424
at our disposal that allow us to to easily prove and verify that they're doing what they're doing.
501
00:36:40.684 --> 00:36:41.184
Unfortunately,
502
00:36:42.045 --> 00:36:45.345
the status quo is the exact opposite. I mean, you said there,
503
00:36:45.799 --> 00:36:46.619
that Siri,
504
00:36:47.319 --> 00:36:55.235
you know, Apple says they protect my privacy, and it's their business model to protect my privacy. There is no way that any of us can prove that or verify
505
00:36:57.315 --> 00:36:57.815
that.
506
00:36:58.915 --> 00:36:59.815
Yeah. Definitely.
507
00:37:00.835 --> 00:37:05.830
And I mean, a big a big reason of why those kinds of devices concern me is,
508
00:37:06.770 --> 00:37:09.350
if anyone's not familiar with kind of the US,
509
00:37:10.290 --> 00:37:10.790
statute,
510
00:37:11.655 --> 00:37:14.395
there's a principle called the 3rd party doctrine
511
00:37:14.855 --> 00:37:18.075
that, I've especially been following a lot in my newsletter,
512
00:37:18.615 --> 00:37:19.835
when it comes to,
513
00:37:21.460 --> 00:37:23.160
like, the EFF looking
514
00:37:23.460 --> 00:37:26.359
at the lack of privacy protection and transparency
515
00:37:26.660 --> 00:37:29.055
with Fintech apps, including some
516
00:37:29.435 --> 00:37:30.735
that have to do with cryptocurrency.
517
00:37:31.435 --> 00:37:35.135
And the 3rd party doctrine in the US basically says that,
518
00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:36.980
if you
519
00:37:37.359 --> 00:37:44.579
if you give data to a 3rd party, that could be your friend. It could be a business, but in general, it gets applied to
520
00:37:44.905 --> 00:37:46.285
instances with businesses.
521
00:37:46.825 --> 00:37:48.045
Basically says that
522
00:37:48.345 --> 00:37:51.805
if you give your data to a third party, you have a decreased
523
00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:56.900
or in some cases, no expectation of privacy anymore because you have, like, surrendered
524
00:37:57.520 --> 00:38:02.855
that privacy to someone else. And so what scares me about I I haven't seen whether
525
00:38:03.155 --> 00:38:05.815
this has been applied anywhere, but I am
526
00:38:06.275 --> 00:38:10.270
afraid of the idea that if you have these devices in your house,
527
00:38:10.810 --> 00:38:18.750
that at some point someone's going to make the argument that because you have, you know, surrendered the privacy of your conversations in your own home
528
00:38:19.464 --> 00:38:23.405
and other people can access that, that that decreases your
529
00:38:24.105 --> 00:38:27.565
like, the the there's this assumption that within the home, there is,
530
00:38:28.250 --> 00:38:33.710
you know, it's different on, like, public streets and such. But in the home, that is considered, like, the gold standard of
531
00:38:34.090 --> 00:38:38.415
places where you should expect to have privacy. And so if that is then stripped away,
532
00:38:38.715 --> 00:38:41.455
what other what other place is there anymore?
533
00:38:48.050 --> 00:38:49.670
Yeah. I mean, you could take that argument,
534
00:38:51.410 --> 00:38:53.425
pretty much all the way down. Right?
535
00:38:53.905 --> 00:38:54.405
Especially
536
00:38:54.785 --> 00:38:55.845
now that we have
537
00:38:56.145 --> 00:39:02.325
so much of our lives are are connected to the Internet all the time. I mean, most people are walking around with a phone in their pocket.
538
00:39:03.589 --> 00:39:03.990
They,
539
00:39:04.390 --> 00:39:07.450
have Apple Watches. As we said, you know, they have these,
540
00:39:08.150 --> 00:39:11.529
these voice assistants. When you're walking down the street, there's cameras everywhere.
541
00:39:13.694 --> 00:39:20.835
So, yeah, the status quo is is is lack of privacy, and you basically have to seek it out. And I think that is one of
542
00:39:21.289 --> 00:39:24.349
the many issues that we have in terms of a society,
543
00:39:25.450 --> 00:39:26.670
that's trying to be
544
00:39:28.465 --> 00:39:32.085
a a beacon of free speech and a beacon of of personal rights.
545
00:39:33.025 --> 00:39:38.000
I I think we've ended up very far from that, and there's a there's a lot of progress that needs to be made
546
00:39:38.380 --> 00:39:38.620
there.
547
00:39:40.140 --> 00:39:41.840
I wanted to cover
548
00:39:43.660 --> 00:39:45.040
this this recent
549
00:39:46.395 --> 00:39:47.135
this this
550
00:39:47.515 --> 00:39:47.675
the
551
00:39:49.195 --> 00:39:50.095
so we have
552
00:39:50.795 --> 00:39:52.175
free open source software
553
00:39:52.850 --> 00:39:55.510
allows us to verify that we are
554
00:39:56.210 --> 00:39:58.630
that these tools are doing what they say they're doing.
555
00:39:59.330 --> 00:40:03.815
We have individuals that need to actually care to use those tools.
556
00:40:04.195 --> 00:40:08.615
And then we have the overwhelming set of individuals that don't realize. And I think, ultimately,
557
00:40:08.994 --> 00:40:10.375
what happens is as
558
00:40:10.750 --> 00:40:13.250
we see our society become more and more,
559
00:40:15.470 --> 00:40:21.894
anti privacy by design, is people are gonna get burned. Right? And we're gonna see worse and worse data leaks. Like, I think,
560
00:40:22.434 --> 00:40:23.255
if you look
561
00:40:23.875 --> 00:40:29.870
if you look at the scale of of instances we've had and and leaks we've had and hacks we've had,
562
00:40:31.130 --> 00:40:32.190
and and privacy
563
00:40:32.570 --> 00:40:35.150
compromises, we've had massive privacy compromises,
564
00:40:35.565 --> 00:40:37.025
it gets worse and worse,
565
00:40:37.725 --> 00:40:41.025
as the years go by because just by design, there's more information
566
00:40:41.405 --> 00:40:46.990
available out there. You know, the Ring camera system that Amazon has in front of everyone's house is a relatively new,
567
00:40:48.430 --> 00:40:53.890
is a relatively new device in terms of of network effects. Yet now you're starting to see it all throughout the suburbs,
568
00:40:55.125 --> 00:40:55.865
in America.
569
00:40:56.325 --> 00:41:02.745
What happens when those cameras start the implications of stuff like those cameras? And I think what happens is people will get burned,
570
00:41:03.630 --> 00:41:05.330
and then once they get burned,
571
00:41:05.710 --> 00:41:09.330
we we it's up to us as as privacy advocates.
572
00:41:10.055 --> 00:41:15.275
It's up to us to have those tools ready for them and the education ready for them so that when they're a motivated individual,
573
00:41:16.375 --> 00:41:18.075
they can improve their own situation.
574
00:41:18.660 --> 00:41:20.119
Would you guys agree with that?
575
00:41:21.299 --> 00:41:45.339
I I completely agree with that. It's also, like, in a kind of an incentive problem too of creating these open source solutions because, you know, as an open source developer, you're not generally not getting paid to do that. And, you know, Amazon's just gonna hire thousands of people to create a better product. So, like, it really, really does have to come from, like, the actual user to want to to want to seek the privacy because, like, the open source solution
576
00:41:45.835 --> 00:41:51.935
won't probably be the better product initially because, you know, they don't have multimillion dollar companies behind them.
577
00:41:56.660 --> 00:41:58.040
Any thoughts there, Janine?
578
00:42:00.900 --> 00:42:02.680
Yeah. I mean, I definitely think,
579
00:42:03.140 --> 00:42:07.065
I mean, I because on the subject, I actually have been reading a book,
580
00:42:08.005 --> 00:42:08.505
called
581
00:42:08.885 --> 00:42:13.065
The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Agbal.
582
00:42:13.580 --> 00:42:20.080
I haven't finished it yet, so I can't do a review. But I was generally really excited about it because basically she studied,
583
00:42:21.275 --> 00:42:25.375
how open source communities function and how open source software is built.
584
00:42:25.675 --> 00:42:28.415
And one of the things that she starts off
585
00:42:28.750 --> 00:42:29.250
with,
586
00:42:29.630 --> 00:42:30.690
at the beginning
587
00:42:31.309 --> 00:42:35.890
is kind of dispelling the notion that, like, yes, open source software,
588
00:42:36.585 --> 00:42:37.085
ideally,
589
00:42:37.465 --> 00:42:41.484
anyone can contribute anytime. It has, like, a wide contributor base.
590
00:42:41.785 --> 00:42:42.685
But in
591
00:42:43.145 --> 00:42:43.965
in practice,
592
00:42:44.665 --> 00:42:45.405
she actually
593
00:42:46.039 --> 00:42:46.859
split up,
594
00:42:48.279 --> 00:42:51.019
she kind of defined, like, the different types of
595
00:42:51.720 --> 00:42:53.900
projects that you can have,
596
00:42:54.440 --> 00:42:56.455
based on some having,
597
00:42:56.835 --> 00:43:04.215
like, really high user growth versus very low contributor growth. So you don't have tons of contributors for for most open source products,
598
00:43:05.160 --> 00:43:05.660
projects.
599
00:43:06.359 --> 00:43:09.099
They have very, very few contributors.
600
00:43:09.560 --> 00:43:10.940
In some cases, only
601
00:43:11.319 --> 00:43:11.819
1.
602
00:43:12.855 --> 00:43:20.954
But then some of them can have a really high user base. And so, I mean, in Bitcoin, I think we're especially sensitive to that because we have this.
603
00:43:21.560 --> 00:43:25.980
We care about consensus and about who's able to make changes to the code. And so,
604
00:43:26.600 --> 00:43:30.195
Bitcoin is actually mentioned, I think, at least once in the book,
605
00:43:30.515 --> 00:43:31.415
as an example
606
00:43:32.115 --> 00:43:33.895
that it's a community that cares
607
00:43:34.595 --> 00:43:38.770
very highly about, like, the quality of the code and the security of,
608
00:43:39.970 --> 00:43:41.990
you know, who is able to make
609
00:43:42.370 --> 00:43:42.870
contributions.
610
00:43:43.970 --> 00:43:44.470
And,
611
00:43:45.810 --> 00:43:47.650
so part of that problem where you
612
00:43:48.625 --> 00:43:49.825
we kind of have
613
00:43:50.625 --> 00:43:54.484
over the years, we've kind of seen open source software development as the commons
614
00:43:55.425 --> 00:43:59.250
and something that's just there and available. And,
615
00:43:59.789 --> 00:44:02.769
I mean, part of the reason why I think there aren't
616
00:44:03.150 --> 00:44:06.289
as many contributors to each project is because
617
00:44:06.875 --> 00:44:10.415
a lot of these people are just contributing their free time, and they do that because,
618
00:44:12.475 --> 00:44:21.049
they're I don't think it's so much that in some cases, maybe there aren't people who want to fund them, but I think in a lot of cases, it's just the barriers to
619
00:44:21.509 --> 00:44:24.635
funding contributors and what makes sense,
620
00:44:26.455 --> 00:44:30.475
has not had not really been possible until Bitcoin.
621
00:44:31.069 --> 00:44:31.809
And so
622
00:44:32.109 --> 00:44:38.015
I definitely think stuff to get developers funded and even exploring different ways of, like,
623
00:44:38.575 --> 00:44:45.075
you know, how how much should you give to particular contributors? Is the maintainer getting all of it and then they distribute it?
624
00:44:45.540 --> 00:44:52.200
Or are you paying on, like, a per commit basis? I think that would that's going to be really interesting in the future if open source projects
625
00:44:52.635 --> 00:44:53.135
can
626
00:44:53.675 --> 00:44:56.815
get funded because we've broken down the kind of,
627
00:44:57.675 --> 00:45:04.010
onboarding hurdles to doing so. Because I think people want to. It's just a struggle in a lot of cases to
628
00:45:04.549 --> 00:45:07.210
figure out how to do that. Like, I myself,
629
00:45:08.230 --> 00:45:11.535
at the moment, I don't have any public facing funding options.
630
00:45:12.155 --> 00:45:13.455
I'm trying to fix that,
631
00:45:14.075 --> 00:45:14.975
but it is,
632
00:45:16.075 --> 00:45:22.670
it is a you know, a lot of people, they just set up like a cash up profile or something. There's there's a lot
633
00:45:23.290 --> 00:45:24.510
of user experience.
634
00:45:27.025 --> 00:45:29.525
There's a lot of money being put into user experience
635
00:45:29.905 --> 00:45:34.965
lately with those kinds of things by big companies. The problem is, you know, these are
636
00:45:35.529 --> 00:45:40.109
essentially still bank accounts. So the people who can access them still have to go through
637
00:45:40.730 --> 00:45:41.789
the regular
638
00:45:42.395 --> 00:45:47.295
KYC process to do it. And so in that way, that still limits who can then
639
00:45:47.835 --> 00:45:51.470
get funded for contributing. So that would be unfortunate. But with
640
00:45:51.950 --> 00:45:54.450
with Bitcoin, we can do better than that.
641
00:45:58.349 --> 00:46:01.385
I I mean, that's some interesting those are some interesting points there.
642
00:46:02.405 --> 00:46:06.985
In terms of of getting funding, a key aspect of of Bitcoin
643
00:46:07.730 --> 00:46:08.950
is that it enables
644
00:46:10.210 --> 00:46:14.950
developers who are unknown developers, developers who do not have
645
00:46:15.410 --> 00:46:15.910
their
646
00:46:17.555 --> 00:46:25.255
their legal government identity publicly attached with working with this this open source project are able to receive funding.
647
00:46:26.369 --> 00:46:30.309
We've we've seen multiple developers get funded from Square Crypto, for instance,
648
00:46:31.010 --> 00:46:33.829
that are NIMs that are that are located around the world.
649
00:46:34.345 --> 00:46:36.685
So so that is a a a new opening,
650
00:46:37.305 --> 00:46:42.125
which is really good to see because I we were talking about earlier the relationship between censorship resistance
651
00:46:42.790 --> 00:46:43.450
and privacy.
652
00:46:43.910 --> 00:46:45.530
I think it's extremely important
653
00:46:45.990 --> 00:46:49.450
that we have developers on on important projects like Bitcoin
654
00:46:49.805 --> 00:46:56.740
that do not have their public identity associated with it, it becomes a lot more difficult to pressure them and to stop working on that kind of code,
655
00:46:57.860 --> 00:47:01.320
especially in in situations where that code could get politically heated.
656
00:47:02.820 --> 00:47:07.654
I I kinda I I feel like this is a a good moment to kind of discuss,
657
00:47:09.315 --> 00:47:12.775
the this apparent Tor attack that we see happening,
658
00:47:14.670 --> 00:47:15.170
because
659
00:47:16.190 --> 00:47:17.250
Tor is considered,
660
00:47:17.550 --> 00:47:21.490
you know, one of the leading open source projects, I would I would argue.
661
00:47:22.355 --> 00:47:27.095
And it seems to me that there's a there's almost a completely different mentality in terms
662
00:47:27.795 --> 00:47:29.895
of adversarial mindset versus
663
00:47:30.940 --> 00:47:33.039
versus, you know, the Bitcoin project,
664
00:47:34.779 --> 00:47:42.065
the Bitcoin open source project. Is that something that you've noticed, Ben? Like, do you do you I I feel like people
665
00:47:43.565 --> 00:47:44.625
grossly underestimate,
666
00:47:46.845 --> 00:47:51.810
the the, basically, the mindset that's gone into the motivation that's gone into developing Bitcoin
667
00:47:52.190 --> 00:47:52.690
software.
668
00:47:53.950 --> 00:47:59.330
Yeah. I think, like, a lot of people, like, kinda just assume Tor is the thing that will always work and, like,
669
00:47:59.775 --> 00:48:15.710
and, you know, it's not something that needs to be defended. Like, we we we, like, all agree we need to defend Bitcoin, but, like and this week, we kinda saw, like, all, like, the v three to our addresses were down and, like, tons of, like, services rely on that. And, like, you're commenting this on
670
00:48:16.165 --> 00:48:16.825
somewhere saying, like,
671
00:48:17.125 --> 00:48:52.369
you know, this could severely affect the lighting network and stuff like that. So yeah. Like, I think, like and, hopefully, this is, like, a wake up period for people, like, you know, is just as, like, probably as important as Bitcoin and, like, this is a network I need to defend. And, hopefully, you know, maybe this could incentivize people to, like, fund tour devs or, you know, to contribute themselves. But, yeah, it's it's pretty scary to see, like, how big of an attack it seemed to be. And I don't think I know they said they have it fixed, but I don't even know if it's out yet. And it's been, like, 2 or 3 days now. So, like, it's been a pretty serious attack.
672
00:48:58.375 --> 00:49:01.035
Yeah. I mean, I've been following I've been following
673
00:49:01.370 --> 00:49:02.030
the developments
674
00:49:02.410 --> 00:49:05.230
of v 3 just from a Bitcoin standpoint,
675
00:49:05.850 --> 00:49:07.150
in my newsletter because,
676
00:49:08.965 --> 00:49:11.465
v 3, I believe, is going to be
677
00:49:12.405 --> 00:49:15.385
added in the next major release of Bitcoin Core,
678
00:49:16.165 --> 00:49:18.105
instead of v 2.
679
00:49:19.060 --> 00:49:21.240
Yeah. That's right. So I've been going yeah.
680
00:49:21.620 --> 00:49:22.120
And,
681
00:49:22.980 --> 00:49:25.560
yeah, I haven't I haven't looked too much into
682
00:49:26.365 --> 00:49:26.865
this,
683
00:49:27.405 --> 00:49:29.025
recent problem with it.
684
00:49:29.725 --> 00:49:33.585
I did notice it was happening because on the day that it supposedly
685
00:49:34.849 --> 00:49:35.349
started,
686
00:49:35.970 --> 00:49:37.589
you know, I am a Tor user.
687
00:49:38.290 --> 00:49:44.069
I am around Tor users, and so there was issues with Tor, and we noticed that immediately.
688
00:49:45.395 --> 00:49:50.135
But, yeah, I'm not I haven't looked into the details. As far as I saw, it was just an implementation
689
00:49:50.835 --> 00:49:51.335
bug.
690
00:49:52.515 --> 00:49:53.335
But, yeah,
691
00:49:54.670 --> 00:49:57.170
I I mean, part part of that is,
692
00:49:57.710 --> 00:49:58.210
like
693
00:49:58.750 --> 00:50:02.995
I mean, supposedly, you know, also Bitcoin core developers were looking at it,
694
00:50:03.395 --> 00:50:05.975
but that is, you know, scary that
695
00:50:06.355 --> 00:50:08.855
something a lot of people depend on for,
696
00:50:09.635 --> 00:50:13.010
just privacy in general. And then in Bitcoin financial privacy,
697
00:50:13.390 --> 00:50:15.410
that would be really bad if
698
00:50:15.790 --> 00:50:17.230
there was an issue that,
699
00:50:17.630 --> 00:50:19.090
suddenly took that down.
700
00:50:20.190 --> 00:50:21.230
I mean, they
701
00:50:22.655 --> 00:50:27.475
so just I mean, a a a base overview is is there was a bug,
702
00:50:28.975 --> 00:50:29.875
that they
703
00:50:30.580 --> 00:50:35.480
appear to have, you know, narrowed down what what the bug was. I mean, the question is,
704
00:50:35.780 --> 00:50:37.080
it was it getting intentionally
705
00:50:37.465 --> 00:50:40.125
exploited by an attacker to bring down v three,
706
00:50:40.985 --> 00:50:42.125
services or,
707
00:50:43.705 --> 00:50:50.920
was it just unintentionally done? Right? And I think in these types of situations, it's probably better to assume an attack than otherwise.
708
00:50:51.780 --> 00:50:54.440
At least I at least call it an alleged attack.
709
00:50:55.065 --> 00:50:58.444
But but one thing that really struck me here is, I mean, the this
710
00:50:58.984 --> 00:51:02.045
these issues have been going on since the 6th January.
711
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.820
I've noticed these issues myself as a Tor user. I'm still noticing them. It's not resolved,
712
00:51:11.615 --> 00:51:13.315
at least on, you know, on my
713
00:51:13.694 --> 00:51:14.194
nonscientific,
714
00:51:15.615 --> 00:51:21.395
usage myself, and I see other people on the Internet reporting issues continue continuous issues here.
715
00:51:22.180 --> 00:51:23.320
And just like the
716
00:51:23.780 --> 00:51:25.640
the way the messaging was handled,
717
00:51:26.020 --> 00:51:30.839
right, just like the way and I'm, you know, a huge fan of the Tor project. Just the way the messaging was handled
718
00:51:31.325 --> 00:51:34.625
on on their official blog and their official communication channels,
719
00:51:36.445 --> 00:51:38.865
it's just night and day from the Bitcoin project.
720
00:51:39.680 --> 00:51:41.300
I I I can't imagine,
721
00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:51.415
like, radio silence out out of out of Bitcoin developers if there was an ongoing attack for multiple days?
722
00:51:55.369 --> 00:51:56.430
I mean, I think
723
00:51:56.810 --> 00:51:57.790
part of it.
724
00:51:59.050 --> 00:52:01.470
I mean, I've I've been following the Tor project
725
00:52:01.974 --> 00:52:02.795
outside of Bitcoin,
726
00:52:03.655 --> 00:52:09.515
for various reasons. And there over the years, there has definitely been a cultural
727
00:52:09.815 --> 00:52:16.860
change, and the number of the number and the type of people who are involved in contributing to Tor has changed a lot.
728
00:52:17.560 --> 00:52:19.740
Part of that is because it went from
729
00:52:20.435 --> 00:52:21.175
being a
730
00:52:21.635 --> 00:52:25.735
like, when when Tor started out, it was just basically a couple of guys,
731
00:52:26.595 --> 00:52:28.775
who were, you know, doing academic research.
732
00:52:29.540 --> 00:52:29.859
And,
733
00:52:30.340 --> 00:52:33.000
as Tor got more popular and got more attention,
734
00:52:33.780 --> 00:52:35.080
and also there was
735
00:52:35.540 --> 00:52:36.920
this desire to
736
00:52:37.684 --> 00:52:42.505
shift Tor as much as possible away from this image of it's the dark net market browser,
737
00:52:43.684 --> 00:52:45.785
because that has been something that has
738
00:52:46.500 --> 00:52:51.960
followed Tor for a very long time. And so there was a lot of there was a lot more focus on
739
00:52:52.500 --> 00:52:57.845
the interface design on user experience and making it really accessible to
740
00:52:58.785 --> 00:53:01.925
the everyday person as is possible, which I think is a good thing in general.
741
00:53:02.785 --> 00:53:09.799
But as with any project, when you focus on one thing, that means other things can suffer. And I don't know if that was the case here, but it
742
00:53:10.599 --> 00:53:11.740
that tends to
743
00:53:12.205 --> 00:53:18.385
be the reason for these types of things ham happening. It doesn't mean it can never happen if there isn't a focus,
744
00:53:19.245 --> 00:53:19.985
on security
745
00:53:21.080 --> 00:53:26.780
and things like that as the primary thing, which I think it is to the greatest extent. But,
746
00:53:27.400 --> 00:53:31.065
I think that might be part of the reason that this might have gotten missed.
747
00:53:32.805 --> 00:53:34.744
In terms of attackers, I mean,
748
00:53:35.525 --> 00:53:36.805
Tor is a very,
749
00:53:37.670 --> 00:53:45.049
it's a very highly visible project, and there is a lot of incentive for people to break it in comparison to other things.
750
00:53:45.510 --> 00:53:47.450
So that's also part of the problem
751
00:53:47.895 --> 00:53:50.395
is that there are because there are so many
752
00:53:50.855 --> 00:53:51.835
vulnerable people
753
00:53:52.455 --> 00:53:53.895
who rely on it,
754
00:53:54.215 --> 00:53:58.590
there are also attackers who want to break it and hurt those people.
755
00:54:00.010 --> 00:54:08.115
So, you know, when things get missed, it can have even if it's a small thing, it can have a big catastrophic effect compared to other projects that have less visibility.
756
00:54:13.750 --> 00:54:39.225
Yeah. I was I don't know. It's like the the timing of it too is, like, very weird too because, like, this is it happened on the same day that, like, the capital was stormed and everything, and it's kinda followed by, you know, all this the deep platform and various platforms. So and it could it could be completely unrelated, but, like it's kinda weird to see, like, lots of people getting deep platforms and then, like, the the private part of the Internet getting, like, attacked at the same time. So it kinda shows, like, we do need to
757
00:54:39.545 --> 00:54:46.685
fight for these, like, no matter what because, you know, if you got the platforms and now you need to be, like, using the Internet privately for some reason,
758
00:54:47.050 --> 00:54:47.550
Like,
759
00:54:47.850 --> 00:54:51.310
you could be and then if Torres down, you're, like, totally screwed.
760
00:54:55.685 --> 00:55:01.785
Yeah. I mean, I think that's, like, that's that's the key similarity we see between the two projects. Right? There are these 2,
761
00:55:02.565 --> 00:55:04.185
massive open source projects
762
00:55:06.340 --> 00:55:07.480
that that basically
763
00:55:07.940 --> 00:55:08.920
have have
764
00:55:10.260 --> 00:55:12.360
that have to operate in this massive
765
00:55:12.845 --> 00:55:16.225
adversarial mindset always because they're just always constantly
766
00:55:16.685 --> 00:55:22.385
you just have to constantly assume they're they're under attack. And I'm just all I'm saying is I just I feel like
767
00:55:22.799 --> 00:55:27.059
the culture is the the culture of the different communities is very important,
768
00:55:27.680 --> 00:55:29.779
and it's it just kind of,
769
00:55:32.245 --> 00:55:36.425
it's it's kind of interesting when you compare the Tor culture versus,
770
00:55:37.605 --> 00:55:39.785
like, the Bitcoin culture just from,
771
00:55:42.520 --> 00:55:46.300
you know, the more active developers on those projects, especially since
772
00:55:46.680 --> 00:55:53.015
there's there's some, like, interesting comparisons there. You you have the adversarial mindset comparison, but you also have the comparison,
773
00:55:53.875 --> 00:55:56.695
that you basically have, like, 2 different types of users.
774
00:56:00.150 --> 00:56:00.710
You you
775
00:56:01.430 --> 00:56:05.609
and I get and this is what Janine, like, kind of touched on is, like, this idea that
776
00:56:05.944 --> 00:56:10.125
that that Tor is trying to get away from being, you know, the dark market browser.
777
00:56:10.905 --> 00:56:12.045
And and Bitcoin,
778
00:56:12.585 --> 00:56:18.980
a lot of people would say, is trying to get away from being, you know, pigeonholed as as the dark market currency only.
779
00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:24.180
So, I mean, there are some similarities there, but at the same time, it just feels like
780
00:56:26.055 --> 00:56:31.115
I I I just I I was surprised that you don't see that much chatter going on in Torland
781
00:56:31.960 --> 00:56:42.635
of of I mean, you see it on on, like, some of these forums and stuff, but you don't really see it, like, in their in their dev community, like, that that they're that they're worried that it all happened at the kind of the same time, and
782
00:56:43.335 --> 00:56:45.835
it's it's just weird. It's just a weird thing to
783
00:56:46.295 --> 00:56:46.454
to
784
00:56:47.730 --> 00:56:53.510
it was a concern I kinda had, and then to to watch it play out, it's just kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. That's all.
785
00:57:00.505 --> 00:57:03.164
So and then the other thing I wanted to touch on was,
786
00:57:04.480 --> 00:57:05.859
I saw this in the comments.
787
00:57:06.880 --> 00:57:14.155
And, Freaks, thank you for joining us. Anyone who's here live, you know, thanks to everyone who's listening after after the fact as well.
788
00:57:15.015 --> 00:57:18.235
This show is all about you guys. We couldn't do it without you.
789
00:57:18.880 --> 00:57:21.299
But I saw one of the freaks mentioned in here,
790
00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:22.260
Cloudflare.
791
00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:26.740
Do you guys have any strong opinions on Cloudflare?
792
00:57:28.555 --> 00:57:30.335
I I have fuck Cloudflare
793
00:57:30.635 --> 00:57:31.135
stickers.
794
00:57:34.315 --> 00:57:37.135
Yeah. They've censored people before, and they'll do it again.
795
00:57:37.660 --> 00:57:39.280
So can we explain
796
00:57:39.580 --> 00:57:40.640
what, you know,
797
00:57:41.100 --> 00:57:44.080
what what Cloudflare's business is and why it's a concern?
798
00:57:50.115 --> 00:57:55.880
From my understanding, Cloudflare is kind of like a DDoS protection, and then they also do, like, a bunch of DNS stuff.
799
00:57:56.420 --> 00:57:59.560
And, you know, just like and then some hosting, I think, as well.
800
00:58:00.020 --> 00:58:13.960
And, like, they're a huge like, it's kinda central point of failure for the Internet where, like, I remember, like I think it was sometime in 2020 Cloud Fair went down and, like, half the Internet's, like, sites were down because, like, they rely on Cloud Fair to do stuff like that. So,
801
00:58:14.420 --> 00:58:19.665
like, if if you lose service from Cloud Fair, you can lose a whole lot of stuff. Like, if you lose your your DNS,
802
00:58:20.045 --> 00:58:28.625
that could be huge. Because now someone needs to actually type in your IP address to tie find your website. Or, you know, if you lose your DDoS protection, your site could go down pretty easily.
803
00:58:29.060 --> 00:58:35.240
So I mean, so, like, losing Cloudflare can be a a huge thing. And I know the sites that have taken down,
804
00:58:36.180 --> 00:58:37.560
you know, they weren't the most
805
00:58:38.215 --> 00:58:45.675
outstanding sites. It was, like, a super, like, Nazi site or something that they took down, but it's still, like, you don't have to defend these people, then who who are you gonna defend,
806
00:58:46.215 --> 00:58:47.355
when they come for you?
807
00:58:50.440 --> 00:58:54.700
Yeah. I mean, I I I I think the key aspect here is that
808
00:58:55.075 --> 00:58:56.855
the Internet as we know it,
809
00:58:59.715 --> 00:59:03.655
has has some, you know, very integral broken incentives,
810
00:59:04.770 --> 00:59:06.390
and is you know,
811
00:59:07.410 --> 00:59:08.630
it it is not
812
00:59:09.170 --> 00:59:11.270
this, you know, magic piece of
813
00:59:11.684 --> 00:59:18.184
of networking that that people necessarily think it is in today's age. Right? Like, people just think it just works. They think it's just like magic.
814
00:59:19.500 --> 00:59:22.080
But what really is is is happening is
815
00:59:22.860 --> 00:59:26.240
the the way it's set up is it's very easy
816
00:59:26.625 --> 00:59:30.724
for a a a relatively easy for a sophisticated actor to essentially,
817
00:59:33.184 --> 00:59:34.805
like, bomb a site with traffic.
818
00:59:35.540 --> 00:59:41.720
And if you bomb a site with traffic, this is what we call a a a DDoS, a distributed denial of service attack.
819
00:59:43.485 --> 00:59:54.020
You you basically hit them so hard that they're not able to serve regular customers. And in the process, it becomes very expensive to them. So they're constantly serving, serving, serving the attacker,
820
00:59:54.560 --> 01:00:01.755
and the attacker could maybe they're not even, a lot of times, the attacker isn't using their own compute. They're using compromised computers,
821
01:00:02.455 --> 01:00:07.410
to then attack those those sites. So what happens is all these independent site owners,
822
01:00:08.750 --> 01:00:13.330
and I and we see it a lot with the Bitcoin exchanges if we wanna bring it back to Bitcoin,
823
01:00:13.995 --> 01:00:18.975
rely on the the easiest way for them to handle those just distributed denial of service
824
01:00:19.435 --> 01:00:19.935
is,
825
01:00:20.555 --> 01:00:25.340
through a centralized actor who's able to basically have massive block lists
826
01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:26.700
and distribute
827
01:00:27.080 --> 01:00:35.565
any kind of traffic around their global network. They they have they have massive economies of scale that allow them to mitigate these DDoS attacks.
828
01:00:36.185 --> 01:00:37.645
But what that means is
829
01:00:38.089 --> 01:00:44.910
that's a centralizing incentive. So now we have a few companies that are offering this service, and those companies become central points of failure.
830
01:00:45.290 --> 01:00:46.089
And it's kind of,
831
01:00:47.835 --> 01:00:50.495
tangential to the to the Tor concerns
832
01:00:50.955 --> 01:00:51.935
because Tor,
833
01:00:52.555 --> 01:00:55.135
as a network that prioritizes privacy,
834
01:00:55.755 --> 01:00:56.895
inherently has,
835
01:00:57.490 --> 01:00:57.990
DDoS
836
01:00:58.290 --> 01:00:59.910
concerns because you can't,
837
01:01:01.490 --> 01:01:06.310
you know, like, if the protocol's working correctly, like, you shouldn't be able to block individual users.
838
01:01:08.435 --> 01:01:09.474
So it's it's a
839
01:01:10.275 --> 01:01:13.974
and the way Tor handles it is they handle it with these centralized directories,
840
01:01:14.595 --> 01:01:17.020
and that's what was getting hit. So,
841
01:01:17.560 --> 01:01:22.140
usually, when we see these protocols, the way they handle distributed denial of service
842
01:01:22.680 --> 01:01:25.740
is they handle it via increased centralization.
843
01:01:26.585 --> 01:01:28.765
But as we know, that doesn't work
844
01:01:29.065 --> 01:01:31.325
if you're facing a a massive
845
01:01:34.920 --> 01:01:37.579
a a a masters massive pro censorship force
846
01:01:37.880 --> 01:01:40.779
that, you know, has regulatory powers over you.
847
01:01:41.455 --> 01:01:47.155
So, like, in in towards in towards threat model, they basically assume the US government isn't gonna go after them,
848
01:01:47.615 --> 01:01:53.560
which has been good so far. It's in the US government's good graces, and we take advantage of that.
849
01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:55.460
Bitcoin doesn't have that luxury.
850
01:01:56.319 --> 01:02:03.605
So so the way Bitcoin handles it is is pretty graceful. The way Bitcoin handles it is is essentially those transaction fees,
851
01:02:05.665 --> 01:02:06.645
allow you to
852
01:02:06.945 --> 01:02:08.005
allow you to mitigate
853
01:02:08.789 --> 01:02:15.049
massive spam on the network, which would essentially be like a a DDoS on the network. It's very, very,
854
01:02:17.085 --> 01:02:22.945
it's just slick how how that incentive model is set up, and I I think people don't realize, you know, how massive that is.
855
01:02:25.220 --> 01:02:26.680
Yeah. And on that subject,
856
01:02:27.140 --> 01:02:28.279
both Tor and,
857
01:02:29.619 --> 01:02:30.579
Didio was saying,
858
01:02:31.225 --> 01:02:32.765
the Tor project is actually,
859
01:02:33.465 --> 01:02:33.965
exploring
860
01:02:34.505 --> 01:02:35.645
using anonymous
861
01:02:35.945 --> 01:02:37.945
tokens. And when I say tokens, they did,
862
01:02:38.600 --> 01:02:41.580
specify that they don't necessarily mean with a blockchain.
863
01:02:41.880 --> 01:02:43.500
It could be with something else. But
864
01:02:43.880 --> 01:02:44.380
they,
865
01:02:44.840 --> 01:02:45.500
have indicated,
866
01:02:46.375 --> 01:02:50.315
I think since September that they are exploring using tokens.
867
01:02:52.535 --> 01:02:55.220
Not I mean, they kind of hinted at possibly
868
01:02:55.920 --> 01:02:58.260
monetizing them, but that is not the main
869
01:02:58.560 --> 01:02:59.780
use case. I think,
870
01:03:01.440 --> 01:03:02.420
I'll get their,
871
01:03:03.440 --> 01:03:08.005
posts. They say additional benefit of a token based approach is that it opens up
872
01:03:08.305 --> 01:03:12.805
a variety of use cases for Tor in the future. For example, in the future, tokens could be used to restrict
873
01:03:13.500 --> 01:03:14.319
malicious usage
874
01:03:15.020 --> 01:03:30.005
of Tor exit nodes by spam and automated bots, hence reducing exit node censorship by centralized services. Tokens can also be used to register human memorable names for onion services. That is good. I I side note that I think that's going to be a big one because if you've ever used
875
01:03:30.430 --> 01:03:32.190
if you've ever used an onion service,
876
01:03:32.990 --> 01:03:40.515
you know, it's a basically a random generated string, and that is not something that's easy to remember without pinning it somehow,
877
01:03:41.535 --> 01:03:46.835
which is kind of hard to do in a poor browser because it's built to not allow you to do things like that.
878
01:03:47.980 --> 01:03:55.599
They can also be used to acquire private bridges and exit nodes for additional security. Lots of details need to be ironed out. So yeah, they are looking at
879
01:03:56.165 --> 01:03:56.665
ways,
880
01:03:57.045 --> 01:04:02.025
within toward itself of kind of solving that problem to change the incentives.
881
01:04:06.840 --> 01:04:10.300
Yeah. I mean, I think it'll be interesting to see how they play around with those,
882
01:04:11.800 --> 01:04:14.860
with those different models because I think something does need to be done.
883
01:04:17.365 --> 01:04:19.445
The incentives need to be, you know
884
01:04:20.325 --> 01:04:24.505
if if not a completely different network, but, I mean, that's a completely above my pay grade.
885
01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:30.940
I have a love hate relationship with Tourer where I we rely on it all the time, and I support the project.
886
01:04:31.640 --> 01:04:34.434
But but I think it needs to be more robust, and I hope it
887
01:04:35.055 --> 01:04:37.315
becomes, more robust over time.
888
01:04:39.214 --> 01:04:46.820
Wasn't there a proposal for a network, like, some, like, routing, like, basically, like, for a network, but I was using, like, lightning network.
889
01:04:47.120 --> 01:04:48.900
I think it came out, like, in 2019.
890
01:04:49.200 --> 01:04:50.020
It was, like,
891
01:04:50.640 --> 01:04:54.275
mesh 40 9 or something like that names. I can't remember exactly.
892
01:04:55.535 --> 01:04:59.475
Are you thinking of lot 49, but Yeah. Mesh Labs? Yeah. I think so.
893
01:05:00.970 --> 01:05:05.310
Yeah. Because there is, like, a it was, like, a basically, like, a toy network, but they use, like,
894
01:05:06.010 --> 01:05:09.070
basically, like, lightning to incentivize people, to be honest.
895
01:05:12.755 --> 01:05:17.734
Yeah. I mean, I guess, the the general concept I mean, I think their focus is was more mesh,
896
01:05:18.275 --> 01:05:19.895
related. But, I mean, you can
897
01:05:20.619 --> 01:05:26.880
you can do that kind of, you know, that kind of layout on a on, like, a non mesh infrastructure as well.
898
01:05:28.855 --> 01:05:34.075
You know, the general idea, I mean, is and it's what we see on the Lightning Network, right, which is an onion network,
899
01:05:34.935 --> 01:05:37.115
where the individual nodes are incentivized
900
01:05:37.950 --> 01:05:43.330
to route messages. And if you're an attacker, it should come with a cost. Right? And that cost is,
901
01:05:44.430 --> 01:05:45.810
a transaction fee.
902
01:05:47.415 --> 01:05:55.660
So so then then you have an incentive where an attacker it it costs more for an attacker than it costs for a for a good user, and you can reduce
903
01:05:55.960 --> 01:05:56.360
the,
904
01:05:57.080 --> 01:06:01.580
vulnerability to to these kind of, you know, large scale denial of service attacks.
905
01:06:02.440 --> 01:06:04.300
But we'll see how that plays out.
906
01:06:06.285 --> 01:06:11.905
Freaks, you got anything else for us in the comments there you want us to touch on? Been really enjoying this conversation.
907
01:06:14.869 --> 01:06:15.369
Ben,
908
01:06:17.029 --> 01:06:20.809
Janine, you got you have anything in mind that you think we should touch on here?
909
01:06:23.325 --> 01:06:28.785
One thing, it was, it was mentioned at the very beginning of the show. Someone brought up, RSS,
910
01:06:30.560 --> 01:06:32.740
And I just wanted to point out, a lot of people
911
01:06:33.120 --> 01:06:34.160
don't know that,
912
01:06:34.640 --> 01:06:35.620
Aaron Schwartz.
913
01:06:36.480 --> 01:06:39.275
I'm sure most people know who Aaron Schwartz is,
914
01:06:39.974 --> 01:06:40.474
but
915
01:06:40.855 --> 01:06:43.275
a lot of people don't know he was actually the
916
01:06:44.454 --> 01:06:47.260
creator of RSS and Markdown. Markdown is
917
01:06:48.380 --> 01:06:49.360
what, Git,
918
01:06:49.900 --> 01:06:53.500
and in particular GitHub, although it has its own flavor of Markdown,
919
01:06:54.220 --> 01:06:58.734
he was the creator of that. So I just wanted to bring that up because a lot of people don't know that.
920
01:07:01.195 --> 01:07:05.820
I have no idea. I think something good to bring up was, were Mozilla. They were saying, like,
921
01:07:06.460 --> 01:07:07.760
we need more than deplatforming
922
01:07:08.220 --> 01:07:08.880
and, like,
923
01:07:09.580 --> 01:07:13.315
they didn't explicitly say, like, censor the Internet, but they were saying, you know, bring up,
924
01:07:13.954 --> 01:07:14.855
like, trustworthy
925
01:07:15.155 --> 01:07:23.255
trustworthy voices or something like that. And, like, so, like, that's a pretty, like, kinda scary thing to see. Like, I stopped using Firefox after I saw that post where
926
01:07:23.620 --> 01:07:32.440
people, like, I don't know. Your your browser should be, like, your your gate to the Internet. It shouldn't be, like, telling you what to go on the Internet and see.
927
01:07:32.765 --> 01:07:36.145
So I think, like, stuff like that is kinda scary too, where, like, I think
928
01:07:36.445 --> 01:07:41.665
me and a lot of other people I know switched to, like, like, on Google Chromium, like, an actual open source,
929
01:07:42.510 --> 01:07:46.849
browser, which is good to see. And, hopefully, that's a good trend we see going forward.
930
01:07:49.125 --> 01:07:50.345
Well, I mean, the browser's
931
01:07:51.205 --> 01:07:53.785
you know, the browser situation is kind of fucked. Right?
932
01:07:54.405 --> 01:07:56.885
I I well, you you were meant you mentioned,
933
01:07:57.205 --> 01:07:58.825
de googled Chromium. Right?
934
01:07:59.270 --> 01:08:04.730
Yeah. Yeah. That's like, it's open source and everything. You can It's, like, basically the only option at this point.
935
01:08:05.589 --> 01:08:06.089
Yeah.
936
01:08:06.465 --> 01:08:10.245
And you need it on your phone. So you kinda screwed that way too.
937
01:08:11.345 --> 01:08:14.405
Yeah. So, I mean, let's just backtrack here for a second and talk about
938
01:08:15.020 --> 01:08:16.560
the there's a concept here.
939
01:08:17.020 --> 01:08:18.880
There's this idea here that you can
940
01:08:19.260 --> 01:08:20.320
you can selectively
941
01:08:21.020 --> 01:08:22.880
filter out only bad content.
942
01:08:23.875 --> 01:08:24.855
And I
943
01:08:25.395 --> 01:08:26.935
I firmly in the camp
944
01:08:27.475 --> 01:08:27.975
that
945
01:08:28.355 --> 01:08:31.415
in order to protect the most vulnerable amongst us,
946
01:08:32.190 --> 01:08:36.290
you have to basically protect everyone en masse. Because if you don't,
947
01:08:37.870 --> 01:08:40.195
then then the powers that be in any individual
948
01:08:40.974 --> 01:08:41.875
power relationship
949
01:08:42.574 --> 01:08:43.395
will always,
950
01:08:45.375 --> 01:08:48.514
exert that power and control over the more vulnerable.
951
01:08:51.680 --> 01:08:54.740
I I both of you agree agree with that. Right?
952
01:08:56.320 --> 01:08:57.220
Yeah. A 100%.
953
01:08:59.335 --> 01:09:01.595
I mean, that's the that's the
954
01:09:02.055 --> 01:09:07.675
the gap. Right? That's that's where the the real disagreement is. Would you would you agree?
955
01:09:10.240 --> 01:09:12.420
I think so. Like, you know,
956
01:09:12.800 --> 01:09:27.014
like, Mozilla and Firefox might have, like, good intentions today, but, you know, 20 years from now, they they might not, and they could be, you know, using this to censor whatever they deem unworthy, which could be, like, you know, something that we deem perfectly fine.
957
01:09:27.420 --> 01:09:29.280
And, you know, if it's not a good,
958
01:09:29.820 --> 01:09:38.235
prescient dissent and, you know, these people could, like, very well abuse this power. Or even if we trust Mozilla, they could be, you know, threatened by
959
01:09:38.614 --> 01:09:42.795
a third party, like, you know, a a government or, you know, just a bad actor
960
01:09:43.255 --> 01:09:44.554
and, you know,
961
01:09:44.980 --> 01:09:51.960
screw over someone that, you know, needs, to use their browser for some reason or, you know, someone that was relying on that as infrastructure.
962
01:09:52.725 --> 01:09:57.785
Well, I mean, I I think us Americans tend to have an American centric view, but if if if
963
01:09:58.645 --> 01:10:04.120
it's it's easier for for an American and maybe do the same exercise if you're from another country
964
01:10:04.500 --> 01:10:06.520
to vision a country that you consider,
965
01:10:07.620 --> 01:10:12.804
has poor human rights. And and and if you if you're if if you think about a country like China,
966
01:10:13.265 --> 01:10:16.405
I think most Americans would agree that we can't trust,
967
01:10:16.864 --> 01:10:20.245
the Chinese government with choosing who can speak and who can't speak.
968
01:10:21.010 --> 01:10:23.510
So if if that is the threshold
969
01:10:23.970 --> 01:10:28.630
that that we agree on and we agree at that premise, how do we bridge the gap between
970
01:10:29.195 --> 01:10:29.695
understanding
971
01:10:30.954 --> 01:10:32.255
that as a concept,
972
01:10:32.715 --> 01:10:34.014
but thinking that,
973
01:10:35.195 --> 01:10:43.880
I I mean, I think a large amount of the country thinks, like, a Twitter or an Apple can choose what what speech is good speech and what's not. Like, how do we bridge that divide?
974
01:10:46.474 --> 01:10:58.610
Yeah. I mean, it's I I find it really hard to answer that question because on the one hand, I believe in the idea that, you know, if you're a private person or a private company, you're not beholden to,
975
01:10:59.515 --> 01:11:00.335
you know, what
976
01:11:01.035 --> 01:11:03.215
you're, you know, what you're kind of entitled
977
01:11:03.595 --> 01:11:10.500
to host or not host as a government is, you know, obligated to not censor people at least in countries like the US.
978
01:11:10.960 --> 01:11:19.045
But on the other hand, a lot of these big platforms, the reason they are so big is because the state makes it difficult
979
01:11:19.425 --> 01:11:20.725
for smaller players
980
01:11:21.105 --> 01:11:21.605
to
981
01:11:22.465 --> 01:11:28.480
to run, you know, their own infrastructure, especially infrastructure that's private and censorship resistant,
982
01:11:29.500 --> 01:11:31.760
do any actual meaningful degree.
983
01:11:32.620 --> 01:11:36.635
So it's really hard because the you know, that's essentially where this kind of
984
01:11:37.094 --> 01:11:41.275
public square argument comes in is because they've effectively been
985
01:11:42.070 --> 01:11:43.450
given this kind of cushion
986
01:11:43.910 --> 01:11:46.890
by the state because of how they've
987
01:11:47.670 --> 01:11:49.370
you know, because they were either
988
01:11:49.715 --> 01:11:51.735
first into the field or
989
01:11:52.035 --> 01:11:56.135
because they had enough power from a, you know, resisting
990
01:11:56.915 --> 01:11:57.415
regulatory
991
01:11:57.955 --> 01:11:58.455
challenges
992
01:11:59.780 --> 01:12:01.719
in different ways to
993
01:12:02.420 --> 01:12:09.245
to kick out all of the competitors or at least limit the ability of competitors to get any good user share.
994
01:12:10.364 --> 01:12:13.665
I don't know. It kind of makes the question a bit murky
995
01:12:14.605 --> 01:12:15.265
to me.
996
01:12:17.900 --> 01:12:20.960
I mean, I kind of feel like the only real solution is,
997
01:12:21.659 --> 01:12:24.640
you know, we build and support platforms that
998
01:12:26.395 --> 01:12:28.735
that no one can easily censor by design,
999
01:12:29.115 --> 01:12:30.895
and then we just kind of just wait
1000
01:12:31.515 --> 01:12:36.219
till enough people get burned to realize that it's an issue. Because I don't know
1001
01:12:36.679 --> 01:12:38.780
how how you how you get through to people,
1002
01:12:40.360 --> 01:12:40.860
if
1003
01:12:42.105 --> 01:12:45.805
without without them getting burned. Like, if if you look at this last week,
1004
01:12:46.665 --> 01:12:53.230
I I think a a a large amount of people woke up to the issue, and I think it's just kind of getting started. I think as
1005
01:12:53.770 --> 01:12:55.710
as as more voices get,
1006
01:12:56.490 --> 01:12:59.790
squeezed, as more people get cut off from the financial
1007
01:13:00.795 --> 01:13:01.115
system.
1008
01:13:01.755 --> 01:13:08.255
As more private information gets leaked, people will start to ultimately realize that that they need to seek out better solutions.
1009
01:13:11.349 --> 01:13:12.790
Yeah. And I mean weirdly enough,
1010
01:13:13.270 --> 01:13:14.809
weird weirdly enough, apparently,
1011
01:13:15.190 --> 01:13:16.090
Mark Zuckerberg,
1012
01:13:17.744 --> 01:13:26.565
at a conference in 2019 actually so he actually said that he believes that the future of social platforms is private, which I find,
1013
01:13:26.930 --> 01:13:32.230
I mean, he's the kind of person that says a bunch of things that are completely contradictory to
1014
01:13:32.850 --> 01:13:34.230
the existence of Facebook
1015
01:13:34.610 --> 01:13:35.830
in so many ways.
1016
01:13:36.495 --> 01:13:39.315
So I I but I find it interesting that he said that.
1017
01:13:39.775 --> 01:13:47.520
He means perceived private privacy. Right? And this idea that you can have, like, a group chat or something, but he he doesn't actually mean actual privacy,
1018
01:13:48.380 --> 01:13:50.880
because that goes against their whole business model.
1019
01:13:51.260 --> 01:13:54.480
But yeah. So so this is actually a perfect example here. Right?
1020
01:13:54.954 --> 01:13:59.934
Is that people group have been using WhatsApp for years. Facebook has owned WhatsApp for years,
1021
01:14:00.554 --> 01:14:02.574
the the number one chat application.
1022
01:14:03.620 --> 01:14:05.880
And all of a sudden, people realized
1023
01:14:08.420 --> 01:14:10.280
I guess, there was, like, this mass movement
1024
01:14:11.175 --> 01:14:18.235
recently, like, this last week, I guess, something changed in their privacy policy or they had to disclose it because Apple forced them to disclose it.
1025
01:14:19.420 --> 01:14:34.540
And, like, a bunch of people woke up. Right? And they just switched to signal. But they there was there's 2 key elements there. Right? It's, like, the people need to wake up, but then once they wake up, there has to be something that's, you know, relatively easy for them to switch to waiting.
1026
01:14:35.580 --> 01:14:38.880
Yeah. And I think, I mean oh, you go ahead, Ben.
1027
01:14:39.260 --> 01:14:52.055
And the sad thing is just, like, Signal is not even, like, a perfect solution where now, like, people might not have to be giving up phone numbers to someone they otherwise might have not had to. So, like, we really do need, like, alternative solutions, which kinda sucks.
1028
01:14:52.740 --> 01:14:55.400
But, I mean, hopefully, people are working on these things now.
1029
01:14:57.380 --> 01:14:57.860
Yeah.
1030
01:14:58.420 --> 01:14:59.220
I mean, I'm
1031
01:14:59.700 --> 01:15:00.600
I've used
1032
01:15:01.315 --> 01:15:06.375
signal before. Like, I have general I don't use it anymore. I'm I mean, I have,
1033
01:15:06.995 --> 01:15:08.055
I have a phone
1034
01:15:09.330 --> 01:15:13.570
for circumstances where there's no other option, but, like, it's almost never on.
1035
01:15:15.250 --> 01:15:15.750
And,
1036
01:15:16.370 --> 01:15:17.750
yeah, I find it
1037
01:15:19.075 --> 01:15:21.575
as a as a generally phone free person,
1038
01:15:22.995 --> 01:15:29.000
I'm I mean, I would say that in general, I would trust signal a lot more than
1039
01:15:29.699 --> 01:15:31.000
WhatsApp slash Facebook.
1040
01:15:32.179 --> 01:15:41.505
But at the end of the day, it's the same model, and the model that I'm worried about is the fact that, you know, it's based on this idea that a phone number is an identifier.
1041
01:15:42.270 --> 01:15:44.210
And I really hate that because,
1042
01:15:45.230 --> 01:15:51.489
phone numbers are not good identifiers. You don't own them. You don't control them. Especially if you're in the US, your phone number can,
1043
01:15:52.255 --> 01:15:55.795
in most circumstances, so easily be taken away from you,
1044
01:15:56.255 --> 01:15:59.235
just by knowing some small details,
1045
01:15:59.615 --> 01:16:00.115
and
1046
01:16:00.640 --> 01:16:02.420
a lot of which is public,
1047
01:16:03.040 --> 01:16:04.500
in a lot of cases. So
1048
01:16:05.360 --> 01:16:13.645
I I just I'm not a fan of any application that requires a phone number to use it. And in signals case, they are
1049
01:16:14.505 --> 01:16:17.565
trying to get away with it, but so far, they are still
1050
01:16:18.160 --> 01:16:21.140
the requirement of the phone number as a security measure.
1051
01:16:22.240 --> 01:16:29.055
In fact, they they say that it's a way to prevent spam, like their services getting overwhelmed or at least that's what they said before.
1052
01:16:29.995 --> 01:16:38.020
So related to that, topic of yeah. It's a it's a centralized KYC method of handling a denial of service.
1053
01:16:39.600 --> 01:16:44.895
Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know if I would call it it's kind of debatable how much
1054
01:16:45.835 --> 01:16:50.255
signal knows. I mean, the the I mean, if anyone doesn't know if they store their stuff on Amazon.
1055
01:16:50.860 --> 01:16:57.180
Yeah. I mean so the supposedly, the way that signal has designed their infrastructure, they don't know your phone number,
1056
01:16:59.020 --> 01:16:59.520
explicitly.
1057
01:17:00.715 --> 01:17:04.735
But still that yeah. So that data though is still
1058
01:17:05.195 --> 01:17:10.060
being stored on Amazon, which I like so much so much is stored on Amazon.
1059
01:17:10.440 --> 01:17:10.940
I'm
1060
01:17:11.880 --> 01:17:13.900
yeah. In in terms of, like,
1061
01:17:14.600 --> 01:17:15.739
centralized adversaries,
1062
01:17:16.040 --> 01:17:18.844
Amazon's a big one for a number of reasons.
1063
01:17:19.145 --> 01:17:22.605
So let's unpack this for a second. I mean, signal is obviously,
1064
01:17:23.224 --> 01:17:27.244
I mean, Ben said, it's not perfect. I mean, it's clearly not perfect.
1065
01:17:28.400 --> 01:17:33.520
The the two main things is the the phone number requirement and just the phone requirement in general. I mean, you can't,
1066
01:17:34.455 --> 01:17:43.090
you can run it on on a computer, but you need to have a phone that basically is relaying the messages to the to the desktop client. It's not a true desktop client.
1067
01:17:43.710 --> 01:17:52.675
And the phones in general are are, you know, it's it's very difficult to secure a phone privacy wise, so you're opening up your users to to that risk.
1068
01:17:53.054 --> 01:18:04.800
But I think it's important to make it to it's it's an important point to make to the freaks that we're you're never everything has trade offs. You're never gonna see something you're never gonna see something that's perfect.
1069
01:18:06.755 --> 01:18:11.335
Signal can get deplatform from AWS just like we saw it happened to Parler.
1070
01:18:13.075 --> 01:18:14.215
They haven't, though.
1071
01:18:14.910 --> 01:18:17.570
So if they can get away with a little bit of centralization,
1072
01:18:19.230 --> 01:18:20.530
for additional convenience,
1073
01:18:22.215 --> 01:18:31.275
then there's an argument to be made there, right, that that maybe that trade off balance is the best balance for a lot of people. Like, I mean, if you if you hear
1074
01:18:31.770 --> 01:18:34.030
you hear Moxie talk about the phone numbers,
1075
01:18:36.090 --> 01:18:44.085
with signals phone number requirement, and he says, you know, for the average user, they find it as a blessing. They they it it's a convenience for them because
1076
01:18:44.465 --> 01:18:52.610
the average user joins, and they just already know which contacts are in signal. And, I mean, if you're an Android phone, it basically works like Imessage, right, where
1077
01:18:52.910 --> 01:18:56.929
you can use it as your regular text client. And if if the other person has,
1078
01:18:57.795 --> 01:18:59.014
signal, it just automatically
1079
01:18:59.315 --> 01:19:01.574
switches to signal rather than SMS.
1080
01:19:02.195 --> 01:19:09.830
So there's a convenience argument to be made there, and I I think this is the type of trade off balance that we basically see all the time in our day to day lives. Right?
1081
01:19:11.890 --> 01:19:14.550
Yeah. I mean, as, I think it was a
1082
01:19:14.965 --> 01:19:17.065
a CoinDesk article about cyberpunks,
1083
01:19:17.685 --> 01:19:20.425
and there was a line in there that said something like,
1084
01:19:20.805 --> 01:19:23.785
using signal is the equivalent of, like,
1085
01:19:24.390 --> 01:19:24.890
smoking,
1086
01:19:26.150 --> 01:19:31.610
smoking weed once in college in terms of the cyberpunk ethos. Like, it's a good onboard.
1087
01:19:33.825 --> 01:19:36.325
And I I would definitely say I would prefer
1088
01:19:37.025 --> 01:19:38.725
people using signal to
1089
01:19:39.185 --> 01:19:41.205
something like just plain text
1090
01:19:41.680 --> 01:19:42.500
SMS messages,
1091
01:19:42.880 --> 01:19:43.860
that's monumentally
1092
01:19:44.400 --> 01:19:45.140
an improvement.
1093
01:19:46.400 --> 01:19:51.245
But in terms of censorship resistance, at the end of the day, it's not it's not any
1094
01:19:51.625 --> 01:19:52.125
different,
1095
01:19:53.945 --> 01:19:56.605
especially with, the requirement of a phone number.
1096
01:19:57.945 --> 01:19:58.445
So
1097
01:19:59.360 --> 01:20:01.219
if if we're gonna go full,
1098
01:20:01.599 --> 01:20:03.300
you know, full hard o here,
1099
01:20:03.679 --> 01:20:05.040
right, and you you have
1100
01:20:05.679 --> 01:20:07.300
if if we end up in a situation
1101
01:20:07.705 --> 01:20:10.125
where the most powerful governments in the world,
1102
01:20:11.145 --> 01:20:12.765
and and the corporations that
1103
01:20:14.025 --> 01:20:15.485
reside within their jurisdictions,
1104
01:20:17.630 --> 01:20:21.330
are are doing active censorship. Right? You know, specifically,
1105
01:20:21.870 --> 01:20:24.770
Amazon. You know, if if if Amazon starts
1106
01:20:27.695 --> 01:20:28.195
deplatforming
1107
01:20:28.655 --> 01:20:32.514
more private like, privacy focused services such as signal,
1108
01:20:32.895 --> 01:20:34.355
we're gonna have to move
1109
01:20:34.735 --> 01:20:35.635
to a
1110
01:20:36.610 --> 01:20:42.070
something that Bitcoiners know very well, a user own node model. Right? Like, a almost like a personal server,
1111
01:20:42.450 --> 01:20:44.710
self host, everything kind of model.
1112
01:20:47.015 --> 01:20:49.515
That is always seemed like the holy grail,
1113
01:20:50.455 --> 01:20:53.114
you know, to a lot lot of sovereignty people, but,
1114
01:20:53.960 --> 01:20:56.860
I mean, it comes with a massive convenience trade off. Right?
1115
01:20:58.760 --> 01:21:02.695
Yeah. I mean, I think the intermediate stage for something like that would just
1116
01:21:03.255 --> 01:21:05.675
be, you know, especially if you live,
1117
01:21:07.494 --> 01:21:17.230
around people who have similar interests and needs, then you would have, you know, at least one person who is self hosting who then provides it for
1118
01:21:17.770 --> 01:21:21.790
everyone else around. And should to answer the question on yeah. So
1119
01:21:22.685 --> 01:21:30.989
in terms of encrypted messaging apps, I I use a lot of different ones, and I use them for different things
1120
01:21:31.610 --> 01:21:33.710
and also even different people. So
1121
01:21:34.170 --> 01:21:35.070
I have Keybase.
1122
01:21:35.449 --> 01:21:43.315
I've had Keybase for a very long time prior to it getting acquired by Zoom last year, I think. I can't remember exactly.
1123
01:21:44.255 --> 01:21:45.955
And I do Yeah. It was definitely
1124
01:21:46.590 --> 01:21:49.250
it was definitely during the pandemic. Go on. Continue.
1125
01:21:50.190 --> 01:21:52.530
Yeah. So I I know I can understand
1126
01:21:53.150 --> 01:21:58.505
to some degree why they made that decision. I think in terms of the product that they're offering, I think it's, like,
1127
01:21:59.285 --> 01:22:04.579
on the completely opposite spectrum to what Zoom has shown that it's interested in in terms of privacy.
1128
01:22:05.520 --> 01:22:06.020
But
1129
01:22:06.400 --> 01:22:14.045
at least the client, not the server, unfortunately, the server code, but the client for Keybase is still open source. I haven't seen
1130
01:22:14.585 --> 01:22:15.485
any changes
1131
01:22:15.785 --> 01:22:16.605
that would
1132
01:22:16.960 --> 01:22:20.100
indicate something worrying on that end in terms of Zoom
1133
01:22:20.720 --> 01:22:22.420
putting pressure on them to,
1134
01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:28.325
I mean, even integrate Zoom. I think they said they might do that at some point, but it doesn't look like it was,
1135
01:22:29.105 --> 01:22:41.850
looked unfavorably at all. So I do I am definitely concerned about the fact that Keybase is now is now owned by Zoom, and that may be a threat. And so I've even before that, though, I've always treated Keybase as kind of, like,
1136
01:22:42.465 --> 01:22:45.445
encrypted Twitter DMs. So, like, whatever I would
1137
01:22:46.625 --> 01:22:53.800
relatively feel okay saying in Twitter DMs, I will say in Keybase and maybe a little more than that, but I don't use it for anything
1138
01:22:54.100 --> 01:22:56.199
super sensitive. I do think that there
1139
01:22:56.500 --> 01:22:59.160
the fact that, you know, you can control your own
1140
01:22:59.645 --> 01:23:00.685
key with it,
1141
01:23:01.245 --> 01:23:02.065
you know, independent
1142
01:23:02.525 --> 01:23:03.425
of Keybase.
1143
01:23:03.805 --> 01:23:07.585
You can also generate it with Keybase that is not ideal. But,
1144
01:23:07.885 --> 01:23:08.705
yeah, I think
1145
01:23:09.110 --> 01:23:11.610
it it's all a matter of, like, what are
1146
01:23:11.990 --> 01:23:22.675
what are the various options? What can you use them for? And what's the threat model in using them? So Keybase, I prefer people to use that rather than DM ing me on Twitter, for example, where,
1147
01:23:22.975 --> 01:23:29.199
you know, Keybase has this whole social network thing. So if someone wants to contact me, you know, it's someone that, you know,
1148
01:23:29.580 --> 01:23:35.360
if they're following me on Twitter or whatever, then that's already public information. I'm not trying to hide that I'm connected to them or something.
1149
01:23:36.385 --> 01:23:41.125
So it's just that that's I treat it like an encrypted version of Twitter, sort of.
1150
01:23:41.744 --> 01:23:46.640
But in terms of, like, your main app, definitely, Keybase is not at the top of the list.
1151
01:23:47.180 --> 01:23:50.240
Yeah. So to the freaks listening to this on the podcast feed,
1152
01:23:51.355 --> 01:23:53.215
one one of our freaks, Pedro,
1153
01:23:53.675 --> 01:23:57.454
he asked, Janine what she thought about Keybase, which triggered that,
1154
01:23:58.155 --> 01:23:59.375
discussion right there.
1155
01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:05.300
You know, I tend to agree a 100% with what you said. I think an important thing for the freaks to realize here
1156
01:24:05.600 --> 01:24:08.180
is that that Keybase is open source software.
1157
01:24:10.114 --> 01:24:15.815
You know, the code could have more eyes on it. You know, the more people looking at code, the better to keep them honest.
1158
01:24:16.920 --> 01:24:19.820
But it is designed in a way to be end to end encrypted.
1159
01:24:20.440 --> 01:24:26.745
So the idea there is between the combination of end to end encryption and the fact that it's open source and you can verify it,
1160
01:24:28.165 --> 01:24:31.545
it means that you don't have to trust the company that's running the servers,
1161
01:24:31.925 --> 01:24:33.625
with the contents of that message,
1162
01:24:35.079 --> 01:24:47.235
which I think is a very important distinction. I mean, obviously, there could be certain things that happen there, but but that's, like, the the base standard that I think we we wanna see in all of our tools and services that
1163
01:24:47.614 --> 01:24:52.610
they're designed in a way to reduce trust in the overarching company as much as possible.
1164
01:24:53.390 --> 01:24:57.545
And then they're open the code is open so that we can actually prove and verify that.
1165
01:25:01.465 --> 01:25:03.645
Do you keep in mind though Yeah. Go on.
1166
01:25:04.640 --> 01:25:08.260
To actually, like, do that entire proof to yourself too, like, you'll need
1167
01:25:08.880 --> 01:25:11.300
to either build it yourself or, you know,
1168
01:25:11.655 --> 01:25:21.760
like, PGP verify your download and everything and not get the automatic updates and all that stuff, which is a huge barrier for entry to a lot of people that likely aren't doing that, which
1169
01:25:22.140 --> 01:25:25.520
is another There's trade offs everywhere. Right? But but
1170
01:25:26.140 --> 01:25:29.280
I think as a base standard, if that's the expectation,
1171
01:25:31.375 --> 01:25:34.355
ideally, you have some people that are doing it. Right?
1172
01:25:35.054 --> 01:25:36.034
So at least,
1173
01:25:36.495 --> 01:25:44.800
you know, users might get fucked, but at least the alarm will be sound, you know, like, someone I it might be after the fact, it might be too late for someone.
1174
01:25:45.500 --> 01:25:51.885
They've already lost their privacy, or in the case of of of, malicious Bitcoin software, maybe lost their coins. But,
1175
01:25:53.465 --> 01:25:55.724
at least at least it would be known. Right?
1176
01:25:58.860 --> 01:26:04.320
Yeah. That's true. Like, it's strictly better than if you compare it to something that's closed and not end to end encrypted.
1177
01:26:04.975 --> 01:26:05.955
Oh, yeah. A 100%.
1178
01:26:08.175 --> 01:26:11.635
Before we got on a key based tangent, Janine, you were saying something
1179
01:26:12.140 --> 01:26:16.320
pretty interesting. You had it I I was enjoying where we were going with that.
1180
01:26:17.420 --> 01:26:20.400
I guess we were talking about we were talking about personal servers
1181
01:26:23.285 --> 01:26:26.425
and and the convenience trade off that that that entails.
1182
01:26:27.605 --> 01:26:38.679
Yeah. I I think the last thing I said before I went to the key based question was about how I think the intermediary step will just be having, you know, a more localized,
1183
01:26:40.175 --> 01:26:41.795
kind of community rung thing where
1184
01:26:42.175 --> 01:26:42.675
you
1185
01:26:43.215 --> 01:26:51.220
know the person who is self hosting the infrastructure and maybe they're, you know, they're the skilled one who knows how to handle that, and they can,
1186
01:26:53.120 --> 01:27:03.855
you know, an individual or a group of people who know what to do can host for their local community or their friends. Maybe they're not living near each other physically, but I feel like that's the intermediary step because
1187
01:27:04.460 --> 01:27:06.160
at the end of the day, most people,
1188
01:27:07.420 --> 01:27:11.120
whether it's because they don't have the money to
1189
01:27:11.555 --> 01:27:15.735
build up the infrastructure or the the the knowledge to know how to do that properly.
1190
01:27:16.675 --> 01:27:21.260
A lot of people most people are not going to do that. So I feel like at least the intermediary
1191
01:27:21.640 --> 01:27:22.860
step is going to be
1192
01:27:23.400 --> 01:27:25.820
just, you know, a group of friends or
1193
01:27:26.360 --> 01:27:29.660
some families who know each other to do that together.
1194
01:27:33.625 --> 01:27:35.005
The uncle Jim model.
1195
01:27:35.385 --> 01:27:37.645
Yeah. The freaks out model very well.
1196
01:27:39.510 --> 01:27:42.570
I think that's a it's a good starting place too because, like,
1197
01:27:43.190 --> 01:28:02.730
for, you know, for some people, like, getting a whole server rack is, like, know, it's completely untenable. Like, yes, like, my mom did that. She'd, you know, just be like, I'm never doing this. So it it is a good thing, like, if you do have that, you know, the quote unquote uncle gym to be able to set something up. And it's, like, you know, our hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper. Like, you can get a
1198
01:28:03.244 --> 01:28:09.824
Raspberry Pi, like, 3 for, like, $20 or something. So, like, it it could be doable and, like, it's not
1199
01:28:10.260 --> 01:28:14.199
exorbitantly expensive where it's not like, you know, you're keeping a barrier to entry from,
1200
01:28:14.580 --> 01:28:17.480
like, a lot of the, like, poor parts of the world.
1201
01:28:18.475 --> 01:28:24.495
But we do need to actually build that software. I don't know. At least, personally, I don't know any messaging that is, like, self hosted,
1202
01:28:24.875 --> 01:28:26.895
like, the uncle Jim model kind of thing.
1203
01:28:31.420 --> 01:28:32.639
Yeah. I mean, I
1204
01:28:33.100 --> 01:28:36.480
I've been kind of bullish on the uncle Jim concept.
1205
01:28:37.085 --> 01:28:39.185
But when I talked to a lot of old timers,
1206
01:28:41.005 --> 01:28:47.460
they were like, that's kind of what, you know, everyone was always saying, and then it just turned into the cloud model.
1207
01:28:48.320 --> 01:28:52.740
So I don't know if we're just, like, in our little bubble, but I think that that's kind of
1208
01:28:53.525 --> 01:29:06.490
what we should try to achieve. Because, I mean, as Janine said, like, I don't think I I don't think we can really expect that many people at scale. I mean, look let's look at Bitcoin nodes, right, which has, like, a massive incentive to to use your own node. Right?
1209
01:29:07.350 --> 01:29:08.570
And very low burden.
1210
01:29:09.350 --> 01:29:17.545
Even with that, we don't see many people running that or using their own node. I mean, what what do we think the upper end of that is? Max, like, a 100000 people?
1211
01:29:23.430 --> 01:29:26.410
Yeah. I think around there is probably right. Like,
1212
01:29:26.985 --> 01:29:34.925
any like what you said, it's a huge incentive where, you know, you could lose, like, potentially, like, 1,000 or 100 of 1,000 of dollars if you're not running your own node.
1213
01:29:35.230 --> 01:29:35.730
So,
1214
01:29:36.350 --> 01:29:46.565
you know, it is kind of bearish for the the home node thing, but, I mean, if you do build, like, something or, like, something that people actually really want, you could, like, get people over there.
1215
01:29:46.945 --> 01:29:47.765
But, I mean,
1216
01:29:48.145 --> 01:29:49.845
we need to actually build that, which
1217
01:29:50.510 --> 01:29:51.730
hopefully, someone does.
1218
01:29:52.590 --> 01:29:53.730
But but overall,
1219
01:29:54.430 --> 01:30:00.335
ultimately, that's where we wanna go. We wanna go to easy self hosting, make it as easy and and accessible as
1220
01:30:01.455 --> 01:30:03.075
and allow people to basically
1221
01:30:04.094 --> 01:30:07.555
operate as as, like, a localized cloud, if you will,
1222
01:30:08.310 --> 01:30:11.050
for for either their neighborhoods or their friends and family.
1223
01:30:12.070 --> 01:30:14.969
And then all of a sudden, you have a way more distributed model,
1224
01:30:15.615 --> 01:30:19.955
that that is more censorship resistant. So that that would be absolutely fantastic to see.
1225
01:30:20.575 --> 01:30:24.835
And that's what I've been dedicating, like, a lot of my time to is is these,
1226
01:30:25.140 --> 01:30:27.320
you know, sovereignty boxes, if you will.
1227
01:30:28.900 --> 01:30:35.835
But, I mean, on top of that, I mean, you still have major infrastructure issues that even if you have the self hosted box in people's homes,
1228
01:30:36.455 --> 01:30:41.035
I mean, we just go right back to the Tor conversation. Right? And then you're relying on Tor actually working.
1229
01:30:43.250 --> 01:31:01.090
Otherwise, like, you can't you can't make that that that future doesn't happen without tour as it stands right now. It's it's fully reliant on Tor. Alright. Hopefully, we have, you know, either Tor 2.0 or a a new and a new protocol in place. But but right now, as it stands, we need tour for it. Right?
1230
01:31:01.630 --> 01:31:15.554
Also, like, you're back to, like, your very first conversation, you get back to like, the app stores could censor you if you wanted to, like, make it usable from the phone unless you, like, side load the app onto your phone, which, you know, you're not gonna be able to get the normie to do. So, like, you still have another
1231
01:31:15.920 --> 01:31:20.340
centrist See, this is where, like, I feel like we get ourselves into holes. You know? Like, here we are,
1232
01:31:20.800 --> 01:31:23.060
an hour and a half into the conversation. Right?
1233
01:31:23.435 --> 01:31:30.415
And and we've talked about all these, you know, more intimate things or these more sophisticated things. And and, ultimately,
1234
01:31:31.120 --> 01:31:35.620
the sheer fact that you can side load an app on an Android phone is a massive
1235
01:31:36.239 --> 01:31:42.505
improvement over something like iPhone. Right? And how how many people have actually side loaded an app or needed to. Right?
1236
01:31:45.125 --> 01:31:48.105
There's just, like it's just a lot of nuance. There's nuance everywhere.
1237
01:31:49.440 --> 01:31:49.940
Yeah.
1238
01:31:50.960 --> 01:31:52.660
So I have a question from
1239
01:31:53.120 --> 01:31:54.980
a freak in the comments, Peloponnesian.
1240
01:31:55.840 --> 01:31:56.980
Shout out to you.
1241
01:31:57.875 --> 01:31:59.494
Number one privacy book
1242
01:31:59.795 --> 01:32:01.494
to read from both of you.
1243
01:32:04.435 --> 01:32:05.335
Start with Janine.
1244
01:32:06.340 --> 01:32:07.220
I can go first.
1245
01:32:07.700 --> 01:32:17.015
So my I wouldn't I I it's it's really hard for me to say which is the number one book, so I'm just gonna go with one that I think is really good and kind of undervalued,
1246
01:32:17.315 --> 01:32:17.975
which is,
1247
01:32:18.595 --> 01:32:20.535
a book called The Maximum Surveillance
1248
01:32:20.835 --> 01:32:22.295
Society, The Rise of CCTV
1249
01:32:22.755 --> 01:32:24.810
by Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong.
1250
01:32:25.429 --> 01:32:29.690
It was written, long ago enough that it's actually I think it was 1999
1251
01:32:30.605 --> 01:32:31.345
that it's,
1252
01:32:31.885 --> 01:32:33.825
actually available on the Internet Archive,
1253
01:32:35.005 --> 01:32:41.590
which you can loan from. They have a book, a digital book lending program. So if you want to read it, it is freely available.
1254
01:32:42.050 --> 01:32:48.905
But I recommend that one because it was written, you know, in the relatively early days of the Internet.
1255
01:32:49.445 --> 01:32:52.585
And I think it has a lot of good points about,
1256
01:32:53.989 --> 01:32:55.849
you know, privacy at a point
1257
01:32:56.150 --> 01:32:59.449
where, you know, we we were really considering it from
1258
01:33:00.070 --> 01:33:01.130
so much the,
1259
01:33:01.945 --> 01:33:07.565
you know, the the apps and serves and such we were thinking or at least he was thinking about it from
1260
01:33:09.060 --> 01:33:11.320
the standpoint of just cameras,
1261
01:33:12.260 --> 01:33:12.760
everywhere,
1262
01:33:13.700 --> 01:33:17.480
which is I mean, the classic image of surveillance is a camera.
1263
01:33:19.835 --> 01:33:31.530
And I guess that was the starting point for much bigger things where we're now putting the we're doing 1984 all on our own by putting the cameras and microphones in our own houses of our free will.
1264
01:33:35.645 --> 01:33:40.145
I would recommend No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald. It's about,
1265
01:33:40.685 --> 01:33:44.500
like, Glenn Greenwald's the guy that broke the story about Edward Snowden, the NSA,
1266
01:33:44.880 --> 01:33:46.880
and all that stuff. I think it's really into,
1267
01:33:47.320 --> 01:33:48.659
you know, like, how perverse,
1268
01:33:49.840 --> 01:33:50.980
like, the US's
1269
01:33:52.215 --> 01:33:53.995
surveillance state has really become
1270
01:33:54.455 --> 01:34:05.040
and talks about, like, you know, like, why this could happen and how they do this. And it's, like, it's a really good read and, you know, it's pressing for the current times, and you get to learn all about Snowdon.
1271
01:34:06.700 --> 01:34:13.454
Yeah. On the subject of, usability, there's a great story in there. If anyone doesn't know when, Snowden was,
1272
01:34:14.175 --> 01:34:16.675
trying to get in contact with Glenn Greenwald,
1273
01:34:17.215 --> 01:34:20.980
Glenn was not really using PGP at the time, and so,
1274
01:34:22.000 --> 01:34:28.355
Snowden was like he, he includes in the book the fact that and I think Snowden also wrote about it in his book.
1275
01:34:28.895 --> 01:34:31.495
But, yeah, Glenn includes the fact that, like, he,
1276
01:34:31.935 --> 01:34:32.435
frustrated
1277
01:34:32.815 --> 01:34:35.395
his source by not using PGP.
1278
01:34:40.250 --> 01:34:43.230
I mean so, I mean, like, PGP is, like, a perfect example,
1279
01:34:44.409 --> 01:34:50.295
of of the trade off balance we were talking about earlier. Right? It's because PGP has been around for a long time.
1280
01:34:52.650 --> 01:34:54.989
I mean and if used properly, it solves,
1281
01:34:57.530 --> 01:34:58.510
private messaging.
1282
01:34:59.050 --> 01:35:02.125
But the problem is it's so inconvenient to use,
1283
01:35:03.304 --> 01:35:08.925
you know, it's it's so inconvenient to use, period. And it's even more inconvenient to use in a secure fashion,
1284
01:35:09.800 --> 01:35:13.900
that it just hasn't had the kind of uptake. And then so you compare that to something
1285
01:35:14.360 --> 01:35:24.755
like signal, and and people a 100% agree that PGP is a pure one. Right? But signal's the one that probably has sent more encrypted messages than than all the years of PGP combined.
1286
01:35:29.190 --> 01:35:33.370
But I appreciate those book recommendations. I mean, I the easy one is extreme privacy,
1287
01:35:34.550 --> 01:35:35.690
by Michael Basil.
1288
01:35:37.014 --> 01:35:39.114
Everyone should give that a read. That's a good one.
1289
01:35:41.414 --> 01:35:44.155
What else do we have here? We have a couple more questions.
1290
01:35:45.960 --> 01:35:48.940
Twitter exodus to Mastodon. What do you guys think about Mastodon?
1291
01:35:52.440 --> 01:35:54.925
I mean, I've had a I've been on the Bitcoin
1292
01:35:55.465 --> 01:35:57.165
hackers Mastodon instance
1293
01:35:57.704 --> 01:35:58.204
since
1294
01:35:58.505 --> 01:36:00.445
at least a year, I think.
1295
01:36:01.790 --> 01:36:05.730
I mean, I don't I don't post too much on Twitter,
1296
01:36:06.830 --> 01:36:08.290
anyway, and usually
1297
01:36:08.989 --> 01:36:13.275
yeah. I mean, I haven't I haven't fully moved to Mastodon, but I definitely,
1298
01:36:15.175 --> 01:36:24.910
recommend people should go there just because I mean, one thing, the the character counts a lot bigger. So if you want to do your massive threads, that's a lot easier on Mastodon.
1299
01:36:25.450 --> 01:36:28.665
I also cross post my newsletter there as well.
1300
01:36:31.225 --> 01:36:33.145
I've been liking Mastodon a lot.
1301
01:36:34.425 --> 01:36:38.445
Hopefully, this this time is different, TM, and, people actually stay.
1302
01:36:38.790 --> 01:36:39.270
But,
1303
01:36:39.590 --> 01:36:52.165
it's been good. Like, this kinda feels like more like the Bitcoin hang where, you know, we don't need to, like, fight with central bankers or Peter Schiff or whoever. We just hang out and share Bitcoin meetings and talk about things we actually care about.
1304
01:36:52.785 --> 01:37:02.060
Yeah. It's it's been good. I I I've been looking into, like, maybe setting up my own instance too because I feel like that'd be a really fun experiment, and I hope other people try that out too.
1305
01:37:03.425 --> 01:37:06.005
So, I mean, that's kind of it's kind of interesting.
1306
01:37:06.385 --> 01:37:07.605
I mean, you know, I'm also
1307
01:37:08.145 --> 01:37:10.325
over there in the Bitcoin Hackers instance.
1308
01:37:11.250 --> 01:37:15.830
Mastodon had been there for a couple years. I think people look at it the wrong way. I don't think it competes with Twitter.
1309
01:37:18.185 --> 01:37:20.925
I think these these centralized platforms
1310
01:37:21.305 --> 01:37:26.445
allow you to, you know like Twitter, these massive centralized platforms let you cheaply,
1311
01:37:27.350 --> 01:37:29.690
and easily broadcast out to the world,
1312
01:37:30.390 --> 01:37:33.450
and at at the cost of censorship resistance.
1313
01:37:34.230 --> 01:37:36.170
So Mastodon's actually really interesting
1314
01:37:36.645 --> 01:37:38.985
based on the trade offs we've been talking about,
1315
01:37:40.725 --> 01:37:42.905
because it kinda does sit in the middle there.
1316
01:37:43.685 --> 01:37:45.545
Anyone can run their own instance,
1317
01:37:46.440 --> 01:37:47.820
which is basically a node,
1318
01:37:48.440 --> 01:37:49.660
their their own server,
1319
01:37:50.440 --> 01:37:52.219
and they can either use that themselves
1320
01:37:52.760 --> 01:38:02.965
or they can uncle Jim it, and they can have other people use it. Right? And and you can you it's a federated model, so you can interact across those instances. So it provides some
1321
01:38:03.265 --> 01:38:03.765
competition,
1322
01:38:04.960 --> 01:38:06.420
in a more open environment,
1323
01:38:07.440 --> 01:38:15.425
with with the ability, as Ben said, is you can just run your own instance all by yourself, and that could just be then all of a sudden we're in the personal server model. Right?
1324
01:38:16.045 --> 01:38:16.545
So
1325
01:38:16.845 --> 01:38:18.705
so it it is a pretty cool project.
1326
01:38:20.490 --> 01:38:22.750
It should be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm
1327
01:38:23.290 --> 01:38:26.350
I'm kind of cautiously optimistic at all these different,
1328
01:38:28.475 --> 01:38:38.400
like, open source social media derivations, you know, and and, hopefully, we can move away from these massive centralized platforms because it's gotten it's gotten really, really bad in that respect.
1329
01:38:40.619 --> 01:38:42.719
Randy McMillan, yes, does mention
1330
01:38:43.260 --> 01:38:44.480
GPG Suite
1331
01:38:44.875 --> 01:38:48.735
on Mac did change the game in terms of using PGP.
1332
01:38:50.394 --> 01:38:50.894
But,
1333
01:38:51.434 --> 01:39:02.320
I mean, people shouldn't use Windows, but it's it's a pain in the ass on Windows. It's actually pretty easy on Linux, but, I mean, when people see the command line, they get scared. And I think it's important that people realize that the UX is almost as important,
1334
01:39:03.675 --> 01:39:04.655
as the actual
1335
01:39:05.275 --> 01:39:12.014
what's going on in the tech in the background. You know, you you need because with privacy, it's just so easy to shoot yourself in the foot, especially.
1336
01:39:13.619 --> 01:39:21.400
So if if if a tool is set up in a way where it's possible for a user to shoot themselves in the foot, you gotta assume that most users are gonna do it.
1337
01:39:24.815 --> 01:39:26.594
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.
1338
01:39:27.454 --> 01:39:28.514
Sorry about that.
1339
01:39:32.469 --> 01:39:35.370
Yeah. So, I mean, I just wanna thank you guys for joining the conversation.
1340
01:39:36.070 --> 01:39:37.770
I respect both of you a lot,
1341
01:39:38.744 --> 01:39:42.525
and that's why I asked you here for the 4th episode of this new show.
1342
01:39:44.344 --> 01:39:49.810
Sorry. It got off a little bit slow here. You know, I'm still trying to to get used to this format,
1343
01:39:50.429 --> 01:39:53.170
especially in a cabin in the woods when my Internet is
1344
01:39:54.110 --> 01:39:57.489
we were talking about intermittent connections earlier. Yeah. That's what I'm experiencing.
1345
01:39:58.775 --> 01:40:05.755
And I wanted to thank the freaks for joining us again, especially the freaks that are joining us live, but also to all the freaks that are gonna listen to this after the fact.
1346
01:40:06.760 --> 01:40:09.099
We're gonna have another episode of Citadel Dispatch
1347
01:40:09.960 --> 01:40:12.460
next week, same time, 5 PM, 22100,
1348
01:40:13.045 --> 01:40:15.385
5 PM EST, 22100 UTC
1349
01:40:16.324 --> 01:40:17.145
on Tuesday.
1350
01:40:18.085 --> 01:40:20.505
We're gonna have rabbit hole recap on Thursday,
1351
01:40:21.445 --> 01:40:24.570
at 5 PM, I believe. Also gonna be a live show.
1352
01:40:25.190 --> 01:40:28.570
So definitely show up for both of those. We'd love to have you.
1353
01:40:30.205 --> 01:40:30.705
Janine,
1354
01:40:31.085 --> 01:40:33.665
Ben, I appreciate you guys a ton.
1355
01:40:34.525 --> 01:40:38.864
I'm gonna throw up for our our our viewers. I'm gonna throw up
1356
01:40:39.380 --> 01:40:39.880
your
1357
01:40:40.340 --> 01:40:43.640
your Twitter tags. Those are also their tags on Mastodon
1358
01:40:44.100 --> 01:40:44.600
atj9roemandat
1359
01:40:47.715 --> 01:40:48.455
Ben Necarman.
1360
01:40:49.555 --> 01:40:51.095
Thank you guys for joining us.
1361
01:40:52.675 --> 01:40:54.615
Thank you. It's fun to be here. You.
1362
01:41:02.630 --> 01:41:03.770
I'll stop in the beginning.
1363
01:41:28.660 --> 01:41:30.680
That's why I love the moon.
1364
01:41:34.020 --> 01:41:36.120
Every night, it's there for 2.
1365
01:41:40.425 --> 01:41:41.325
It's constant,
1366
01:45:12.975 --> 01:45:15.875
Just be kept for where you look for love.
1367
01:45:21.940 --> 01:45:23.240
You can stop it.
1368
01:45:25.380 --> 01:45:27.560
Love you freaks. Stay humble. Stack sets.
NOTE
Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 3/17/2024 4:34:21 PM
Duration: 6329.678
Channels: 1
1
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:01.860
2
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39,000.
3
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Where's it going?
4
00:00:08.135 --> 00:00:16.235
5
00:00:17.060 --> 00:00:20.920
Where is it going? It's probably going to a 100, then a 150, then 200,000.
6
00:00:21.619 --> 00:00:28.805
In what period? I don't know. 5 years, 10 years, but it's going there. And the reason is because every time you see
7
00:00:29.345 --> 00:00:30.645
all of this stuff happening,
8
00:00:31.585 --> 00:00:38.830
it just reminds you that, wow, our leaders are not as trustworthy and reliable as they used to be. And so just in case,
9
00:00:39.610 --> 00:00:43.790
we really do need to have some kind of, you know, insurance we can keep under our pillow
10
00:00:44.105 --> 00:00:47.405
that gives us some access to an uncorrelated hedge.
11
00:00:47.945 --> 00:00:57.990
And it's going to eventually transition to something much more important, But for right now, you're just getting all these data points that prove this thing. It's just the fabric of society is frayed.
12
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And until we figure out how to make it better,
13
00:01:01.415 --> 00:01:12.440
it's time to just have a little, schmuck insurance on the side, and everybody's running in. It's just an incredible thing. I could never have imagined it. Good to be a schmuck, I guess, if you got if you got
14
00:01:48.860 --> 00:01:50.880
15
00:01:51.420 --> 00:01:54.160
Sorry about that little technical mishap we had there.
16
00:01:54.925 --> 00:01:56.865
Thank you for joining us on the rebroadcast.
17
00:01:59.325 --> 00:02:01.985
This is Citadel Dispatch episode 4.
18
00:02:02.445 --> 00:02:03.905
I'm joined by my friends,
19
00:02:04.750 --> 00:02:06.450
Janine and Ben Decarman.
20
00:02:07.870 --> 00:02:12.210
I'd like to welcome them here to the show. I wanna thank all the freaks for joining us live.
21
00:02:13.935 --> 00:02:15.875
Without you, we couldn't do this show.
22
00:02:16.335 --> 00:02:22.995
And it's been a pretty crazy week, so the topics I wanna cover mostly the focus I really wanna have here
23
00:02:25.370 --> 00:02:26.270
is on censorship,
24
00:02:26.650 --> 00:02:33.935
privacy, and open source software because I think these last few weeks have really highlighted to a lot of people what the 3 of us,
25
00:02:35.275 --> 00:02:40.500
have been talking about a lot lately, which is the need for more ship resistant tools and platforms,
26
00:02:41.200 --> 00:02:42.340
available to individuals.
27
00:02:43.440 --> 00:02:43.940
So
28
00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:46.420
with that being said,
29
00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:48.340
let's get this party started.
30
00:02:49.825 --> 00:02:51.765
Janine, do you wanna give a brief intro,
31
00:02:52.305 --> 00:02:53.425
on how the freaks,
32
00:02:54.945 --> 00:02:57.285
what what your focus has been in the last few years?
33
00:02:59.290 --> 00:03:00.350
34
00:03:00.730 --> 00:03:03.230
For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm an investigative
35
00:03:03.690 --> 00:03:05.630
journalist and privacy researcher.
36
00:03:07.625 --> 00:03:10.765
Middle of last year, I started a newsletter called,
37
00:03:11.065 --> 00:03:15.645
This Month in Bitcoin Privacy. So if you want to specifically know about
38
00:03:16.330 --> 00:03:16.830
anything,
39
00:03:17.690 --> 00:03:21.470
related to privacy in Bitcoin, that's what I focus on.
40
00:03:23.050 --> 00:03:26.965
I also do other work, but that's mainly the Bitcoin stuff. I also
41
00:03:27.584 --> 00:03:31.424
have a shout out to, John Spahary for reminding me.
42
00:03:32.064 --> 00:03:34.230
Worked on wallets recovery with,
43
00:03:35.390 --> 00:03:35.590
with,
44
00:03:38.870 --> 00:03:39.370
I
45
00:03:40.069 --> 00:03:40.310
just
46
00:03:41.110 --> 00:03:43.370
my brain is a bit dead right now.
47
00:03:46.695 --> 00:03:48.155
Yeah. Worked on recovery,
48
00:03:49.815 --> 00:03:51.015
which helps with,
49
00:03:54.519 --> 00:03:55.720
which which helps with,
50
00:03:56.519 --> 00:03:59.340
if you have issues, like, importing your,
51
00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:08.355
your keys or your seed to other wallets and and are struggling with that, it kind of explains why that's the case and what which wallets are compatible with each other.
52
00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:12.660
53
00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:20.020
no don't don't worry about being a little frazzled here. I think we all are, after my little technical issue there.
54
00:04:21.505 --> 00:04:23.205
Ben, how should people know you?
55
00:04:24.705 --> 00:04:27.525
56
00:04:28.225 --> 00:04:31.860
like, 3 years now, and I've been doing Bitcoin development for about
57
00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:35.139
2 years ish now. Started at, like, Bitcoin Core,
58
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:40.755
just basic stuff, and then worked out with Sabi for a while. And then for the past year, I've been
59
00:04:41.135 --> 00:04:43.315
at doing, discreet log contract stuff.
60
00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:53.060
61
00:04:53.755 --> 00:04:55.855
Janine's most recent, newsletter,
62
00:04:56.475 --> 00:04:56.975
into
63
00:04:57.755 --> 00:04:58.575
the comments.
64
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Everyone should go check that out. I really have been enjoying them. So thank you for that, Janine.
65
00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:07.280
I guess let's just jump right into it.
66
00:05:08.139 --> 00:05:09.040
We had
67
00:05:11.505 --> 00:05:14.545
the sitting president of the United States got removed from,
68
00:05:15.665 --> 00:05:17.525
from Twitter completely forever.
69
00:05:18.620 --> 00:05:21.440
And I think all of a sudden, people are starting to realize
70
00:05:22.139 --> 00:05:24.240
that if it can happen to
71
00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:26.639
one of the most powerful people in the world,
72
00:05:27.315 --> 00:05:29.495
then maybe it is actually happening
73
00:05:29.795 --> 00:05:30.615
to much,
74
00:05:32.435 --> 00:05:34.215
you know, much more vulnerable people,
75
00:05:35.430 --> 00:05:36.250
all the time.
76
00:05:36.710 --> 00:05:37.210
And,
77
00:05:38.949 --> 00:05:46.565
let's I I think I think I think it'd be good to shed some light on on what this particular issue is, this idea of deplatforming,
78
00:05:46.865 --> 00:05:51.365
this idea that that you can basically remove someone from an online platform,
79
00:05:51.759 --> 00:05:55.620
and and what are the implications of of that for us going forward?
80
00:05:59.175 --> 00:06:03.655
81
00:06:04.615 --> 00:06:12.950
other things. Like, Ron Paul's, like, page got removed off Facebook and, like, seeming and, like, some, like, even some, like, stuff from the left got removed
82
00:06:13.490 --> 00:06:17.345
that, like, seemingly was unrelated to Trump. So it's been, like, a huge purge from
83
00:06:17.725 --> 00:06:22.945
social media, and it's like I don't know. I think, like, Gab and, like, Mastodon have been getting huge
84
00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:25.060
influx of which is good to see.
85
00:06:32.165 --> 00:06:32.665
86
00:06:38.175 --> 00:06:38.560
the
87
00:06:39.280 --> 00:06:51.085
the issue is bigger, I think, than so so so I'm I'm gonna how do how can we unpack this? Let let's unpack this a little bit because we had we literally had Parler, right, which is one of these competing Twitter
88
00:06:51.545 --> 00:06:55.085
like, services. I guess it was it was a relatively new service.
89
00:06:56.290 --> 00:06:56.950
It had,
90
00:06:57.730 --> 00:06:58.390
you know,
91
00:06:58.850 --> 00:07:04.390
it it was it was a very amateur hour type of operation they seem to be having over there. They didn't have very good security,
92
00:07:05.215 --> 00:07:08.915
policies in place. But besides all of that, Amazon, AWS,
93
00:07:11.625 --> 00:07:12.080
removed
94
00:07:12.639 --> 00:07:14.979
Parler from their service. They deplatform
95
00:07:15.280 --> 00:07:16.580
them from
96
00:07:16.960 --> 00:07:20.979
the actual cloud servers. You know, Amazon's cloud servers are running
97
00:07:21.475 --> 00:07:23.255
a a large majority of the Internet,
98
00:07:24.595 --> 00:07:30.215
and Parler's operations were part of that, and they removed Parler from there. And then app before that happened,
99
00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:35.620
Apple and Google removed them from the App Store. So we have we have multiple different things happening. Right? We have
100
00:07:37.715 --> 00:07:41.735
we have, like, platforms on platforms on platforms. Right? So so, like, for
101
00:07:42.355 --> 00:07:55.190
so so you have the individual user who is being hosted on a platform. You have that platform, which is then also is being hosted on a cloud server somewhere, and then you have the actual app distribution, which is going through these controlled walled gardens.
102
00:07:55.615 --> 00:08:00.115
And wherever you have the central point of failures is where you you tend to see pressure happen.
103
00:08:01.215 --> 00:08:01.715
So
104
00:08:02.975 --> 00:08:13.780
let's unpack it even further than that. Janine, now she's no longer having cat problems. Janine, why is free speech important? Why is the ability for anyone to to interact
105
00:08:15.845 --> 00:08:17.384
interact freely online
106
00:08:17.685 --> 00:08:18.425
so important.
107
00:08:20.324 --> 00:08:27.750
108
00:08:28.210 --> 00:08:28.710
So,
109
00:08:29.410 --> 00:08:30.550
that is fixed now.
110
00:08:31.225 --> 00:08:34.125
But yeah. So I actually gave a talk in December,
111
00:08:34.905 --> 00:08:35.725
called financial
112
00:08:36.265 --> 00:08:39.840
cancel culture about the link between freedom of speech
113
00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:42.180
and money, and how censoring
114
00:08:42.560 --> 00:08:43.780
financial access,
115
00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:47.860
and also just limiting financial access in general
116
00:08:48.325 --> 00:08:49.065
can affect,
117
00:08:50.245 --> 00:08:50.745
speech.
118
00:08:51.525 --> 00:08:52.665
And so,
119
00:08:53.445 --> 00:08:56.025
yeah, I definitely think that in terms of,
120
00:08:57.910 --> 00:09:00.650
recent events, but also I mean, I I covered
121
00:09:01.510 --> 00:09:09.255
mainly events that happened just in November December in my presentation, and there was quite a lot. I focused on that because there was just so many
122
00:09:09.875 --> 00:09:11.415
examples that I could give.
123
00:09:13.235 --> 00:09:16.380
Obviously, the most prominent one that most people know about is,
124
00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:17.660
when WikiLeaks,
125
00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:19.740
published the
126
00:09:20.120 --> 00:09:21.180
diplomatic cables.
127
00:09:21.880 --> 00:09:22.620
And then,
128
00:09:23.160 --> 00:09:25.405
you had various payment processors
129
00:09:26.425 --> 00:09:27.485
and even banks,
130
00:09:28.025 --> 00:09:29.005
kicking them off.
131
00:09:29.705 --> 00:09:31.565
Not for any real,
132
00:09:32.579 --> 00:09:34.279
explicit reason in most cases,
133
00:09:34.660 --> 00:09:42.040
and not saying no whether there was any pressure, but I think it's reasonable to assume that there was pressure at a very high level to do so.
134
00:09:42.645 --> 00:09:43.865
But even if there wasn't,
135
00:09:44.245 --> 00:09:46.585
that without Bitcoin existing,
136
00:09:47.605 --> 00:09:54.410
I could I think I could reasonably say that WikiLeaks itself may not have continued to exist after that point,
137
00:09:55.910 --> 00:10:00.410
or at least it would have been significantly harder because they're at the moment,
138
00:10:00.725 --> 00:10:02.665
I think they're still relying on,
139
00:10:03.525 --> 00:10:07.625
basically other institutions to accept donations on their behalf, which,
140
00:10:08.085 --> 00:10:11.610
you know, that works, but it's not the best.
141
00:10:12.870 --> 00:10:15.690
So in terms of journalism, which is my focus,
142
00:10:16.230 --> 00:10:16.890
I definitely
143
00:10:17.510 --> 00:10:19.050
see the value in
144
00:10:19.935 --> 00:10:23.555
in having a money that is censorship resistant because,
145
00:10:24.175 --> 00:10:24.675
like,
146
00:10:25.615 --> 00:10:36.180
WikiLeaks is and a lot of other people now are skilled in, you know, finding ways to at least make their platform censorship resistant. There's a lot of different methods for that that don't
147
00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:37.940
have anything to do with Blockchains
148
00:10:38.560 --> 00:10:41.365
despite many attempts at that in recent years.
149
00:10:42.545 --> 00:10:46.165
But a lot of them haven't really looked at money. And I think,
150
00:10:46.829 --> 00:10:49.649
you know, examples like WikiLeaks, but also others,
151
00:10:50.110 --> 00:10:54.370
they're the only people who have really considered that and actually been willing to
152
00:10:55.305 --> 00:11:02.985
experiment with things like Bitcoin, which is, you know, back in 2010 was so much smaller, and that was, you know, it's always this rumor that,
153
00:11:03.690 --> 00:11:10.029
part of the reason that Satoshi went quiet is because one of the last messages he, she or they posted was about
154
00:11:10.490 --> 00:11:15.615
the, hornet's nest being kicked in terms of WikiLeaks possibly accepting donations in Bitcoin.
155
00:11:16.714 --> 00:11:19.615
And weirdly enough, I still think that a lot of Bitcoiners
156
00:11:20.314 --> 00:11:23.690
have that fear of even talking
157
00:11:24.230 --> 00:11:25.610
about, the case
158
00:11:26.070 --> 00:11:33.035
or trying to link Bitcoin with that in any way, which is unfortunate because I feel like, you know, if one organization
159
00:11:33.495 --> 00:11:38.555
if you can't even talk about an organization accepting Bitcoin, is Bitcoin really censorship resistant?
160
00:11:39.095 --> 00:11:40.475
If you're afraid about that.
161
00:11:47.560 --> 00:11:50.620
162
00:11:50.925 --> 00:11:51.825
and the
163
00:11:52.685 --> 00:11:58.545
you you touched on something that was that that is really key there, I mean, for us as Bitcoiners, which is that
164
00:11:59.170 --> 00:11:59.670
oftentimes,
165
00:12:00.050 --> 00:12:03.270
the financial aspects are what gets squeezed first.
166
00:12:04.690 --> 00:12:05.190
And
167
00:12:06.505 --> 00:12:14.605
if if if if you're able to defund a particular movement, you're able to prevent them from raising funds, you're able to prevent maybe a independent media
168
00:12:16.079 --> 00:12:16.579
personality
169
00:12:17.199 --> 00:12:17.940
or individual
170
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from monetizing their work,
171
00:12:20.959 --> 00:12:26.975
then you're able to essentially censor their speech even if you're not stopping the specific speech because you're making it so that they,
172
00:12:28.635 --> 00:12:31.775
they're not able to fundraise. They're not able to support their operations.
173
00:12:32.714 --> 00:12:33.214
But
174
00:12:33.850 --> 00:12:34.510
this is
175
00:12:34.810 --> 00:12:35.310
a
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a phenomenon that we've seen growing
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more and more over the years. I mean, most recently,
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I think a a big element of, the financial censorship side,
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has been
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I think it was called Operation Chokepoint, which was against, I believe, sex workers and,
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marijuana businesses.
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And and these type of businesses are are
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and and you see the trend here. Right? The trend is is you basically
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put a business or entity in a bad light. You you you equate WikiLeaks with with terrorism
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or,
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foreign governments. You equate marijuana and and sex working with, you know, illegal distasteful activities, and then you're it's easier for you to go and censor them.
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And and that's exactly the MO we've seen,
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on the speech platform. So so it comes down to what is the solution here,
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as our as our lives get more and more digital. And is is that solution really,
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as some have said, like, competing platforms. Right? So if Stripe censors you, well, do you go to Cash App? Or if Twitter censors you, do you go to a Gap?
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Alternatively, we've seen that because of the way our our our tech situation is set up, our tech infrastructure is set up. There's so many choke points that prevent those companies from even competing in the first place. So I would argue,
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and I I think you guys would tend to agree with me, that the real the real solution here
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is some type of tech based solution. We we basically need networks and protocols and tools,
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that that can't be censored by an individual, whether you like it or not.
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And that's the only real way to to protect speech and or and to tangentially to protect privacy, I would say, is the same thing.
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Ben, what are your thoughts here?
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is a much better alternative. And,
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I think we're people are recognizing that a lot more now, and
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there's hopefully some people are waking up and realizing, like, we need to build these, like, censorship resistant platforms or protocols,
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for things, like, other than money.
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is is
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is this idea, like, the when you when you see this this censorship coming from a,
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a a central body,
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it it tends to be the playbook tends to be to do 2 things, to identify critical participants,
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and then pressure those participants. So I I think when you're looking at tools,
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that are trying to
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help further the goals of censorship resistance.
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I think, like, the two main things that we can benefit from is is
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making it more difficult to identify the specific participants.
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And even if you do identify the participants, make it so each in participant doesn't have, you know, any kind of real significant power over the others.
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Otherwise, you can find 1 and you and you can pressure them.
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And so
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a key element here
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is free open source software. Because if if if we do not have free open source software,
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then you always have some kind of centralized company,
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sitting here and operating,
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whatever tool you're using, such as Twitter, and that company can get pressured.
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I was hoping, Janine, that you could,
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help enlighten the freaks, you know,
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why why open source is so much more powerful,
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and and why is it why it's basically
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absolutely essential,
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for us moving forward.
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No worry if you disagree with me.
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looked at the notice
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that BitGo received
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that, you know, they had,
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basically
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violated US sanctions
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because they had supposedly,
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hosted wallets for users that were connecting from
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the banned countries like Iran and Syria and such.
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I thought that was interesting because
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that happened around or that notice was published within days of a similar notice that was in the complete opposite direction from GitHub,
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which for anyone who didn't see in 2019, there was this controversy because
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GitHub was suddenly limiting,
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access to
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developers from Iran,
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and they were citing US sanctions as the reason. And interestingly,
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very unless
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I can't remember the date when it was posted. It was the last week or so. But,
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they posted an update saying that they had actually applied for a license
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to be able to offer their services in Iran.
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And the argument that they gave was that they basically said that the freedom of information
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benefits
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of making their services available for developers there should it was greater than the
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need to impose
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to basically deny it on the basis of imposing economic sanctions, which I thought was really interesting because,
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basically, it was saying,
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you know,
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the the the value of,
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you know, offering these services and having people from Iran contribute to open source software
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was,
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was outweighed or it no. It it outweighed the
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the desire for the government to restrict that.
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So I thought that's interesting that those two things happened at the same time even though they went in completely opposite directions.
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Yeah. Their license got approved, and they say that they're going to apply for licenses for other countries. At the moment, they just have Iran.
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But, yeah, it's unfortunate
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that the same argument can't also be made for money, but,
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obviously, money is perceived as much more
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political than simply software,
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hosting,
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unfortunately.
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But, I would argue that
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Right? Very similar.
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the reversal on GitHub allowing
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Iranians I mean, I I was pleasantly surprised at that, but I I did not I don't think that's something that we can really expect
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going forward. Right? It caught me off guard.
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should know by now, GitHub is owned by Microsoft.
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So I'm guessing that the reason they were able to do that was maybe Microsoft
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stuck its giant foot in there and said that they wanted to support it. I have no idea what stance Microsoft,
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may have taken in those kinds of negotiations, but, I mean, it is good
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that,
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that that argument that they made was successful,
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because I didn't even know that
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I didn't I wasn't even aware that you could actually apply for a license
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to
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basically
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ignore the sanctions under certain circumstances.
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But, I was surprised that
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it sounds like they made the argument that,
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it's it's important for,
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spreading
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intellectual freedom or something.
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You did have you do have a good point there that it kinda hits both ways. Right? These big companies,
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it's it's more likely
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in in some
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in some ways, it's more likely that they can, you know, bend the rules in their favor,
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and get a carve out for themselves for Iranian users in this case.
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But then other times, I I they're almost bigger targets,
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and that they'll be more likely to have to comply because,
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because they are one of the largest companies in the world,
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and and the governments have more leverage over them.
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Like, sometimes I want you you see, like, these smaller
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a lot of times, you'll see, like, these smaller start ups, and they might not do any kind of geo blocking. And then once they get bigger, then they have to.
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Just to go back to BitGo,
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that's really interesting because
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what we're seeing here is is basically it was a non custodial wallet with BitGo. It was a noncustodial Bitcoin wallet. They weren't holding anyone's Bitcoin,
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but they were providing,
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infrastructure.
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And,
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so they knew the IP addresses of their users. And and one of the issues is is using IP addresses
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to mass classify users is that you can use a VPN
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to,
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you know, fake an IP address or have a different IP address,
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located in a different country. So what happens after that is what we usually see is justification of KYC, which is which is mass data collection of users to make sure,
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that the user is who they say they are and to censor appropriately.
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Ben, you've been you've been awfully quiet over there.
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You you wanna talk to the freaks a little bit about why, you know, why KYC concerns us so much?
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now, like,
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you, like, you don't wanna give up. Like, if you're just giving us info to Ditko or whatever, like, they can
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use this information against you, and, like, you shouldn't need to do that. It's a huge hassle, and you're, like, putting yourself up for, like, risk because, like, we've seen countless times where, you know, Bitco could get hacked, and now they're selling this data on the market, like, what we saw with Ledger earlier this,
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like, few months ago where now, like, there's just a huge,
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entire database of people that own Bitcoin
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and, you know, they have their, like, their house address and phone number and full name and, like, if you had something like that where it's if you're doing it even full KYC, we're giving up
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a something like a driver's license or a Social Security number, now you can be at risk for, like, someone stealing your identity and then someone could, you know, open up credit cards in your name and, like, really screw things up. And, like, it's a huge problem in America. I think, like, a quarter of Americans get their identity stolen in their lifetime, which is utterly ridiculous. And, like, that's thousands of hours that people are spending not only, like,
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getting wasted by, like, having to deal with that, but then, like, the like, if they don't catch it, they could actually, like, ruin parts of people's lives. And, like, these people
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have no reason to be able to give up this information. Like, you know, I should be allowed to use BitGo services if me and BitGo want to use it, but,
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you know, some people don't like that.
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the one aspect is for people who even have
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information
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relevant to KYC to begin with, which is that, you know, once you enter that, you're as you said, you're at risk of,
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identity theft. You're at risk of things like, the ledger data breach happening where,
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you know, potentially
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thousands to 100 of thousands of people,
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if they didn't
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use,
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you know, if they didn't obfuscate their identity somehow or obfuscate their,
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shipping location, whether that's a,
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in a lot of cases, it was probably a home address,
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then you basically open yourself up to anyone with the motivation to come and find you with the knowledge that, you know, you have some interest at least in a,
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volatile,
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asset.
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The other aspect of KYC is that from the start, it blocks out anyone who doesn't have the identity,
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documents necessary to participate in the system by going through the KYC process. Like, if they don't have it, they don't even get the choice of whether to participate because they don't.
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They whether to make that, take those privacy risks. They just don't have the option. So that's also an issue.
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And so, you know, at on one hand, that means, you know,
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you're, you know, financially censored in the sense, and your speech in effect can be censored as well if you've not if you're not even allowed to join these platforms because you don't have the right
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documents.
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But then also, you can be censored
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if
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you say something that is not acceptable to that platform, and they don't wanna host it anymore, and they kick you off.
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say if I I don't know. If if you're a sex worker and you have to and you wanna use, like, someone's service, like
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like, if I'm, like, wanna have a wall at Bicco, it shouldn't matter, like, what my job is. Like
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but if you have to, like, submit an ID, they could, like, do some cross check and be like, oh, this person does this job that we deem
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inappropriate, and now they block you from the service, which, like,
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they shouldn't
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be like, they shouldn't have to know who I am and, like, they shouldn't need to be able to do all that stuff. Like, it's it'd be so much
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better for, like, both parties if they could just ignore that and just, like, offer the service and honestly.
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362
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that it's to protect the users,
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or at least we often hear that.
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But, ultimately,
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this data collection is ineffective,
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because criminals can buy,
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KYC information, fake information. They can steal fake information.
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All that information
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find usually, it it you should assume that it's gonna leak,
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because companies have hard time securing that information.
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So so, really, it's
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not only does it put users in in massive risk in terms of their private data,
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but
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it's not even effective because it creates this loop where that private data is such a honeypot,
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that it can then be used to circumvent any kind of,
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compliance
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benefits that they so called compliance benefits that they could possibly get out of it, that they pretend they can get out of it. Ideally, if we were talking about protecting the user,
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that that that service, that company, that tool should know as little as possible about them.
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Compounding that on top of that, we have a Internet model,
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a monetization model on the Internet
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that that is the main monetization model that's gotten widespread use is really,
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the monetization
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of user data and advertising to them.
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So, you know, many of our most profitable companies
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not only are are required by regulation to collect intimate data on us, but they actually have an incentive system in place
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to to make money by collecting additional data on top of that.
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And then I I I don't even know where to put this, but, Americans know about the Equifax leak, which the Equifax hack, where we weren't even customers. They were just a third party company
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that just, you know, automatically takes data on every single American.
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So we just have these systems in place that,
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that prioritize data
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collection over data protection.
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And it's just us.
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So, I mean,
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another thing that's been happening,
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So, I mean, a key element here, I think, is privacy. I think I think it it all it all comes together. You can't really have proper censorship resistance
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without without privacy,
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without some elements of privacy.
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And you can't really,
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I guess, you could get privacy without censorship resistance,
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maybe. But I think I feel like if you have privacy, then you're almost you're you're almost censorship resistant inherently.
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What do you guys think about that relationship between privacy and censorship resistance?
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403
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404
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if if you think of privacy as, you know,
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if if you first do threat modeling and figure out what your threats are in privacy and
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because I think that's part of the promise that and it's something I'm going to kind of
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talk about,
408
00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:32.495
for the Bob meetup, but I can go into the gist here, which is that,
409
00:30:33.355 --> 00:30:34.095
I kind
410
00:30:34.555 --> 00:30:37.835
of am annoyed with the way that people
411
00:30:38.475 --> 00:30:44.039
a lot of people respond to me when I say I'm researching privacy or I'm a privacy searcher because
412
00:30:44.340 --> 00:30:46.279
usually the first question I get is
413
00:30:46.794 --> 00:30:48.815
why why does privacy matter? And
414
00:30:50.075 --> 00:30:55.669
I think that has to do with the fact that people don't think of privacy as information security.
415
00:30:56.530 --> 00:31:03.270
And, I mean, information security is a lot broader than just privacy. It's also about authentication and integrity.
416
00:31:04.585 --> 00:31:05.085
But
417
00:31:05.545 --> 00:31:13.850
privacy is a big part of that, and if, you know, if someone calls himself a security researcher, you don't you don't see them getting asked why is security important.
418
00:31:14.390 --> 00:31:16.890
And so if people started thinking about privacy
419
00:31:17.670 --> 00:31:19.850
as a strategy for security,
420
00:31:20.375 --> 00:31:22.075
then I think they would understand
421
00:31:22.855 --> 00:31:24.795
that that question is kind of
422
00:31:25.255 --> 00:31:25.755
weird,
423
00:31:26.455 --> 00:31:27.355
to get asked
424
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:31.299
because, yeah, I
425
00:31:32.880 --> 00:31:34.340
I I definitely think that
426
00:31:35.120 --> 00:31:35.520
having
427
00:31:36.365 --> 00:31:42.865
I think, you have to have some privacy in terms of I actually use the the the German term, because in in Germany,
428
00:31:43.725 --> 00:31:44.705
they don't have
429
00:31:45.500 --> 00:31:49.920
privacy really in the constitution. They have what's called informational self determination,
430
00:31:50.700 --> 00:31:53.975
and that's the idea that you should be able to
431
00:31:54.355 --> 00:31:54.855
decide
432
00:31:55.394 --> 00:31:58.855
who has access to your information or at least have knowledge of who has access.
433
00:31:59.235 --> 00:32:00.615
That's actually in their constitution.
434
00:32:01.539 --> 00:32:03.240
And I find that a lot
435
00:32:03.700 --> 00:32:10.760
better in terms of explaining to people what privacy is, like, the scope of it, because if it's about,
436
00:32:11.345 --> 00:32:12.725
you know, volunteerism
437
00:32:13.505 --> 00:32:14.085
and making
438
00:32:14.465 --> 00:32:19.525
being able to make decisions about who has access to your information and having control over it,
439
00:32:20.070 --> 00:32:29.825
then I think people will appreciate privacy a lot more if it's framed in that way and not just I'm hiding stuff because that's how most people, I think, see privacy is that you have to,
440
00:32:30.205 --> 00:32:32.545
you know, you have to go dark and,
441
00:32:33.405 --> 00:32:36.780
you know, interact with people in a very limited way. But
442
00:32:37.180 --> 00:32:40.160
I think that that's a very that's like a narrow
443
00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:42.960
section of what I think privacy means.
444
00:32:49.025 --> 00:32:49.525
445
00:32:50.305 --> 00:32:54.560
yeah. So, I mean, that that's a that's definitely a very a very good point,
446
00:32:55.360 --> 00:32:58.820
that I've struggled with myself is is do people actually
447
00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:03.220
does the average person care enough? I mean, I I think
448
00:33:04.904 --> 00:33:09.005
I I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. I think and I think, ultimately,
449
00:33:10.345 --> 00:33:14.120
in our society, we've kind of found ourselves in this weird
450
00:33:16.260 --> 00:33:16.760
situation
451
00:33:17.060 --> 00:33:18.820
where privacy is actually
452
00:33:20.295 --> 00:33:21.835
the default is the opposite,
453
00:33:23.015 --> 00:33:27.595
unfortunately. And and and and that wasn't always the case before. It's it's mostly
454
00:33:27.895 --> 00:33:28.635
tech enabled.
455
00:33:29.540 --> 00:33:32.120
Our our our world has become more and more digital.
456
00:33:33.299 --> 00:33:34.360
And, you know,
457
00:33:34.660 --> 00:33:36.840
I mean, a perfect example is is
458
00:33:37.985 --> 00:33:41.445
the status quo was if you spoke in your house about something,
459
00:33:42.625 --> 00:33:46.405
it was only heard by, like, you and your family members and whoever was in the house.
460
00:33:46.990 --> 00:33:47.490
Now,
461
00:33:48.110 --> 00:33:51.250
for a large number of people around the world,
462
00:33:52.430 --> 00:33:55.730
they have Internet connected microphones that they plugged in themselves,
463
00:33:56.485 --> 00:33:58.184
to provide them additional conveniences.
464
00:33:59.205 --> 00:34:03.465
So that's not it's no longer the status quo. Right? It's it's it's almost
465
00:34:04.310 --> 00:34:08.730
the the people who are seeking privacies are the outliers. You have to, like, go out of the way.
466
00:34:10.710 --> 00:34:14.825
467
00:34:16.965 --> 00:34:19.465
about, I think it was specifically about Amazon's
468
00:34:20.005 --> 00:34:22.025
oh, no. I think it was Siri, actually.
469
00:34:22.405 --> 00:34:22.645
And
470
00:34:23.210 --> 00:34:26.829
yeah, a lot of people, they kind of see Apple as, oh,
471
00:34:27.130 --> 00:34:32.509
I mean, actually, the researcher who presented justified her continued use of Siri personally
472
00:34:33.195 --> 00:34:35.935
as to say Apple's business model isn't,
473
00:34:36.955 --> 00:34:38.335
isn't to sell your data.
474
00:34:38.955 --> 00:34:42.575
And that's to I I would debate that. I would say it's
475
00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:43.460
true
476
00:34:44.080 --> 00:34:47.380
in the larger context of all the other companies who are
477
00:34:48.320 --> 00:35:01.930
doing and creating similar products, But I would definitely recommend watching that because a lot of people think, oh, the the Alexa only turns on or is engaged when you give the call the call phrase, like, hey, Alexa or hey, Siri, or whatever.
478
00:35:03.190 --> 00:35:04.970
And it turns out that's not the case.
479
00:35:05.510 --> 00:35:08.330
She actually tested it on her own house and family,
480
00:35:09.035 --> 00:35:11.775
and it was getting triggered by, like,
481
00:35:12.155 --> 00:35:12.655
random
482
00:35:13.035 --> 00:35:16.174
laughter, random conversation that you couldn't even hear
483
00:35:16.555 --> 00:35:17.375
in the recording.
484
00:35:18.620 --> 00:35:23.120
So if anyone I hope no one has those. I would never have one of those devices.
485
00:35:23.820 --> 00:35:27.440
But anyone who does, you might want to check that out because
486
00:35:28.125 --> 00:35:31.345
it is picking up a lot more than you think it does.
487
00:35:32.204 --> 00:35:35.244
488
00:35:36.230 --> 00:35:44.915
you know, you have your assigned FBI agent listening on your Alexa device. It's like, these companies have, like, some of the smartest people in the world working on, like, data collection and data analysis. Like,
489
00:35:45.775 --> 00:35:55.880
your Alexa is just, like, streaming some data to the Amazon servers, and it's going through this, like, this complex thing they wrote that's doing analysis. And that's where you're, like, losing, like, privacy
490
00:35:56.180 --> 00:36:09.515
and other aspects like that. It's not like, you know, even if, like, quote unquote, the government doesn't care about you, like, you're still losing something here. And, like, it's still something you should be protecting that, like, you know, Amazon doesn't need this data from you and you have no reason to give it to them.
491
00:36:11.734 --> 00:36:12.234
492
00:36:12.810 --> 00:36:17.150
I mean, there's a there's a good point there in terms of Amazon telling,
493
00:36:17.930 --> 00:36:18.430
individuals
494
00:36:18.810 --> 00:36:19.870
that it's only
495
00:36:21.165 --> 00:36:22.305
collecting information
496
00:36:23.165 --> 00:36:24.945
under a specific set of circumstances.
497
00:36:26.045 --> 00:36:28.865
That brings us back to the open source software,
498
00:36:29.670 --> 00:36:30.170
conversation.
499
00:36:30.630 --> 00:36:32.970
In that, we can have tools,
500
00:36:33.910 --> 00:36:39.424
at our disposal that allow us to to easily prove and verify that they're doing what they're doing.
501
00:36:40.684 --> 00:36:41.184
Unfortunately,
502
00:36:42.045 --> 00:36:45.345
the status quo is the exact opposite. I mean, you said there,
503
00:36:45.799 --> 00:36:46.619
that Siri,
504
00:36:47.319 --> 00:36:55.235
you know, Apple says they protect my privacy, and it's their business model to protect my privacy. There is no way that any of us can prove that or verify
505
00:36:57.315 --> 00:36:57.815
506
00:36:58.915 --> 00:36:59.815
Yeah. Definitely.
507
00:37:00.835 --> 00:37:05.830
And I mean, a big a big reason of why those kinds of devices concern me is,
508
00:37:06.770 --> 00:37:09.350
if anyone's not familiar with kind of the US,
509
00:37:10.290 --> 00:37:10.790
statute,
510
00:37:11.655 --> 00:37:14.395
there's a principle called the 3rd party doctrine
511
00:37:14.855 --> 00:37:18.075
that, I've especially been following a lot in my newsletter,
512
00:37:18.615 --> 00:37:19.835
when it comes to,
513
00:37:21.460 --> 00:37:23.160
like, the EFF looking
514
00:37:23.460 --> 00:37:26.359
at the lack of privacy protection and transparency
515
00:37:26.660 --> 00:37:29.055
with Fintech apps, including some
516
00:37:29.435 --> 00:37:30.735
that have to do with cryptocurrency.
517
00:37:31.435 --> 00:37:35.135
And the 3rd party doctrine in the US basically says that,
518
00:37:36.240 --> 00:37:36.980
if you
519
00:37:37.359 --> 00:37:44.579
if you give data to a 3rd party, that could be your friend. It could be a business, but in general, it gets applied to
520
00:37:44.905 --> 00:37:46.285
instances with businesses.
521
00:37:46.825 --> 00:37:48.045
Basically says that
522
00:37:48.345 --> 00:37:51.805
if you give your data to a third party, you have a decreased
523
00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:56.900
or in some cases, no expectation of privacy anymore because you have, like, surrendered
524
00:37:57.520 --> 00:38:02.855
that privacy to someone else. And so what scares me about I I haven't seen whether
525
00:38:03.155 --> 00:38:05.815
this has been applied anywhere, but I am
526
00:38:06.275 --> 00:38:10.270
afraid of the idea that if you have these devices in your house,
527
00:38:10.810 --> 00:38:18.750
that at some point someone's going to make the argument that because you have, you know, surrendered the privacy of your conversations in your own home
528
00:38:19.464 --> 00:38:23.405
and other people can access that, that that decreases your
529
00:38:24.105 --> 00:38:27.565
like, the the there's this assumption that within the home, there is,
530
00:38:28.250 --> 00:38:33.710
you know, it's different on, like, public streets and such. But in the home, that is considered, like, the gold standard of
531
00:38:34.090 --> 00:38:38.415
places where you should expect to have privacy. And so if that is then stripped away,
532
00:38:38.715 --> 00:38:41.455
what other what other place is there anymore?
533
00:38:48.050 --> 00:38:49.670
534
00:38:51.410 --> 00:38:53.425
pretty much all the way down. Right?
535
00:38:53.905 --> 00:38:54.405
Especially
536
00:38:54.785 --> 00:38:55.845
now that we have
537
00:38:56.145 --> 00:39:02.325
so much of our lives are are connected to the Internet all the time. I mean, most people are walking around with a phone in their pocket.
538
00:39:03.589 --> 00:39:03.990
They,
539
00:39:04.390 --> 00:39:07.450
have Apple Watches. As we said, you know, they have these,
540
00:39:08.150 --> 00:39:11.529
these voice assistants. When you're walking down the street, there's cameras everywhere.
541
00:39:13.694 --> 00:39:20.835
So, yeah, the status quo is is is lack of privacy, and you basically have to seek it out. And I think that is one of
542
00:39:21.289 --> 00:39:24.349
the many issues that we have in terms of a society,
543
00:39:25.450 --> 00:39:26.670
that's trying to be
544
00:39:28.465 --> 00:39:32.085
a a beacon of free speech and a beacon of of personal rights.
545
00:39:33.025 --> 00:39:38.000
I I think we've ended up very far from that, and there's a there's a lot of progress that needs to be made
546
00:39:38.380 --> 00:39:38.620
there.
547
00:39:40.140 --> 00:39:41.840
I wanted to cover
548
00:39:43.660 --> 00:39:45.040
this this recent
549
00:39:46.395 --> 00:39:47.135
this this
550
00:39:47.515 --> 00:39:47.675
the
551
00:39:49.195 --> 00:39:50.095
so we have
552
00:39:50.795 --> 00:39:52.175
free open source software
553
00:39:52.850 --> 00:39:55.510
allows us to verify that we are
554
00:39:56.210 --> 00:39:58.630
that these tools are doing what they say they're doing.
555
00:39:59.330 --> 00:40:03.815
We have individuals that need to actually care to use those tools.
556
00:40:04.195 --> 00:40:08.615
And then we have the overwhelming set of individuals that don't realize. And I think, ultimately,
557
00:40:08.994 --> 00:40:10.375
what happens is as
558
00:40:10.750 --> 00:40:13.250
we see our society become more and more,
559
00:40:15.470 --> 00:40:21.894
anti privacy by design, is people are gonna get burned. Right? And we're gonna see worse and worse data leaks. Like, I think,
560
00:40:22.434 --> 00:40:23.255
if you look
561
00:40:23.875 --> 00:40:29.870
if you look at the scale of of instances we've had and and leaks we've had and hacks we've had,
562
00:40:31.130 --> 00:40:32.190
and and privacy
563
00:40:32.570 --> 00:40:35.150
compromises, we've had massive privacy compromises,
564
00:40:35.565 --> 00:40:37.025
it gets worse and worse,
565
00:40:37.725 --> 00:40:41.025
as the years go by because just by design, there's more information
566
00:40:41.405 --> 00:40:46.990
available out there. You know, the Ring camera system that Amazon has in front of everyone's house is a relatively new,
567
00:40:48.430 --> 00:40:53.890
is a relatively new device in terms of of network effects. Yet now you're starting to see it all throughout the suburbs,
568
00:40:55.125 --> 00:40:55.865
in America.
569
00:40:56.325 --> 00:41:02.745
What happens when those cameras start the implications of stuff like those cameras? And I think what happens is people will get burned,
570
00:41:03.630 --> 00:41:05.330
and then once they get burned,
571
00:41:05.710 --> 00:41:09.330
we we it's up to us as as privacy advocates.
572
00:41:10.055 --> 00:41:15.275
It's up to us to have those tools ready for them and the education ready for them so that when they're a motivated individual,
573
00:41:16.375 --> 00:41:18.075
they can improve their own situation.
574
00:41:18.660 --> 00:41:20.119
Would you guys agree with that?
575
00:41:21.299 --> 00:41:45.339
576
00:41:45.835 --> 00:41:51.935
won't probably be the better product initially because, you know, they don't have multimillion dollar companies behind them.
577
00:41:56.660 --> 00:41:58.040
578
00:42:00.900 --> 00:42:02.680
579
00:42:03.140 --> 00:42:07.065
I mean, I because on the subject, I actually have been reading a book,
580
00:42:08.005 --> 00:42:08.505
called
581
00:42:08.885 --> 00:42:13.065
The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Agbal.
582
00:42:13.580 --> 00:42:20.080
I haven't finished it yet, so I can't do a review. But I was generally really excited about it because basically she studied,
583
00:42:21.275 --> 00:42:25.375
how open source communities function and how open source software is built.
584
00:42:25.675 --> 00:42:28.415
And one of the things that she starts off
585
00:42:28.750 --> 00:42:29.250
with,
586
00:42:29.630 --> 00:42:30.690
at the beginning
587
00:42:31.309 --> 00:42:35.890
is kind of dispelling the notion that, like, yes, open source software,
588
00:42:36.585 --> 00:42:37.085
ideally,
589
00:42:37.465 --> 00:42:41.484
anyone can contribute anytime. It has, like, a wide contributor base.
590
00:42:41.785 --> 00:42:42.685
But in
591
00:42:43.145 --> 00:42:43.965
in practice,
592
00:42:44.665 --> 00:42:45.405
she actually
593
00:42:46.039 --> 00:42:46.859
split up,
594
00:42:48.279 --> 00:42:51.019
she kind of defined, like, the different types of
595
00:42:51.720 --> 00:42:53.900
projects that you can have,
596
00:42:54.440 --> 00:42:56.455
based on some having,
597
00:42:56.835 --> 00:43:04.215
like, really high user growth versus very low contributor growth. So you don't have tons of contributors for for most open source products,
598
00:43:05.160 --> 00:43:05.660
projects.
599
00:43:06.359 --> 00:43:09.099
They have very, very few contributors.
600
00:43:09.560 --> 00:43:10.940
In some cases, only
601
00:43:11.319 --> 00:43:11.819
1.
602
00:43:12.855 --> 00:43:20.954
But then some of them can have a really high user base. And so, I mean, in Bitcoin, I think we're especially sensitive to that because we have this.
603
00:43:21.560 --> 00:43:25.980
We care about consensus and about who's able to make changes to the code. And so,
604
00:43:26.600 --> 00:43:30.195
Bitcoin is actually mentioned, I think, at least once in the book,
605
00:43:30.515 --> 00:43:31.415
as an example
606
00:43:32.115 --> 00:43:33.895
that it's a community that cares
607
00:43:34.595 --> 00:43:38.770
very highly about, like, the quality of the code and the security of,
608
00:43:39.970 --> 00:43:41.990
you know, who is able to make
609
00:43:42.370 --> 00:43:42.870
contributions.
610
00:43:43.970 --> 00:43:44.470
And,
611
00:43:45.810 --> 00:43:47.650
so part of that problem where you
612
00:43:48.625 --> 00:43:49.825
we kind of have
613
00:43:50.625 --> 00:43:54.484
over the years, we've kind of seen open source software development as the commons
614
00:43:55.425 --> 00:43:59.250
and something that's just there and available. And,
615
00:43:59.789 --> 00:44:02.769
I mean, part of the reason why I think there aren't
616
00:44:03.150 --> 00:44:06.289
as many contributors to each project is because
617
00:44:06.875 --> 00:44:10.415
a lot of these people are just contributing their free time, and they do that because,
618
00:44:12.475 --> 00:44:21.049
they're I don't think it's so much that in some cases, maybe there aren't people who want to fund them, but I think in a lot of cases, it's just the barriers to
619
00:44:21.509 --> 00:44:24.635
funding contributors and what makes sense,
620
00:44:26.455 --> 00:44:30.475
has not had not really been possible until Bitcoin.
621
00:44:31.069 --> 00:44:31.809
And so
622
00:44:32.109 --> 00:44:38.015
I definitely think stuff to get developers funded and even exploring different ways of, like,
623
00:44:38.575 --> 00:44:45.075
you know, how how much should you give to particular contributors? Is the maintainer getting all of it and then they distribute it?
624
00:44:45.540 --> 00:44:52.200
Or are you paying on, like, a per commit basis? I think that would that's going to be really interesting in the future if open source projects
625
00:44:52.635 --> 00:44:53.135
can
626
00:44:53.675 --> 00:44:56.815
get funded because we've broken down the kind of,
627
00:44:57.675 --> 00:45:04.010
onboarding hurdles to doing so. Because I think people want to. It's just a struggle in a lot of cases to
628
00:45:04.549 --> 00:45:07.210
figure out how to do that. Like, I myself,
629
00:45:08.230 --> 00:45:11.535
at the moment, I don't have any public facing funding options.
630
00:45:12.155 --> 00:45:13.455
I'm trying to fix that,
631
00:45:14.075 --> 00:45:14.975
but it is,
632
00:45:16.075 --> 00:45:22.670
it is a you know, a lot of people, they just set up like a cash up profile or something. There's there's a lot
633
00:45:23.290 --> 00:45:24.510
of user experience.
634
00:45:27.025 --> 00:45:29.525
There's a lot of money being put into user experience
635
00:45:29.905 --> 00:45:34.965
lately with those kinds of things by big companies. The problem is, you know, these are
636
00:45:35.529 --> 00:45:40.109
essentially still bank accounts. So the people who can access them still have to go through
637
00:45:40.730 --> 00:45:41.789
the regular
638
00:45:42.395 --> 00:45:47.295
KYC process to do it. And so in that way, that still limits who can then
639
00:45:47.835 --> 00:45:51.470
get funded for contributing. So that would be unfortunate. But with
640
00:45:51.950 --> 00:45:54.450
with Bitcoin, we can do better than that.
641
00:45:58.349 --> 00:46:01.385
642
00:46:02.405 --> 00:46:06.985
In terms of of getting funding, a key aspect of of Bitcoin
643
00:46:07.730 --> 00:46:08.950
is that it enables
644
00:46:10.210 --> 00:46:14.950
developers who are unknown developers, developers who do not have
645
00:46:15.410 --> 00:46:15.910
their
646
00:46:17.555 --> 00:46:25.255
their legal government identity publicly attached with working with this this open source project are able to receive funding.
647
00:46:26.369 --> 00:46:30.309
We've we've seen multiple developers get funded from Square Crypto, for instance,
648
00:46:31.010 --> 00:46:33.829
that are NIMs that are that are located around the world.
649
00:46:34.345 --> 00:46:36.685
So so that is a a a new opening,
650
00:46:37.305 --> 00:46:42.125
which is really good to see because I we were talking about earlier the relationship between censorship resistance
651
00:46:42.790 --> 00:46:43.450
and privacy.
652
00:46:43.910 --> 00:46:45.530
I think it's extremely important
653
00:46:45.990 --> 00:46:49.450
that we have developers on on important projects like Bitcoin
654
00:46:49.805 --> 00:46:56.740
that do not have their public identity associated with it, it becomes a lot more difficult to pressure them and to stop working on that kind of code,
655
00:46:57.860 --> 00:47:01.320
especially in in situations where that code could get politically heated.
656
00:47:02.820 --> 00:47:07.654
I I kinda I I feel like this is a a good moment to kind of discuss,
657
00:47:09.315 --> 00:47:12.775
the this apparent Tor attack that we see happening,
658
00:47:14.670 --> 00:47:15.170
because
659
00:47:16.190 --> 00:47:17.250
Tor is considered,
660
00:47:17.550 --> 00:47:21.490
you know, one of the leading open source projects, I would I would argue.
661
00:47:22.355 --> 00:47:27.095
And it seems to me that there's a there's almost a completely different mentality in terms
662
00:47:27.795 --> 00:47:29.895
of adversarial mindset versus
663
00:47:30.940 --> 00:47:33.039
versus, you know, the Bitcoin project,
664
00:47:34.779 --> 00:47:42.065
the Bitcoin open source project. Is that something that you've noticed, Ben? Like, do you do you I I feel like people
665
00:47:43.565 --> 00:47:44.625
grossly underestimate,
666
00:47:46.845 --> 00:47:51.810
the the, basically, the mindset that's gone into the motivation that's gone into developing Bitcoin
667
00:47:52.190 --> 00:47:52.690
software.
668
00:47:53.950 --> 00:47:59.330
669
00:47:59.775 --> 00:48:15.710
and, you know, it's not something that needs to be defended. Like, we we we, like, all agree we need to defend Bitcoin, but, like and this week, we kinda saw, like, all, like, the v three to our addresses were down and, like, tons of, like, services rely on that. And, like, you're commenting this on
670
00:48:16.165 --> 00:48:16.825
somewhere saying, like,
671
00:48:17.125 --> 00:48:52.369
you know, this could severely affect the lighting network and stuff like that. So yeah. Like, I think, like and, hopefully, this is, like, a wake up period for people, like, you know, is just as, like, probably as important as Bitcoin and, like, this is a network I need to defend. And, hopefully, you know, maybe this could incentivize people to, like, fund tour devs or, you know, to contribute themselves. But, yeah, it's it's pretty scary to see, like, how big of an attack it seemed to be. And I don't think I know they said they have it fixed, but I don't even know if it's out yet. And it's been, like, 2 or 3 days now. So, like, it's been a pretty serious attack.
672
00:48:58.375 --> 00:49:01.035
673
00:49:01.370 --> 00:49:02.030
the developments
674
00:49:02.410 --> 00:49:05.230
of v 3 just from a Bitcoin standpoint,
675
00:49:05.850 --> 00:49:07.150
in my newsletter because,
676
00:49:08.965 --> 00:49:11.465
v 3, I believe, is going to be
677
00:49:12.405 --> 00:49:15.385
added in the next major release of Bitcoin Core,
678
00:49:16.165 --> 00:49:18.105
instead of v 2.
679
00:49:19.060 --> 00:49:21.240
Yeah. That's right. So I've been going yeah.
680
00:49:21.620 --> 00:49:22.120
And,
681
00:49:22.980 --> 00:49:25.560
yeah, I haven't I haven't looked too much into
682
00:49:26.365 --> 00:49:26.865
this,
683
00:49:27.405 --> 00:49:29.025
recent problem with it.
684
00:49:29.725 --> 00:49:33.585
I did notice it was happening because on the day that it supposedly
685
00:49:34.849 --> 00:49:35.349
started,
686
00:49:35.970 --> 00:49:37.589
you know, I am a Tor user.
687
00:49:38.290 --> 00:49:44.069
I am around Tor users, and so there was issues with Tor, and we noticed that immediately.
688
00:49:45.395 --> 00:49:50.135
But, yeah, I'm not I haven't looked into the details. As far as I saw, it was just an implementation
689
00:49:50.835 --> 00:49:51.335
bug.
690
00:49:52.515 --> 00:49:53.335
But, yeah,
691
00:49:54.670 --> 00:49:57.170
I I mean, part part of that is,
692
00:49:57.710 --> 00:49:58.210
like
693
00:49:58.750 --> 00:50:02.995
I mean, supposedly, you know, also Bitcoin core developers were looking at it,
694
00:50:03.395 --> 00:50:05.975
but that is, you know, scary that
695
00:50:06.355 --> 00:50:08.855
something a lot of people depend on for,
696
00:50:09.635 --> 00:50:13.010
just privacy in general. And then in Bitcoin financial privacy,
697
00:50:13.390 --> 00:50:15.410
that would be really bad if
698
00:50:15.790 --> 00:50:17.230
there was an issue that,
699
00:50:17.630 --> 00:50:19.090
suddenly took that down.
700
00:50:20.190 --> 00:50:21.230
701
00:50:22.655 --> 00:50:27.475
so just I mean, a a a base overview is is there was a bug,
702
00:50:28.975 --> 00:50:29.875
that they
703
00:50:30.580 --> 00:50:35.480
appear to have, you know, narrowed down what what the bug was. I mean, the question is,
704
00:50:35.780 --> 00:50:37.080
it was it getting intentionally
705
00:50:37.465 --> 00:50:40.125
exploited by an attacker to bring down v three,
706
00:50:40.985 --> 00:50:42.125
services or,
707
00:50:43.705 --> 00:50:50.920
was it just unintentionally done? Right? And I think in these types of situations, it's probably better to assume an attack than otherwise.
708
00:50:51.780 --> 00:50:54.440
At least I at least call it an alleged attack.
709
00:50:55.065 --> 00:50:58.444
But but one thing that really struck me here is, I mean, the this
710
00:50:58.984 --> 00:51:02.045
these issues have been going on since the 6th January.
711
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.820
I've noticed these issues myself as a Tor user. I'm still noticing them. It's not resolved,
712
00:51:11.615 --> 00:51:13.315
at least on, you know, on my
713
00:51:13.694 --> 00:51:14.194
nonscientific,
714
00:51:15.615 --> 00:51:21.395
usage myself, and I see other people on the Internet reporting issues continue continuous issues here.
715
00:51:22.180 --> 00:51:23.320
And just like the
716
00:51:23.780 --> 00:51:25.640
the way the messaging was handled,
717
00:51:26.020 --> 00:51:30.839
right, just like the way and I'm, you know, a huge fan of the Tor project. Just the way the messaging was handled
718
00:51:31.325 --> 00:51:34.625
on on their official blog and their official communication channels,
719
00:51:36.445 --> 00:51:38.865
it's just night and day from the Bitcoin project.
720
00:51:39.680 --> 00:51:41.300
I I I can't imagine,
721
00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:51.415
like, radio silence out out of out of Bitcoin developers if there was an ongoing attack for multiple days?
722
00:51:55.369 --> 00:51:56.430
723
00:51:56.810 --> 00:51:57.790
part of it.
724
00:51:59.050 --> 00:52:01.470
I mean, I've I've been following the Tor project
725
00:52:01.974 --> 00:52:02.795
outside of Bitcoin,
726
00:52:03.655 --> 00:52:09.515
for various reasons. And there over the years, there has definitely been a cultural
727
00:52:09.815 --> 00:52:16.860
change, and the number of the number and the type of people who are involved in contributing to Tor has changed a lot.
728
00:52:17.560 --> 00:52:19.740
Part of that is because it went from
729
00:52:20.435 --> 00:52:21.175
being a
730
00:52:21.635 --> 00:52:25.735
like, when when Tor started out, it was just basically a couple of guys,
731
00:52:26.595 --> 00:52:28.775
who were, you know, doing academic research.
732
00:52:29.540 --> 00:52:29.859
And,
733
00:52:30.340 --> 00:52:33.000
as Tor got more popular and got more attention,
734
00:52:33.780 --> 00:52:35.080
and also there was
735
00:52:35.540 --> 00:52:36.920
this desire to
736
00:52:37.684 --> 00:52:42.505
shift Tor as much as possible away from this image of it's the dark net market browser,
737
00:52:43.684 --> 00:52:45.785
because that has been something that has
738
00:52:46.500 --> 00:52:51.960
followed Tor for a very long time. And so there was a lot of there was a lot more focus on
739
00:52:52.500 --> 00:52:57.845
the interface design on user experience and making it really accessible to
740
00:52:58.785 --> 00:53:01.925
the everyday person as is possible, which I think is a good thing in general.
741
00:53:02.785 --> 00:53:09.799
But as with any project, when you focus on one thing, that means other things can suffer. And I don't know if that was the case here, but it
742
00:53:10.599 --> 00:53:11.740
that tends to
743
00:53:12.205 --> 00:53:18.385
be the reason for these types of things ham happening. It doesn't mean it can never happen if there isn't a focus,
744
00:53:19.245 --> 00:53:19.985
on security
745
00:53:21.080 --> 00:53:26.780
and things like that as the primary thing, which I think it is to the greatest extent. But,
746
00:53:27.400 --> 00:53:31.065
I think that might be part of the reason that this might have gotten missed.
747
00:53:32.805 --> 00:53:34.744
In terms of attackers, I mean,
748
00:53:35.525 --> 00:53:36.805
Tor is a very,
749
00:53:37.670 --> 00:53:45.049
it's a very highly visible project, and there is a lot of incentive for people to break it in comparison to other things.
750
00:53:45.510 --> 00:53:47.450
So that's also part of the problem
751
00:53:47.895 --> 00:53:50.395
is that there are because there are so many
752
00:53:50.855 --> 00:53:51.835
vulnerable people
753
00:53:52.455 --> 00:53:53.895
who rely on it,
754
00:53:54.215 --> 00:53:58.590
there are also attackers who want to break it and hurt those people.
755
00:54:00.010 --> 00:54:08.115
So, you know, when things get missed, it can have even if it's a small thing, it can have a big catastrophic effect compared to other projects that have less visibility.
756
00:54:13.750 --> 00:54:39.225
757
00:54:39.545 --> 00:54:46.685
fight for these, like, no matter what because, you know, if you got the platforms and now you need to be, like, using the Internet privately for some reason,
758
00:54:47.050 --> 00:54:47.550
Like,
759
00:54:47.850 --> 00:54:51.310
you could be and then if Torres down, you're, like, totally screwed.
760
00:54:55.685 --> 00:55:01.785
761
00:55:02.565 --> 00:55:04.185
massive open source projects
762
00:55:06.340 --> 00:55:07.480
that that basically
763
00:55:07.940 --> 00:55:08.920
have have
764
00:55:10.260 --> 00:55:12.360
that have to operate in this massive
765
00:55:12.845 --> 00:55:16.225
adversarial mindset always because they're just always constantly
766
00:55:16.685 --> 00:55:22.385
you just have to constantly assume they're they're under attack. And I'm just all I'm saying is I just I feel like
767
00:55:22.799 --> 00:55:27.059
the culture is the the culture of the different communities is very important,
768
00:55:27.680 --> 00:55:29.779
and it's it just kind of,
769
00:55:32.245 --> 00:55:36.425
it's it's kind of interesting when you compare the Tor culture versus,
770
00:55:37.605 --> 00:55:39.785
like, the Bitcoin culture just from,
771
00:55:42.520 --> 00:55:46.300
you know, the more active developers on those projects, especially since
772
00:55:46.680 --> 00:55:53.015
there's there's some, like, interesting comparisons there. You you have the adversarial mindset comparison, but you also have the comparison,
773
00:55:53.875 --> 00:55:56.695
that you basically have, like, 2 different types of users.
774
00:56:00.150 --> 00:56:00.710
You you
775
00:56:01.430 --> 00:56:05.609
and I get and this is what Janine, like, kind of touched on is, like, this idea that
776
00:56:05.944 --> 00:56:10.125
that that Tor is trying to get away from being, you know, the dark market browser.
777
00:56:10.905 --> 00:56:12.045
And and Bitcoin,
778
00:56:12.585 --> 00:56:18.980
a lot of people would say, is trying to get away from being, you know, pigeonholed as as the dark market currency only.
779
00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:24.180
So, I mean, there are some similarities there, but at the same time, it just feels like
780
00:56:26.055 --> 00:56:31.115
I I I just I I was surprised that you don't see that much chatter going on in Torland
781
00:56:31.960 --> 00:56:42.635
of of I mean, you see it on on, like, some of these forums and stuff, but you don't really see it, like, in their in their dev community, like, that that they're that they're worried that it all happened at the kind of the same time, and
782
00:56:43.335 --> 00:56:45.835
it's it's just weird. It's just a weird thing to
783
00:56:46.295 --> 00:56:46.454
to
784
00:56:47.730 --> 00:56:53.510
it was a concern I kinda had, and then to to watch it play out, it's just kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. That's all.
785
00:57:00.505 --> 00:57:03.164
So and then the other thing I wanted to touch on was,
786
00:57:04.480 --> 00:57:05.859
I saw this in the comments.
787
00:57:06.880 --> 00:57:14.155
And, Freaks, thank you for joining us. Anyone who's here live, you know, thanks to everyone who's listening after after the fact as well.
788
00:57:15.015 --> 00:57:18.235
This show is all about you guys. We couldn't do it without you.
789
00:57:18.880 --> 00:57:21.299
But I saw one of the freaks mentioned in here,
790
00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:22.260
Cloudflare.
791
00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:26.740
Do you guys have any strong opinions on Cloudflare?
792
00:57:28.555 --> 00:57:30.335
793
00:57:30.635 --> 00:57:31.135
stickers.
794
00:57:34.315 --> 00:57:37.135
795
00:57:37.660 --> 00:57:39.280
796
00:57:39.580 --> 00:57:40.640
what, you know,
797
00:57:41.100 --> 00:57:44.080
what what Cloudflare's business is and why it's a concern?
798
00:57:50.115 --> 00:57:55.880
799
00:57:56.420 --> 00:57:59.560
And, you know, just like and then some hosting, I think, as well.
800
00:58:00.020 --> 00:58:13.960
And, like, they're a huge like, it's kinda central point of failure for the Internet where, like, I remember, like I think it was sometime in 2020 Cloud Fair went down and, like, half the Internet's, like, sites were down because, like, they rely on Cloud Fair to do stuff like that. So,
801
00:58:14.420 --> 00:58:19.665
like, if if you lose service from Cloud Fair, you can lose a whole lot of stuff. Like, if you lose your your DNS,
802
00:58:20.045 --> 00:58:28.625
that could be huge. Because now someone needs to actually type in your IP address to tie find your website. Or, you know, if you lose your DDoS protection, your site could go down pretty easily.
803
00:58:29.060 --> 00:58:35.240
So I mean, so, like, losing Cloudflare can be a a huge thing. And I know the sites that have taken down,
804
00:58:36.180 --> 00:58:37.560
you know, they weren't the most
805
00:58:38.215 --> 00:58:45.675
outstanding sites. It was, like, a super, like, Nazi site or something that they took down, but it's still, like, you don't have to defend these people, then who who are you gonna defend,
806
00:58:46.215 --> 00:58:47.355
when they come for you?
807
00:58:50.440 --> 00:58:54.700
808
00:58:55.075 --> 00:58:56.855
the Internet as we know it,
809
00:58:59.715 --> 00:59:03.655
has has some, you know, very integral broken incentives,
810
00:59:04.770 --> 00:59:06.390
and is you know,
811
00:59:07.410 --> 00:59:08.630
it it is not
812
00:59:09.170 --> 00:59:11.270
this, you know, magic piece of
813
00:59:11.684 --> 00:59:18.184
of networking that that people necessarily think it is in today's age. Right? Like, people just think it just works. They think it's just like magic.
814
00:59:19.500 --> 00:59:22.080
But what really is is is happening is
815
00:59:22.860 --> 00:59:26.240
the the way it's set up is it's very easy
816
00:59:26.625 --> 00:59:30.724
for a a a relatively easy for a sophisticated actor to essentially,
817
00:59:33.184 --> 00:59:34.805
like, bomb a site with traffic.
818
00:59:35.540 --> 00:59:41.720
And if you bomb a site with traffic, this is what we call a a a DDoS, a distributed denial of service attack.
819
00:59:43.485 --> 00:59:54.020
You you basically hit them so hard that they're not able to serve regular customers. And in the process, it becomes very expensive to them. So they're constantly serving, serving, serving the attacker,
820
00:59:54.560 --> 01:00:01.755
and the attacker could maybe they're not even, a lot of times, the attacker isn't using their own compute. They're using compromised computers,
821
01:00:02.455 --> 01:00:07.410
to then attack those those sites. So what happens is all these independent site owners,
822
01:00:08.750 --> 01:00:13.330
and I and we see it a lot with the Bitcoin exchanges if we wanna bring it back to Bitcoin,
823
01:00:13.995 --> 01:00:18.975
rely on the the easiest way for them to handle those just distributed denial of service
824
01:00:19.435 --> 01:00:19.935
is,
825
01:00:20.555 --> 01:00:25.340
through a centralized actor who's able to basically have massive block lists
826
01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:26.700
and distribute
827
01:00:27.080 --> 01:00:35.565
any kind of traffic around their global network. They they have they have massive economies of scale that allow them to mitigate these DDoS attacks.
828
01:00:36.185 --> 01:00:37.645
But what that means is
829
01:00:38.089 --> 01:00:44.910
that's a centralizing incentive. So now we have a few companies that are offering this service, and those companies become central points of failure.
830
01:00:45.290 --> 01:00:46.089
And it's kind of,
831
01:00:47.835 --> 01:00:50.495
tangential to the to the Tor concerns
832
01:00:50.955 --> 01:00:51.935
because Tor,
833
01:00:52.555 --> 01:00:55.135
as a network that prioritizes privacy,
834
01:00:55.755 --> 01:00:56.895
inherently has,
835
01:00:57.490 --> 01:00:57.990
DDoS
836
01:00:58.290 --> 01:00:59.910
concerns because you can't,
837
01:01:01.490 --> 01:01:06.310
you know, like, if the protocol's working correctly, like, you shouldn't be able to block individual users.
838
01:01:08.435 --> 01:01:09.474
So it's it's a
839
01:01:10.275 --> 01:01:13.974
and the way Tor handles it is they handle it with these centralized directories,
840
01:01:14.595 --> 01:01:17.020
and that's what was getting hit. So,
841
01:01:17.560 --> 01:01:22.140
usually, when we see these protocols, the way they handle distributed denial of service
842
01:01:22.680 --> 01:01:25.740
is they handle it via increased centralization.
843
01:01:26.585 --> 01:01:28.765
But as we know, that doesn't work
844
01:01:29.065 --> 01:01:31.325
if you're facing a a massive
845
01:01:34.920 --> 01:01:37.579
a a a masters massive pro censorship force
846
01:01:37.880 --> 01:01:40.779
that, you know, has regulatory powers over you.
847
01:01:41.455 --> 01:01:47.155
So, like, in in towards in towards threat model, they basically assume the US government isn't gonna go after them,
848
01:01:47.615 --> 01:01:53.560
which has been good so far. It's in the US government's good graces, and we take advantage of that.
849
01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:55.460
Bitcoin doesn't have that luxury.
850
01:01:56.319 --> 01:02:03.605
So so the way Bitcoin handles it is is pretty graceful. The way Bitcoin handles it is is essentially those transaction fees,
851
01:02:05.665 --> 01:02:06.645
allow you to
852
01:02:06.945 --> 01:02:08.005
allow you to mitigate
853
01:02:08.789 --> 01:02:15.049
massive spam on the network, which would essentially be like a a DDoS on the network. It's very, very,
854
01:02:17.085 --> 01:02:22.945
it's just slick how how that incentive model is set up, and I I think people don't realize, you know, how massive that is.
855
01:02:25.220 --> 01:02:26.680
856
01:02:27.140 --> 01:02:28.279
both Tor and,
857
01:02:29.619 --> 01:02:30.579
Didio was saying,
858
01:02:31.225 --> 01:02:32.765
the Tor project is actually,
859
01:02:33.465 --> 01:02:33.965
exploring
860
01:02:34.505 --> 01:02:35.645
using anonymous
861
01:02:35.945 --> 01:02:37.945
tokens. And when I say tokens, they did,
862
01:02:38.600 --> 01:02:41.580
specify that they don't necessarily mean with a blockchain.
863
01:02:41.880 --> 01:02:43.500
It could be with something else. But
864
01:02:43.880 --> 01:02:44.380
they,
865
01:02:44.840 --> 01:02:45.500
have indicated,
866
01:02:46.375 --> 01:02:50.315
I think since September that they are exploring using tokens.
867
01:02:52.535 --> 01:02:55.220
Not I mean, they kind of hinted at possibly
868
01:02:55.920 --> 01:02:58.260
monetizing them, but that is not the main
869
01:02:58.560 --> 01:02:59.780
use case. I think,
870
01:03:01.440 --> 01:03:02.420
I'll get their,
871
01:03:03.440 --> 01:03:08.005
posts. They say additional benefit of a token based approach is that it opens up
872
01:03:08.305 --> 01:03:12.805
a variety of use cases for Tor in the future. For example, in the future, tokens could be used to restrict
873
01:03:13.500 --> 01:03:14.319
malicious usage
874
01:03:15.020 --> 01:03:30.005
of Tor exit nodes by spam and automated bots, hence reducing exit node censorship by centralized services. Tokens can also be used to register human memorable names for onion services. That is good. I I side note that I think that's going to be a big one because if you've ever used
875
01:03:30.430 --> 01:03:32.190
if you've ever used an onion service,
876
01:03:32.990 --> 01:03:40.515
you know, it's a basically a random generated string, and that is not something that's easy to remember without pinning it somehow,
877
01:03:41.535 --> 01:03:46.835
which is kind of hard to do in a poor browser because it's built to not allow you to do things like that.
878
01:03:47.980 --> 01:03:55.599
They can also be used to acquire private bridges and exit nodes for additional security. Lots of details need to be ironed out. So yeah, they are looking at
879
01:03:56.165 --> 01:03:56.665
ways,
880
01:03:57.045 --> 01:04:02.025
within toward itself of kind of solving that problem to change the incentives.
881
01:04:06.840 --> 01:04:10.300
882
01:04:11.800 --> 01:04:14.860
with those different models because I think something does need to be done.
883
01:04:17.365 --> 01:04:19.445
The incentives need to be, you know
884
01:04:20.325 --> 01:04:24.505
if if not a completely different network, but, I mean, that's a completely above my pay grade.
885
01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:30.940
I have a love hate relationship with Tourer where I we rely on it all the time, and I support the project.
886
01:04:31.640 --> 01:04:34.434
But but I think it needs to be more robust, and I hope it
887
01:04:35.055 --> 01:04:37.315
becomes, more robust over time.
888
01:04:39.214 --> 01:04:46.820
889
01:04:47.120 --> 01:04:48.900
I think it came out, like, in 2019.
890
01:04:49.200 --> 01:04:50.020
It was, like,
891
01:04:50.640 --> 01:04:54.275
mesh 40 9 or something like that names. I can't remember exactly.
892
01:04:55.535 --> 01:04:59.475
893
01:05:00.970 --> 01:05:05.310
894
01:05:06.010 --> 01:05:09.070
basically, like, lightning to incentivize people, to be honest.
895
01:05:12.755 --> 01:05:17.734
896
01:05:18.275 --> 01:05:19.895
related. But, I mean, you can
897
01:05:20.619 --> 01:05:26.880
you can do that kind of, you know, that kind of layout on a on, like, a non mesh infrastructure as well.
898
01:05:28.855 --> 01:05:34.075
You know, the general idea, I mean, is and it's what we see on the Lightning Network, right, which is an onion network,
899
01:05:34.935 --> 01:05:37.115
where the individual nodes are incentivized
900
01:05:37.950 --> 01:05:43.330
to route messages. And if you're an attacker, it should come with a cost. Right? And that cost is,
901
01:05:44.430 --> 01:05:45.810
a transaction fee.
902
01:05:47.415 --> 01:05:55.660
So so then then you have an incentive where an attacker it it costs more for an attacker than it costs for a for a good user, and you can reduce
903
01:05:55.960 --> 01:05:56.360
the,
904
01:05:57.080 --> 01:06:01.580
vulnerability to to these kind of, you know, large scale denial of service attacks.
905
01:06:02.440 --> 01:06:04.300
But we'll see how that plays out.
906
01:06:06.285 --> 01:06:11.905
Freaks, you got anything else for us in the comments there you want us to touch on? Been really enjoying this conversation.
907
01:06:14.869 --> 01:06:15.369
Ben,
908
01:06:17.029 --> 01:06:20.809
Janine, you got you have anything in mind that you think we should touch on here?
909
01:06:23.325 --> 01:06:28.785
910
01:06:30.560 --> 01:06:32.740
And I just wanted to point out, a lot of people
911
01:06:33.120 --> 01:06:34.160
don't know that,
912
01:06:34.640 --> 01:06:35.620
Aaron Schwartz.
913
01:06:36.480 --> 01:06:39.275
I'm sure most people know who Aaron Schwartz is,
914
01:06:39.974 --> 01:06:40.474
but
915
01:06:40.855 --> 01:06:43.275
a lot of people don't know he was actually the
916
01:06:44.454 --> 01:06:47.260
creator of RSS and Markdown. Markdown is
917
01:06:48.380 --> 01:06:49.360
what, Git,
918
01:06:49.900 --> 01:06:53.500
and in particular GitHub, although it has its own flavor of Markdown,
919
01:06:54.220 --> 01:06:58.734
he was the creator of that. So I just wanted to bring that up because a lot of people don't know that.
920
01:07:01.195 --> 01:07:05.820
921
01:07:06.460 --> 01:07:07.760
we need more than deplatforming
922
01:07:08.220 --> 01:07:08.880
and, like,
923
01:07:09.580 --> 01:07:13.315
they didn't explicitly say, like, censor the Internet, but they were saying, you know, bring up,
924
01:07:13.954 --> 01:07:14.855
like, trustworthy
925
01:07:15.155 --> 01:07:23.255
trustworthy voices or something like that. And, like, so, like, that's a pretty, like, kinda scary thing to see. Like, I stopped using Firefox after I saw that post where
926
01:07:23.620 --> 01:07:32.440
people, like, I don't know. Your your browser should be, like, your your gate to the Internet. It shouldn't be, like, telling you what to go on the Internet and see.
927
01:07:32.765 --> 01:07:36.145
So I think, like, stuff like that is kinda scary too, where, like, I think
928
01:07:36.445 --> 01:07:41.665
me and a lot of other people I know switched to, like, like, on Google Chromium, like, an actual open source,
929
01:07:42.510 --> 01:07:46.849
browser, which is good to see. And, hopefully, that's a good trend we see going forward.
930
01:07:49.125 --> 01:07:50.345
931
01:07:51.205 --> 01:07:53.785
you know, the browser situation is kind of fucked. Right?
932
01:07:54.405 --> 01:07:56.885
I I well, you you were meant you mentioned,
933
01:07:57.205 --> 01:07:58.825
de googled Chromium. Right?
934
01:07:59.270 --> 01:08:04.730
935
01:08:05.589 --> 01:08:06.089
Yeah.
936
01:08:06.465 --> 01:08:10.245
And you need it on your phone. So you kinda screwed that way too.
937
01:08:11.345 --> 01:08:14.405
938
01:08:15.020 --> 01:08:16.560
the there's a concept here.
939
01:08:17.020 --> 01:08:18.880
There's this idea here that you can
940
01:08:19.260 --> 01:08:20.320
you can selectively
941
01:08:21.020 --> 01:08:22.880
filter out only bad content.
942
01:08:23.875 --> 01:08:24.855
And I
943
01:08:25.395 --> 01:08:26.935
I firmly in the camp
944
01:08:27.475 --> 01:08:27.975
that
945
01:08:28.355 --> 01:08:31.415
in order to protect the most vulnerable amongst us,
946
01:08:32.190 --> 01:08:36.290
you have to basically protect everyone en masse. Because if you don't,
947
01:08:37.870 --> 01:08:40.195
then then the powers that be in any individual
948
01:08:40.974 --> 01:08:41.875
power relationship
949
01:08:42.574 --> 01:08:43.395
will always,
950
01:08:45.375 --> 01:08:48.514
exert that power and control over the more vulnerable.
951
01:08:51.680 --> 01:08:54.740
I I both of you agree agree with that. Right?
952
01:08:56.320 --> 01:08:57.220
953
01:08:59.335 --> 01:09:01.595
954
01:09:02.055 --> 01:09:07.675
the gap. Right? That's that's where the the real disagreement is. Would you would you agree?
955
01:09:10.240 --> 01:09:12.420
956
01:09:12.800 --> 01:09:27.014
like, Mozilla and Firefox might have, like, good intentions today, but, you know, 20 years from now, they they might not, and they could be, you know, using this to censor whatever they deem unworthy, which could be, like, you know, something that we deem perfectly fine.
957
01:09:27.420 --> 01:09:29.280
And, you know, if it's not a good,
958
01:09:29.820 --> 01:09:38.235
prescient dissent and, you know, these people could, like, very well abuse this power. Or even if we trust Mozilla, they could be, you know, threatened by
959
01:09:38.614 --> 01:09:42.795
a third party, like, you know, a a government or, you know, just a bad actor
960
01:09:43.255 --> 01:09:44.554
and, you know,
961
01:09:44.980 --> 01:09:51.960
screw over someone that, you know, needs, to use their browser for some reason or, you know, someone that was relying on that as infrastructure.
962
01:09:52.725 --> 01:09:57.785
963
01:09:58.645 --> 01:10:04.120
it's it's easier for for an American and maybe do the same exercise if you're from another country
964
01:10:04.500 --> 01:10:06.520
to vision a country that you consider,
965
01:10:07.620 --> 01:10:12.804
has poor human rights. And and and if you if you're if if you think about a country like China,
966
01:10:13.265 --> 01:10:16.405
I think most Americans would agree that we can't trust,
967
01:10:16.864 --> 01:10:20.245
the Chinese government with choosing who can speak and who can't speak.
968
01:10:21.010 --> 01:10:23.510
So if if that is the threshold
969
01:10:23.970 --> 01:10:28.630
that that we agree on and we agree at that premise, how do we bridge the gap between
970
01:10:29.195 --> 01:10:29.695
understanding
971
01:10:30.954 --> 01:10:32.255
that as a concept,
972
01:10:32.715 --> 01:10:34.014
but thinking that,
973
01:10:35.195 --> 01:10:43.880
I I mean, I think a large amount of the country thinks, like, a Twitter or an Apple can choose what what speech is good speech and what's not. Like, how do we bridge that divide?
974
01:10:46.474 --> 01:10:58.610
975
01:10:59.515 --> 01:11:00.335
you know, what
976
01:11:01.035 --> 01:11:03.215
you're, you know, what you're kind of entitled
977
01:11:03.595 --> 01:11:10.500
to host or not host as a government is, you know, obligated to not censor people at least in countries like the US.
978
01:11:10.960 --> 01:11:19.045
But on the other hand, a lot of these big platforms, the reason they are so big is because the state makes it difficult
979
01:11:19.425 --> 01:11:20.725
for smaller players
980
01:11:21.105 --> 01:11:21.605
to
981
01:11:22.465 --> 01:11:28.480
to run, you know, their own infrastructure, especially infrastructure that's private and censorship resistant,
982
01:11:29.500 --> 01:11:31.760
do any actual meaningful degree.
983
01:11:32.620 --> 01:11:36.635
So it's really hard because the you know, that's essentially where this kind of
984
01:11:37.094 --> 01:11:41.275
public square argument comes in is because they've effectively been
985
01:11:42.070 --> 01:11:43.450
given this kind of cushion
986
01:11:43.910 --> 01:11:46.890
by the state because of how they've
987
01:11:47.670 --> 01:11:49.370
you know, because they were either
988
01:11:49.715 --> 01:11:51.735
first into the field or
989
01:11:52.035 --> 01:11:56.135
because they had enough power from a, you know, resisting
990
01:11:56.915 --> 01:11:57.415
regulatory
991
01:11:57.955 --> 01:11:58.455
challenges
992
01:11:59.780 --> 01:12:01.719
in different ways to
993
01:12:02.420 --> 01:12:09.245
to kick out all of the competitors or at least limit the ability of competitors to get any good user share.
994
01:12:10.364 --> 01:12:13.665
I don't know. It kind of makes the question a bit murky
995
01:12:14.605 --> 01:12:15.265
to me.
996
01:12:17.900 --> 01:12:20.960
997
01:12:21.659 --> 01:12:24.640
you know, we build and support platforms that
998
01:12:26.395 --> 01:12:28.735
that no one can easily censor by design,
999
01:12:29.115 --> 01:12:30.895
and then we just kind of just wait
1000
01:12:31.515 --> 01:12:36.219
till enough people get burned to realize that it's an issue. Because I don't know
1001
01:12:36.679 --> 01:12:38.780
how how you how you get through to people,
1002
01:12:40.360 --> 01:12:40.860
if
1003
01:12:42.105 --> 01:12:45.805
without without them getting burned. Like, if if you look at this last week,
1004
01:12:46.665 --> 01:12:53.230
I I think a a a large amount of people woke up to the issue, and I think it's just kind of getting started. I think as
1005
01:12:53.770 --> 01:12:55.710
as as more voices get,
1006
01:12:56.490 --> 01:12:59.790
squeezed, as more people get cut off from the financial
1007
01:13:00.795 --> 01:13:01.115
system.
1008
01:13:01.755 --> 01:13:08.255
As more private information gets leaked, people will start to ultimately realize that that they need to seek out better solutions.
1009
01:13:11.349 --> 01:13:12.790
1010
01:13:13.270 --> 01:13:14.809
weird weirdly enough, apparently,
1011
01:13:15.190 --> 01:13:16.090
Mark Zuckerberg,
1012
01:13:17.744 --> 01:13:26.565
at a conference in 2019 actually so he actually said that he believes that the future of social platforms is private, which I find,
1013
01:13:26.930 --> 01:13:32.230
I mean, he's the kind of person that says a bunch of things that are completely contradictory to
1014
01:13:32.850 --> 01:13:34.230
the existence of Facebook
1015
01:13:34.610 --> 01:13:35.830
in so many ways.
1016
01:13:36.495 --> 01:13:39.315
So I I but I find it interesting that he said that.
1017
01:13:39.775 --> 01:13:47.520
1018
01:13:48.380 --> 01:13:50.880
because that goes against their whole business model.
1019
01:13:51.260 --> 01:13:54.480
But yeah. So so this is actually a perfect example here. Right?
1020
01:13:54.954 --> 01:13:59.934
Is that people group have been using WhatsApp for years. Facebook has owned WhatsApp for years,
1021
01:14:00.554 --> 01:14:02.574
the the number one chat application.
1022
01:14:03.620 --> 01:14:05.880
And all of a sudden, people realized
1023
01:14:08.420 --> 01:14:10.280
I guess, there was, like, this mass movement
1024
01:14:11.175 --> 01:14:18.235
recently, like, this last week, I guess, something changed in their privacy policy or they had to disclose it because Apple forced them to disclose it.
1025
01:14:19.420 --> 01:14:34.540
And, like, a bunch of people woke up. Right? And they just switched to signal. But they there was there's 2 key elements there. Right? It's, like, the people need to wake up, but then once they wake up, there has to be something that's, you know, relatively easy for them to switch to waiting.
1026
01:14:35.580 --> 01:14:38.880
1027
01:14:39.260 --> 01:14:52.055
1028
01:14:52.740 --> 01:14:55.400
But, I mean, hopefully, people are working on these things now.
1029
01:14:57.380 --> 01:14:57.860
1030
01:14:58.420 --> 01:14:59.220
I mean, I'm
1031
01:14:59.700 --> 01:15:00.600
I've used
1032
01:15:01.315 --> 01:15:06.375
signal before. Like, I have general I don't use it anymore. I'm I mean, I have,
1033
01:15:06.995 --> 01:15:08.055
I have a phone
1034
01:15:09.330 --> 01:15:13.570
for circumstances where there's no other option, but, like, it's almost never on.
1035
01:15:15.250 --> 01:15:15.750
And,
1036
01:15:16.370 --> 01:15:17.750
yeah, I find it
1037
01:15:19.075 --> 01:15:21.575
as a as a generally phone free person,
1038
01:15:22.995 --> 01:15:29.000
I'm I mean, I would say that in general, I would trust signal a lot more than
1039
01:15:29.699 --> 01:15:31.000
WhatsApp slash Facebook.
1040
01:15:32.179 --> 01:15:41.505
But at the end of the day, it's the same model, and the model that I'm worried about is the fact that, you know, it's based on this idea that a phone number is an identifier.
1041
01:15:42.270 --> 01:15:44.210
And I really hate that because,
1042
01:15:45.230 --> 01:15:51.489
phone numbers are not good identifiers. You don't own them. You don't control them. Especially if you're in the US, your phone number can,
1043
01:15:52.255 --> 01:15:55.795
in most circumstances, so easily be taken away from you,
1044
01:15:56.255 --> 01:15:59.235
just by knowing some small details,
1045
01:15:59.615 --> 01:16:00.115
and
1046
01:16:00.640 --> 01:16:02.420
a lot of which is public,
1047
01:16:03.040 --> 01:16:04.500
in a lot of cases. So
1048
01:16:05.360 --> 01:16:13.645
I I just I'm not a fan of any application that requires a phone number to use it. And in signals case, they are
1049
01:16:14.505 --> 01:16:17.565
trying to get away with it, but so far, they are still
1050
01:16:18.160 --> 01:16:21.140
the requirement of the phone number as a security measure.
1051
01:16:22.240 --> 01:16:29.055
In fact, they they say that it's a way to prevent spam, like their services getting overwhelmed or at least that's what they said before.
1052
01:16:29.995 --> 01:16:38.020
1053
01:16:39.600 --> 01:16:44.895
1054
01:16:45.835 --> 01:16:50.255
signal knows. I mean, the the I mean, if anyone doesn't know if they store their stuff on Amazon.
1055
01:16:50.860 --> 01:16:57.180
Yeah. I mean so the supposedly, the way that signal has designed their infrastructure, they don't know your phone number,
1056
01:16:59.020 --> 01:16:59.520
explicitly.
1057
01:17:00.715 --> 01:17:04.735
But still that yeah. So that data though is still
1058
01:17:05.195 --> 01:17:10.060
being stored on Amazon, which I like so much so much is stored on Amazon.
1059
01:17:10.440 --> 01:17:10.940
I'm
1060
01:17:11.880 --> 01:17:13.900
yeah. In in terms of, like,
1061
01:17:14.600 --> 01:17:15.739
centralized adversaries,
1062
01:17:16.040 --> 01:17:18.844
Amazon's a big one for a number of reasons.
1063
01:17:19.145 --> 01:17:22.605
1064
01:17:23.224 --> 01:17:27.244
I mean, Ben said, it's not perfect. I mean, it's clearly not perfect.
1065
01:17:28.400 --> 01:17:33.520
The the two main things is the the phone number requirement and just the phone requirement in general. I mean, you can't,
1066
01:17:34.455 --> 01:17:43.090
you can run it on on a computer, but you need to have a phone that basically is relaying the messages to the to the desktop client. It's not a true desktop client.
1067
01:17:43.710 --> 01:17:52.675
And the phones in general are are, you know, it's it's very difficult to secure a phone privacy wise, so you're opening up your users to to that risk.
1068
01:17:53.054 --> 01:18:04.800
But I think it's important to make it to it's it's an important point to make to the freaks that we're you're never everything has trade offs. You're never gonna see something you're never gonna see something that's perfect.
1069
01:18:06.755 --> 01:18:11.335
Signal can get deplatform from AWS just like we saw it happened to Parler.
1070
01:18:13.075 --> 01:18:14.215
They haven't, though.
1071
01:18:14.910 --> 01:18:17.570
So if they can get away with a little bit of centralization,
1072
01:18:19.230 --> 01:18:20.530
for additional convenience,
1073
01:18:22.215 --> 01:18:31.275
then there's an argument to be made there, right, that that maybe that trade off balance is the best balance for a lot of people. Like, I mean, if you if you hear
1074
01:18:31.770 --> 01:18:34.030
you hear Moxie talk about the phone numbers,
1075
01:18:36.090 --> 01:18:44.085
with signals phone number requirement, and he says, you know, for the average user, they find it as a blessing. They they it it's a convenience for them because
1076
01:18:44.465 --> 01:18:52.610
the average user joins, and they just already know which contacts are in signal. And, I mean, if you're an Android phone, it basically works like Imessage, right, where
1077
01:18:52.910 --> 01:18:56.929
you can use it as your regular text client. And if if the other person has,
1078
01:18:57.795 --> 01:18:59.014
signal, it just automatically
1079
01:18:59.315 --> 01:19:01.574
switches to signal rather than SMS.
1080
01:19:02.195 --> 01:19:09.830
So there's a convenience argument to be made there, and I I think this is the type of trade off balance that we basically see all the time in our day to day lives. Right?
1081
01:19:11.890 --> 01:19:14.550
1082
01:19:14.965 --> 01:19:17.065
a CoinDesk article about cyberpunks,
1083
01:19:17.685 --> 01:19:20.425
and there was a line in there that said something like,
1084
01:19:20.805 --> 01:19:23.785
using signal is the equivalent of, like,
1085
01:19:24.390 --> 01:19:24.890
smoking,
1086
01:19:26.150 --> 01:19:31.610
smoking weed once in college in terms of the cyberpunk ethos. Like, it's a good onboard.
1087
01:19:33.825 --> 01:19:36.325
And I I would definitely say I would prefer
1088
01:19:37.025 --> 01:19:38.725
people using signal to
1089
01:19:39.185 --> 01:19:41.205
something like just plain text
1090
01:19:41.680 --> 01:19:42.500
SMS messages,
1091
01:19:42.880 --> 01:19:43.860
that's monumentally
1092
01:19:44.400 --> 01:19:45.140
an improvement.
1093
01:19:46.400 --> 01:19:51.245
But in terms of censorship resistance, at the end of the day, it's not it's not any
1094
01:19:51.625 --> 01:19:52.125
different,
1095
01:19:53.945 --> 01:19:56.605
especially with, the requirement of a phone number.
1096
01:19:57.945 --> 01:19:58.445
1097
01:19:59.360 --> 01:20:01.219
if if we're gonna go full,
1098
01:20:01.599 --> 01:20:03.300
you know, full hard o here,
1099
01:20:03.679 --> 01:20:05.040
right, and you you have
1100
01:20:05.679 --> 01:20:07.300
if if we end up in a situation
1101
01:20:07.705 --> 01:20:10.125
where the most powerful governments in the world,
1102
01:20:11.145 --> 01:20:12.765
and and the corporations that
1103
01:20:14.025 --> 01:20:15.485
reside within their jurisdictions,
1104
01:20:17.630 --> 01:20:21.330
are are doing active censorship. Right? You know, specifically,
1105
01:20:21.870 --> 01:20:24.770
Amazon. You know, if if if Amazon starts
1106
01:20:27.695 --> 01:20:28.195
deplatforming
1107
01:20:28.655 --> 01:20:32.514
more private like, privacy focused services such as signal,
1108
01:20:32.895 --> 01:20:34.355
we're gonna have to move
1109
01:20:34.735 --> 01:20:35.635
to a
1110
01:20:36.610 --> 01:20:42.070
something that Bitcoiners know very well, a user own node model. Right? Like, a almost like a personal server,
1111
01:20:42.450 --> 01:20:44.710
self host, everything kind of model.
1112
01:20:47.015 --> 01:20:49.515
That is always seemed like the holy grail,
1113
01:20:50.455 --> 01:20:53.114
you know, to a lot lot of sovereignty people, but,
1114
01:20:53.960 --> 01:20:56.860
I mean, it comes with a massive convenience trade off. Right?
1115
01:20:58.760 --> 01:21:02.695
1116
01:21:03.255 --> 01:21:05.675
be, you know, especially if you live,
1117
01:21:07.494 --> 01:21:17.230
around people who have similar interests and needs, then you would have, you know, at least one person who is self hosting who then provides it for
1118
01:21:17.770 --> 01:21:21.790
everyone else around. And should to answer the question on yeah. So
1119
01:21:22.685 --> 01:21:30.989
in terms of encrypted messaging apps, I I use a lot of different ones, and I use them for different things
1120
01:21:31.610 --> 01:21:33.710
and also even different people. So
1121
01:21:34.170 --> 01:21:35.070
I have Keybase.
1122
01:21:35.449 --> 01:21:43.315
I've had Keybase for a very long time prior to it getting acquired by Zoom last year, I think. I can't remember exactly.
1123
01:21:44.255 --> 01:21:45.955
And I do Yeah. It was definitely
1124
01:21:46.590 --> 01:21:49.250
1125
01:21:50.190 --> 01:21:52.530
1126
01:21:53.150 --> 01:21:58.505
to some degree why they made that decision. I think in terms of the product that they're offering, I think it's, like,
1127
01:21:59.285 --> 01:22:04.579
on the completely opposite spectrum to what Zoom has shown that it's interested in in terms of privacy.
1128
01:22:05.520 --> 01:22:06.020
But
1129
01:22:06.400 --> 01:22:14.045
at least the client, not the server, unfortunately, the server code, but the client for Keybase is still open source. I haven't seen
1130
01:22:14.585 --> 01:22:15.485
any changes
1131
01:22:15.785 --> 01:22:16.605
that would
1132
01:22:16.960 --> 01:22:20.100
indicate something worrying on that end in terms of Zoom
1133
01:22:20.720 --> 01:22:22.420
putting pressure on them to,
1134
01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:28.325
I mean, even integrate Zoom. I think they said they might do that at some point, but it doesn't look like it was,
1135
01:22:29.105 --> 01:22:41.850
looked unfavorably at all. So I do I am definitely concerned about the fact that Keybase is now is now owned by Zoom, and that may be a threat. And so I've even before that, though, I've always treated Keybase as kind of, like,
1136
01:22:42.465 --> 01:22:45.445
encrypted Twitter DMs. So, like, whatever I would
1137
01:22:46.625 --> 01:22:53.800
relatively feel okay saying in Twitter DMs, I will say in Keybase and maybe a little more than that, but I don't use it for anything
1138
01:22:54.100 --> 01:22:56.199
super sensitive. I do think that there
1139
01:22:56.500 --> 01:22:59.160
the fact that, you know, you can control your own
1140
01:22:59.645 --> 01:23:00.685
key with it,
1141
01:23:01.245 --> 01:23:02.065
you know, independent
1142
01:23:02.525 --> 01:23:03.425
of Keybase.
1143
01:23:03.805 --> 01:23:07.585
You can also generate it with Keybase that is not ideal. But,
1144
01:23:07.885 --> 01:23:08.705
yeah, I think
1145
01:23:09.110 --> 01:23:11.610
it it's all a matter of, like, what are
1146
01:23:11.990 --> 01:23:22.675
what are the various options? What can you use them for? And what's the threat model in using them? So Keybase, I prefer people to use that rather than DM ing me on Twitter, for example, where,
1147
01:23:22.975 --> 01:23:29.199
you know, Keybase has this whole social network thing. So if someone wants to contact me, you know, it's someone that, you know,
1148
01:23:29.580 --> 01:23:35.360
if they're following me on Twitter or whatever, then that's already public information. I'm not trying to hide that I'm connected to them or something.
1149
01:23:36.385 --> 01:23:41.125
So it's just that that's I treat it like an encrypted version of Twitter, sort of.
1150
01:23:41.744 --> 01:23:46.640
But in terms of, like, your main app, definitely, Keybase is not at the top of the list.
1151
01:23:47.180 --> 01:23:50.240
1152
01:23:51.355 --> 01:23:53.215
one one of our freaks, Pedro,
1153
01:23:53.675 --> 01:23:57.454
he asked, Janine what she thought about Keybase, which triggered that,
1154
01:23:58.155 --> 01:23:59.375
discussion right there.
1155
01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:05.300
You know, I tend to agree a 100% with what you said. I think an important thing for the freaks to realize here
1156
01:24:05.600 --> 01:24:08.180
is that that Keybase is open source software.
1157
01:24:10.114 --> 01:24:15.815
You know, the code could have more eyes on it. You know, the more people looking at code, the better to keep them honest.
1158
01:24:16.920 --> 01:24:19.820
But it is designed in a way to be end to end encrypted.
1159
01:24:20.440 --> 01:24:26.745
So the idea there is between the combination of end to end encryption and the fact that it's open source and you can verify it,
1160
01:24:28.165 --> 01:24:31.545
it means that you don't have to trust the company that's running the servers,
1161
01:24:31.925 --> 01:24:33.625
with the contents of that message,
1162
01:24:35.079 --> 01:24:47.235
which I think is a very important distinction. I mean, obviously, there could be certain things that happen there, but but that's, like, the the base standard that I think we we wanna see in all of our tools and services that
1163
01:24:47.614 --> 01:24:52.610
they're designed in a way to reduce trust in the overarching company as much as possible.
1164
01:24:53.390 --> 01:24:57.545
And then they're open the code is open so that we can actually prove and verify that.
1165
01:25:01.465 --> 01:25:03.645
Do you keep in mind though Yeah. Go on.
1166
01:25:04.640 --> 01:25:08.260
1167
01:25:08.880 --> 01:25:11.300
to either build it yourself or, you know,
1168
01:25:11.655 --> 01:25:21.760
like, PGP verify your download and everything and not get the automatic updates and all that stuff, which is a huge barrier for entry to a lot of people that likely aren't doing that, which
1169
01:25:22.140 --> 01:25:25.520
1170
01:25:26.140 --> 01:25:29.280
I think as a base standard, if that's the expectation,
1171
01:25:31.375 --> 01:25:34.355
ideally, you have some people that are doing it. Right?
1172
01:25:35.054 --> 01:25:36.034
So at least,
1173
01:25:36.495 --> 01:25:44.800
you know, users might get fucked, but at least the alarm will be sound, you know, like, someone I it might be after the fact, it might be too late for someone.
1174
01:25:45.500 --> 01:25:51.885
They've already lost their privacy, or in the case of of of, malicious Bitcoin software, maybe lost their coins. But,
1175
01:25:53.465 --> 01:25:55.724
at least at least it would be known. Right?
1176
01:25:58.860 --> 01:26:04.320
Yeah. That's true. Like, it's strictly better than if you compare it to something that's closed and not end to end encrypted.
1177
01:26:04.975 --> 01:26:05.955
1178
01:26:08.175 --> 01:26:11.635
1179
01:26:12.140 --> 01:26:16.320
pretty interesting. You had it I I was enjoying where we were going with that.
1180
01:26:17.420 --> 01:26:20.400
I guess we were talking about we were talking about personal servers
1181
01:26:23.285 --> 01:26:26.425
and and the convenience trade off that that that entails.
1182
01:26:27.605 --> 01:26:38.679
1183
01:26:40.175 --> 01:26:41.795
kind of community rung thing where
1184
01:26:42.175 --> 01:26:42.675
you
1185
01:26:43.215 --> 01:26:51.220
know the person who is self hosting the infrastructure and maybe they're, you know, they're the skilled one who knows how to handle that, and they can,
1186
01:26:53.120 --> 01:27:03.855
you know, an individual or a group of people who know what to do can host for their local community or their friends. Maybe they're not living near each other physically, but I feel like that's the intermediary step because
1187
01:27:04.460 --> 01:27:06.160
at the end of the day, most people,
1188
01:27:07.420 --> 01:27:11.120
whether it's because they don't have the money to
1189
01:27:11.555 --> 01:27:15.735
build up the infrastructure or the the the knowledge to know how to do that properly.
1190
01:27:16.675 --> 01:27:21.260
A lot of people most people are not going to do that. So I feel like at least the intermediary
1191
01:27:21.640 --> 01:27:22.860
step is going to be
1192
01:27:23.400 --> 01:27:25.820
just, you know, a group of friends or
1193
01:27:26.360 --> 01:27:29.660
some families who know each other to do that together.
1194
01:27:33.625 --> 01:27:35.005
1195
01:27:35.385 --> 01:27:37.645
1196
01:27:39.510 --> 01:27:42.570
1197
01:27:43.190 --> 01:28:02.730
for, you know, for some people, like, getting a whole server rack is, like, know, it's completely untenable. Like, yes, like, my mom did that. She'd, you know, just be like, I'm never doing this. So it it is a good thing, like, if you do have that, you know, the quote unquote uncle gym to be able to set something up. And it's, like, you know, our hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper. Like, you can get a
1198
01:28:03.244 --> 01:28:09.824
Raspberry Pi, like, 3 for, like, $20 or something. So, like, it it could be doable and, like, it's not
1199
01:28:10.260 --> 01:28:14.199
exorbitantly expensive where it's not like, you know, you're keeping a barrier to entry from,
1200
01:28:14.580 --> 01:28:17.480
like, a lot of the, like, poor parts of the world.
1201
01:28:18.475 --> 01:28:24.495
But we do need to actually build that software. I don't know. At least, personally, I don't know any messaging that is, like, self hosted,
1202
01:28:24.875 --> 01:28:26.895
like, the uncle Jim model kind of thing.
1203
01:28:31.420 --> 01:28:32.639
1204
01:28:33.100 --> 01:28:36.480
I've been kind of bullish on the uncle Jim concept.
1205
01:28:37.085 --> 01:28:39.185
But when I talked to a lot of old timers,
1206
01:28:41.005 --> 01:28:47.460
they were like, that's kind of what, you know, everyone was always saying, and then it just turned into the cloud model.
1207
01:28:48.320 --> 01:28:52.740
So I don't know if we're just, like, in our little bubble, but I think that that's kind of
1208
01:28:53.525 --> 01:29:06.490
what we should try to achieve. Because, I mean, as Janine said, like, I don't think I I don't think we can really expect that many people at scale. I mean, look let's look at Bitcoin nodes, right, which has, like, a massive incentive to to use your own node. Right?
1209
01:29:07.350 --> 01:29:08.570
And very low burden.
1210
01:29:09.350 --> 01:29:17.545
Even with that, we don't see many people running that or using their own node. I mean, what what do we think the upper end of that is? Max, like, a 100000 people?
1211
01:29:23.430 --> 01:29:26.410
1212
01:29:26.985 --> 01:29:34.925
any like what you said, it's a huge incentive where, you know, you could lose, like, potentially, like, 1,000 or 100 of 1,000 of dollars if you're not running your own node.
1213
01:29:35.230 --> 01:29:35.730
So,
1214
01:29:36.350 --> 01:29:46.565
you know, it is kind of bearish for the the home node thing, but, I mean, if you do build, like, something or, like, something that people actually really want, you could, like, get people over there.
1215
01:29:46.945 --> 01:29:47.765
But, I mean,
1216
01:29:48.145 --> 01:29:49.845
we need to actually build that, which
1217
01:29:50.510 --> 01:29:51.730
hopefully, someone does.
1218
01:29:52.590 --> 01:29:53.730
1219
01:29:54.430 --> 01:30:00.335
ultimately, that's where we wanna go. We wanna go to easy self hosting, make it as easy and and accessible as
1220
01:30:01.455 --> 01:30:03.075
and allow people to basically
1221
01:30:04.094 --> 01:30:07.555
operate as as, like, a localized cloud, if you will,
1222
01:30:08.310 --> 01:30:11.050
for for either their neighborhoods or their friends and family.
1223
01:30:12.070 --> 01:30:14.969
And then all of a sudden, you have a way more distributed model,
1224
01:30:15.615 --> 01:30:19.955
that that is more censorship resistant. So that that would be absolutely fantastic to see.
1225
01:30:20.575 --> 01:30:24.835
And that's what I've been dedicating, like, a lot of my time to is is these,
1226
01:30:25.140 --> 01:30:27.320
you know, sovereignty boxes, if you will.
1227
01:30:28.900 --> 01:30:35.835
But, I mean, on top of that, I mean, you still have major infrastructure issues that even if you have the self hosted box in people's homes,
1228
01:30:36.455 --> 01:30:41.035
I mean, we just go right back to the Tor conversation. Right? And then you're relying on Tor actually working.
1229
01:30:43.250 --> 01:31:01.090
Otherwise, like, you can't you can't make that that that future doesn't happen without tour as it stands right now. It's it's fully reliant on Tor. Alright. Hopefully, we have, you know, either Tor 2.0 or a a new and a new protocol in place. But but right now, as it stands, we need tour for it. Right?
1230
01:31:01.630 --> 01:31:15.554
1231
01:31:15.920 --> 01:31:20.340
1232
01:31:20.800 --> 01:31:23.060
an hour and a half into the conversation. Right?
1233
01:31:23.435 --> 01:31:30.415
And and we've talked about all these, you know, more intimate things or these more sophisticated things. And and, ultimately,
1234
01:31:31.120 --> 01:31:35.620
the sheer fact that you can side load an app on an Android phone is a massive
1235
01:31:36.239 --> 01:31:42.505
improvement over something like iPhone. Right? And how how many people have actually side loaded an app or needed to. Right?
1236
01:31:45.125 --> 01:31:48.105
There's just, like it's just a lot of nuance. There's nuance everywhere.
1237
01:31:49.440 --> 01:31:49.940
Yeah.
1238
01:31:50.960 --> 01:31:52.660
So I have a question from
1239
01:31:53.120 --> 01:31:54.980
a freak in the comments, Peloponnesian.
1240
01:31:55.840 --> 01:31:56.980
Shout out to you.
1241
01:31:57.875 --> 01:31:59.494
Number one privacy book
1242
01:31:59.795 --> 01:32:01.494
to read from both of you.
1243
01:32:04.435 --> 01:32:05.335
Start with Janine.
1244
01:32:06.340 --> 01:32:07.220
1245
01:32:07.700 --> 01:32:17.015
So my I wouldn't I I it's it's really hard for me to say which is the number one book, so I'm just gonna go with one that I think is really good and kind of undervalued,
1246
01:32:17.315 --> 01:32:17.975
which is,
1247
01:32:18.595 --> 01:32:20.535
a book called The Maximum Surveillance
1248
01:32:20.835 --> 01:32:22.295
Society, The Rise of CCTV
1249
01:32:22.755 --> 01:32:24.810
by Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong.
1250
01:32:25.429 --> 01:32:29.690
It was written, long ago enough that it's actually I think it was 1999
1251
01:32:30.605 --> 01:32:31.345
that it's,
1252
01:32:31.885 --> 01:32:33.825
actually available on the Internet Archive,
1253
01:32:35.005 --> 01:32:41.590
which you can loan from. They have a book, a digital book lending program. So if you want to read it, it is freely available.
1254
01:32:42.050 --> 01:32:48.905
But I recommend that one because it was written, you know, in the relatively early days of the Internet.
1255
01:32:49.445 --> 01:32:52.585
And I think it has a lot of good points about,
1256
01:32:53.989 --> 01:32:55.849
you know, privacy at a point
1257
01:32:56.150 --> 01:32:59.449
where, you know, we we were really considering it from
1258
01:33:00.070 --> 01:33:01.130
so much the,
1259
01:33:01.945 --> 01:33:07.565
you know, the the apps and serves and such we were thinking or at least he was thinking about it from
1260
01:33:09.060 --> 01:33:11.320
the standpoint of just cameras,
1261
01:33:12.260 --> 01:33:12.760
everywhere,
1262
01:33:13.700 --> 01:33:17.480
which is I mean, the classic image of surveillance is a camera.
1263
01:33:19.835 --> 01:33:31.530
And I guess that was the starting point for much bigger things where we're now putting the we're doing 1984 all on our own by putting the cameras and microphones in our own houses of our free will.
1264
01:33:35.645 --> 01:33:40.145
1265
01:33:40.685 --> 01:33:44.500
like, Glenn Greenwald's the guy that broke the story about Edward Snowden, the NSA,
1266
01:33:44.880 --> 01:33:46.880
and all that stuff. I think it's really into,
1267
01:33:47.320 --> 01:33:48.659
you know, like, how perverse,
1268
01:33:49.840 --> 01:33:50.980
like, the US's
1269
01:33:52.215 --> 01:33:53.995
surveillance state has really become
1270
01:33:54.455 --> 01:34:05.040
and talks about, like, you know, like, why this could happen and how they do this. And it's, like, it's a really good read and, you know, it's pressing for the current times, and you get to learn all about Snowdon.
1271
01:34:06.700 --> 01:34:13.454
1272
01:34:14.175 --> 01:34:16.675
trying to get in contact with Glenn Greenwald,
1273
01:34:17.215 --> 01:34:20.980
Glenn was not really using PGP at the time, and so,
1274
01:34:22.000 --> 01:34:28.355
Snowden was like he, he includes in the book the fact that and I think Snowden also wrote about it in his book.
1275
01:34:28.895 --> 01:34:31.495
But, yeah, Glenn includes the fact that, like, he,
1276
01:34:31.935 --> 01:34:32.435
frustrated
1277
01:34:32.815 --> 01:34:35.395
his source by not using PGP.
1278
01:34:40.250 --> 01:34:43.230
1279
01:34:44.409 --> 01:34:50.295
of of the trade off balance we were talking about earlier. Right? It's because PGP has been around for a long time.
1280
01:34:52.650 --> 01:34:54.989
I mean and if used properly, it solves,
1281
01:34:57.530 --> 01:34:58.510
private messaging.
1282
01:34:59.050 --> 01:35:02.125
But the problem is it's so inconvenient to use,
1283
01:35:03.304 --> 01:35:08.925
you know, it's it's so inconvenient to use, period. And it's even more inconvenient to use in a secure fashion,
1284
01:35:09.800 --> 01:35:13.900
that it just hasn't had the kind of uptake. And then so you compare that to something
1285
01:35:14.360 --> 01:35:24.755
like signal, and and people a 100% agree that PGP is a pure one. Right? But signal's the one that probably has sent more encrypted messages than than all the years of PGP combined.
1286
01:35:29.190 --> 01:35:33.370
But I appreciate those book recommendations. I mean, I the easy one is extreme privacy,
1287
01:35:34.550 --> 01:35:35.690
by Michael Basil.
1288
01:35:37.014 --> 01:35:39.114
Everyone should give that a read. That's a good one.
1289
01:35:41.414 --> 01:35:44.155
What else do we have here? We have a couple more questions.
1290
01:35:45.960 --> 01:35:48.940
Twitter exodus to Mastodon. What do you guys think about Mastodon?
1291
01:35:52.440 --> 01:35:54.925
1292
01:35:55.465 --> 01:35:57.165
hackers Mastodon instance
1293
01:35:57.704 --> 01:35:58.204
since
1294
01:35:58.505 --> 01:36:00.445
at least a year, I think.
1295
01:36:01.790 --> 01:36:05.730
I mean, I don't I don't post too much on Twitter,
1296
01:36:06.830 --> 01:36:08.290
anyway, and usually
1297
01:36:08.989 --> 01:36:13.275
yeah. I mean, I haven't I haven't fully moved to Mastodon, but I definitely,
1298
01:36:15.175 --> 01:36:24.910
recommend people should go there just because I mean, one thing, the the character counts a lot bigger. So if you want to do your massive threads, that's a lot easier on Mastodon.
1299
01:36:25.450 --> 01:36:28.665
I also cross post my newsletter there as well.
1300
01:36:31.225 --> 01:36:33.145
1301
01:36:34.425 --> 01:36:38.445
Hopefully, this this time is different, TM, and, people actually stay.
1302
01:36:38.790 --> 01:36:39.270
But,
1303
01:36:39.590 --> 01:36:52.165
it's been good. Like, this kinda feels like more like the Bitcoin hang where, you know, we don't need to, like, fight with central bankers or Peter Schiff or whoever. We just hang out and share Bitcoin meetings and talk about things we actually care about.
1304
01:36:52.785 --> 01:37:02.060
Yeah. It's it's been good. I I I've been looking into, like, maybe setting up my own instance too because I feel like that'd be a really fun experiment, and I hope other people try that out too.
1305
01:37:03.425 --> 01:37:06.005
1306
01:37:06.385 --> 01:37:07.605
I mean, you know, I'm also
1307
01:37:08.145 --> 01:37:10.325
over there in the Bitcoin Hackers instance.
1308
01:37:11.250 --> 01:37:15.830
Mastodon had been there for a couple years. I think people look at it the wrong way. I don't think it competes with Twitter.
1309
01:37:18.185 --> 01:37:20.925
I think these these centralized platforms
1310
01:37:21.305 --> 01:37:26.445
allow you to, you know like Twitter, these massive centralized platforms let you cheaply,
1311
01:37:27.350 --> 01:37:29.690
and easily broadcast out to the world,
1312
01:37:30.390 --> 01:37:33.450
and at at the cost of censorship resistance.
1313
01:37:34.230 --> 01:37:36.170
So Mastodon's actually really interesting
1314
01:37:36.645 --> 01:37:38.985
based on the trade offs we've been talking about,
1315
01:37:40.725 --> 01:37:42.905
because it kinda does sit in the middle there.
1316
01:37:43.685 --> 01:37:45.545
Anyone can run their own instance,
1317
01:37:46.440 --> 01:37:47.820
which is basically a node,
1318
01:37:48.440 --> 01:37:49.660
their their own server,
1319
01:37:50.440 --> 01:37:52.219
and they can either use that themselves
1320
01:37:52.760 --> 01:38:02.965
or they can uncle Jim it, and they can have other people use it. Right? And and you can you it's a federated model, so you can interact across those instances. So it provides some
1321
01:38:03.265 --> 01:38:03.765
competition,
1322
01:38:04.960 --> 01:38:06.420
in a more open environment,
1323
01:38:07.440 --> 01:38:15.425
with with the ability, as Ben said, is you can just run your own instance all by yourself, and that could just be then all of a sudden we're in the personal server model. Right?
1324
01:38:16.045 --> 01:38:16.545
So
1325
01:38:16.845 --> 01:38:18.705
so it it is a pretty cool project.
1326
01:38:20.490 --> 01:38:22.750
It should be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm
1327
01:38:23.290 --> 01:38:26.350
I'm kind of cautiously optimistic at all these different,
1328
01:38:28.475 --> 01:38:38.400
like, open source social media derivations, you know, and and, hopefully, we can move away from these massive centralized platforms because it's gotten it's gotten really, really bad in that respect.
1329
01:38:40.619 --> 01:38:42.719
Randy McMillan, yes, does mention
1330
01:38:43.260 --> 01:38:44.480
GPG Suite
1331
01:38:44.875 --> 01:38:48.735
on Mac did change the game in terms of using PGP.
1332
01:38:50.394 --> 01:38:50.894
But,
1333
01:38:51.434 --> 01:39:02.320
I mean, people shouldn't use Windows, but it's it's a pain in the ass on Windows. It's actually pretty easy on Linux, but, I mean, when people see the command line, they get scared. And I think it's important that people realize that the UX is almost as important,
1334
01:39:03.675 --> 01:39:04.655
as the actual
1335
01:39:05.275 --> 01:39:12.014
what's going on in the tech in the background. You know, you you need because with privacy, it's just so easy to shoot yourself in the foot, especially.
1336
01:39:13.619 --> 01:39:21.400
So if if if a tool is set up in a way where it's possible for a user to shoot themselves in the foot, you gotta assume that most users are gonna do it.
1337
01:39:24.815 --> 01:39:26.594
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.
1338
01:39:27.454 --> 01:39:28.514
Sorry about that.
1339
01:39:32.469 --> 01:39:35.370
Yeah. So, I mean, I just wanna thank you guys for joining the conversation.
1340
01:39:36.070 --> 01:39:37.770
I respect both of you a lot,
1341
01:39:38.744 --> 01:39:42.525
and that's why I asked you here for the 4th episode of this new show.
1342
01:39:44.344 --> 01:39:49.810
Sorry. It got off a little bit slow here. You know, I'm still trying to to get used to this format,
1343
01:39:50.429 --> 01:39:53.170
especially in a cabin in the woods when my Internet is
1344
01:39:54.110 --> 01:39:57.489
we were talking about intermittent connections earlier. Yeah. That's what I'm experiencing.
1345
01:39:58.775 --> 01:40:05.755
And I wanted to thank the freaks for joining us again, especially the freaks that are joining us live, but also to all the freaks that are gonna listen to this after the fact.
1346
01:40:06.760 --> 01:40:09.099
We're gonna have another episode of Citadel Dispatch
1347
01:40:09.960 --> 01:40:12.460
next week, same time, 5 PM, 22100,
1348
01:40:13.045 --> 01:40:15.385
5 PM EST, 22100 UTC
1349
01:40:16.324 --> 01:40:17.145
on Tuesday.
1350
01:40:18.085 --> 01:40:20.505
We're gonna have rabbit hole recap on Thursday,
1351
01:40:21.445 --> 01:40:24.570
at 5 PM, I believe. Also gonna be a live show.
1352
01:40:25.190 --> 01:40:28.570
So definitely show up for both of those. We'd love to have you.
1353
01:40:30.205 --> 01:40:30.705
Janine,
1354
01:40:31.085 --> 01:40:33.665
Ben, I appreciate you guys a ton.
1355
01:40:34.525 --> 01:40:38.864
I'm gonna throw up for our our our viewers. I'm gonna throw up
1356
01:40:39.380 --> 01:40:39.880
your
1357
01:40:40.340 --> 01:40:43.640
your Twitter tags. Those are also their tags on Mastodon
1358
01:40:44.100 --> 01:40:44.600
atj9roemandat
1359
01:40:47.715 --> 01:40:48.455
Ben Necarman.
1360
01:40:49.555 --> 01:40:51.095
Thank you guys for joining us.
1361
01:40:52.675 --> 01:40:54.615
1362
01:41:02.630 --> 01:41:03.770
I'll stop in the beginning.
1363
01:41:28.660 --> 01:41:30.680
1364
01:41:34.020 --> 01:41:36.120
Every night, it's there for 2.
1365
01:41:40.425 --> 01:41:41.325
1366
01:45:12.975 --> 01:45:15.875
1367
01:45:21.940 --> 01:45:23.240
You can stop it.
1368
01:45:25.380 --> 01:45:27.560
Love you freaks. Stay humble. Stack sets.
