
Time for a return of the Cypherpunks, Crypto-Anarchists & Techno-Libertarians? - mindcrime
http://www.jroller.com/mindcrime/entry/time_for_the_return_of
======
m0nastic
By contrast, I've noticed the exact opposite phenomenon that the OP describes
(mainly, that over the past year or so, neo-cypherpunks have started coming
out of the woodwork to prosthelitize things like bitcoin, and terrible in-
browser Javascript crypto).

I suppose we all see what we want to see.

I do wish that there existed a forum for some of the discussions that used to
actually happen on the cypherpunks list (even though it would frequently
derail into arguments about assasination markets, and paranoid conspiracy
theories).

~~~
unimpressive
>terrible in-browser Javascript crypto

I'm not a cryptographer by any means, but my first thought when reading that
is _can we make non-terrible in-browser javascript crypto?_

~~~
m0nastic
The short answer is "no, we can't" which every time someone proposes a new
scheme seems to infuriate people (as though our inability to actually do it is
a value judgement on whether or not it's a good idea).

~~~
Estragon
Actually, I think in some limited circumstances, JS crypto could be useful for
a kind of "separation of trust." For instance, I am considering a service at
the moment which would involve people uploading confidential information. The
uploads will be fairly large, so a lot of bandwidth will be required
(optimistically assuming it gets traction.) One architecture I am considering
is a small dedicated HTTPS server which provides a self-contained webpage-
plus-JS program to encrypt the upload and send it for storage on Amazon S3.
Then I will pull the results off Amazon and decrypt them on a machine which is
not even connected to the network. The advantage to this architecture is that
it will scale arbitrarily but require me to secure only relatively modest
dedicated resources, despite being used for transmission of confidential
information. Because it uses a dedicated HTTPS server serving a self-contained
page doing all the crypto, it avoids tptacek's objections to JS crypto in the
browser (E.g., the server can provide the random seed in the JS itself, HTTPS
prevents MITM attacks, etc.)

(Copied from <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3872007>)

~~~
m0nastic
So, you're scheme would require the long answer...

;)

Which is that it sounds rather complicated (which makes my security-sense go
off, but certainly isn't a fatal indictment) and that I'd really need to
either do an active evaluation of the system or get several reassurrances that
someone else decent (ideally someone much smarter than me) did and it checked
out before I'd be remotely comfortable using it or recommending it.

~~~
Estragon
That's fair enough. I was just pointing out that not every architecture
involving in-browser JS crypto suffers from the problems tptacek detailed.

------
_delirium
I think there's a bit more focus on networks than on cryptography lately among
freelance activist type people. But if you include that, there is still
substantial activity. Tor is going fairly strongly, Retroshare has recently
gotten a big uptake in publicity, and some other darknet projects have been
floated. The focus seems to be on hard-to-disrupt connectivity, with some
indirect association with groups like Wikileaks who aim at using that
connectivity to promote state/corporate transparency (which is actually pretty
close to an old-school "information wants to be free!" agenda). In Europe,
there's also been a rise in "Pirate Parties", which despite their name are
more generally interested in techno-freedom issues, not purely copyright-
infringement issues.

------
thechut
Maybe these people feel it's no longer safe for them to be so vocal about it.
Maybe even for the exact reasons you are mentioning they should be angered by.

~~~
unimpressive
Ding! Ding! Ding! I think we have a winner. It's a self reinforcing effect
too. The less people that speak out the less people that speak out because
nobody else is.

~~~
m0nastic
I don't think that fear is really the culprit here.

People on the internet don't seem to have trouble speaking out about all sorts
of other things.

I think the issues which are fundamental to the cypherpunk ethos (if such a
thing can be said to exist‡) just aren't things most people care about. And
you can totally make a valid argument that this will pretty much ensure that
the worst-case scenario is the one that will come to pass (if you are so
inclined).

But I don't get the impression that there's this large contingent of people
who are actually interested in this who aren't participating because they're
worried. I'd love to be wrong though, as that would mean that there could be a
much more lively and productive community to swell up.

‡ although this is as good a stab at it as any:
[http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.t...](http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.txt)

------
srconstantin
I'm skeptical.

All of the articles cited are indeed about civil liberties, but I don't see
them as being problems that can necessarily be improved by developing better
cryptography.

The social network propaganda isn't so much of a technological problem as a
social one -- people assume that everyone's using social networks in a
straightforward way, to express themselves and connect with friends, even
though they have the capacity to be used in many other ways, including
deceptively.

The NSA email-hoarding thing is also a social problem -- encryption exists,
it's just that nobody uses it.

The "pre-crime screening" appears to be a statistical model. I don't yet know
if there's a science of counter-machine-learning -- that is, creating examples
that are hard for models to classify, analogously to making harder and harder
CAPTCHAs. If government gets better at data science, what civil libertarians
will need is not better encriptions, but different techniques designed to
protect against _statistical_ intrusions.

Likewise, I don't think better crypto is in any straightforward way a
protection against biometrics or government bills to take down certain
websites.

If he's saying "we need more libertarians and people concerned about civil
liberties," then he's right. But I'm not even sure there are fewer than there
used to be (look at the backlash to SOPA). I just suspect think there was a
time when people had more hope in purely technological fixes to government
abuses. I know some old-time crypto-anarchists, and they're largely
disappointed with how things have turned out. In the end, preventing the abuse
of government power is a hard problem, and it looks less likely that a small
set of tech breakthroughs will suddenly make civil liberties violations
obsolete.

------
gbog
I don't read Slashdot or Reddit but on HN I have felt a slow drift from core
technology topics towards design and UI. The Applemania is one of the culprit
here, I believe.

------
javert
There are just too many competing voices. For example, the "techno-
libertarian" types have to "compete" with the voices of the net neutraily
crowd, as well as the pro-piracy crowd. Unfortunately, all three camps use the
same terminology to express totally different view and ideas.

I don't care to spend time advocating techno-libertarian positions (that I
agree with), just to see a larger mass of piracy people [mis] using the same
words (e.g. freedom, rights, etc.) to try to justify a position that I
personally find abhorrent.

~~~
andrewcooke
why compete? i saw the guy was a libertarian (and, perhaps worse, some kind of
smelly metal head), which is not my scene at all, but i still emailed him to
be added to any kind of list because i think privacy is important.

if the list ends up being for "crypto to avoid paying taxes so the poor die as
darwin wanted" then sure, i wouldn't join. but i think there's a clear need
for a unified voice on crypto and online rights.

worse, i think you are doing this a disservice, in that you're implying that
these rights are only important for your group of people. these rights are
important for all of us. even metal-head libertarians.

incidentally, i would also encourage people to donate to eff - almost all the
free gifts they give you for donating are horrible, but the hat pin is
actually really nice. so go buy a $100 dollar hat pin and help spread some
good.

~~~
mindcrime
_if the list ends up being for "crypto to avoid paying taxes so the poor die
as darwin wanted" then sure, i wouldn't join. but i think there's a clear need
for a unified voice on crypto and online rights._

The thing about privacy is, you don't know what end it does serve. I
personally _am_ a Libertarian (and a metal-head, yes, although I'm getting too
old for a lot of moshing and shit), but I certainly advocate for privacy
rights independently of any other Libertarian position. If I'm using crypto to
discuss my beliefs about ending tax-payer subsidized entitlement programs,
others may simultaneously be using it to discuss their desire to raise taxes,
end all private property and redistribute wealth "to each according to his
need."

 _but i think there's a clear need for a unified voice on crypto and online
rights._

Yes, this is one area where Libertarians and most left-leaning types can find
some common ground.

------
antihero
I see the issue as being that secure tools, such as GnuPGP, are still way too
complicated and confusing for the average activist to use, thus people don't
bother and use low-tech solutions to communicate for day-to-day protesting. If
someone _is_ organising something big and scary, they'd learn to use PGP and
use it.

~~~
mindcrime
_I see the issue as being that secure tools, such as GnuPGP, are still way too
complicated and confusing for the average activist to use_

Yes, I think that is very true. That's why I think two of the goals of a
modern cypherpunk movement should be to: A. educate people on how to use
encryption and related tools, and B. work on making tools that are simpler to
use / easier to understand in the first place.

------
pnathan
I see the core ideas being diluted into Wikileaks, Anonymous, etc. Those are
bad representations of the core ideas.

There are not many people who can lucidly translate the understanding of
technology's issues into the language of non-techies. It's not sufficient to
be technically correct: it's required that the presentation works as well.

Techies seem to have allergies to other cultures that don't have similar value
systems and have largely failed in translating our concerns to the broader
world. The old word 'luser' adequately explains our shortcoming.

~~~
sneak
Diluted? They're the same people.

------
StephenFalken
For those that haven't yet had the chance of reading a foundational text
related to Cypherpunks and Crypto-Anarchy, there is "The Crypto Anarchist
Manifesto" by Tim May (back then a Chief Scientist at Intel) ->
<http://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html>

------
overshard
It's impossible to provide good tools for your average user without getting
some government actively working to destroy it. There are already great tools
for experienced users but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get my
friends to send email using PGP even if I install it and set it up for them.
They seem confused by the whole concept.

~~~
Aloisius
Good crypto exists, but governments aren't what is holding users back anymore.
The fact of the matter is, crypto generally makes everything harder, so users
don't use it.

~~~
overshard
That's basically what I said I think? At least what I tried to say, but yes,
exactly.

------
zdw
As long as they stick to distribution and advocacy rather than creating new
tech, I'm all for this. Crypto is very hard to do right - one example from
last year:

[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-
critical-...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-
security-bug.html)

~~~
noonespecial
Not only is it hard to do right, it seems like its often even hard to take
crypto that's done right and _use_ it right.

------
stretchwithme
Maybe they are all exposing their private data to Facebook.

<https://www.facebook.com/groups/technolibertarians/>

------
SoftwareMaven
I am lucky in that 1) my company is really trying to come up with a solution
to allow individuals to easily keep their privacy and 2) our funders are
strong libertarians who want to see this succeed more than they want an
instant return. It's a difficult place to build a business, and impatient
investors would make it impossible.

~~~
noarchy
I hope you succeed in what you are setting out to do, if your goal is to truly
protect privacy. I have to admit, though, that I am highly skeptical if the
solution turns out to be closed, and proprietary. It is a huge risk to place
one's security in the hands of something that is a black box.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Thank you. I think about this a lot because I totally agree with you. I'm
continually asking what it would take for me to trust me. One thing I know is
we can't reach the end straight from the beginning, so we are going to move
incrementally.

Eventually, everything has to be open. I wouldn't trust a company with 100% of
my data that wasn't. However, there is 10% I would trust with a company like
mine today, assuming I got benefits in other areas, and that's where we are
starting.

------
DrWhax
I think you are looking in the wrong direction, but things have changed over
the years as well. This group of people might not be well organised anymore in
terms of a mailinglist. But projects like the Torproject, EFF and pirate
parties are doing better then ever. They got more organised and decentralised.

A few good references: <https://www.calyxinstitute.org/> and
<https://crypto.is/> | threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/behind-scenes-crypto-
project-083011

We are rebuilding crypto.is and moving the site to other servers, we'll be
back soon, you can find us at irc.oftc.net #cryptodotis

------
sneak
The underground is still out there. It's just underground.

Get in touch if you'd like to be invited.

------
rdl
To be honest, more crypto got shipped outside the cypherpunks than within. PGP
(of debatable utility now) and otr (the chat encryption) are the main useful
systems produced by cypherpunkdom (mixmaster and tor (sort of) too); SSL,
Start TLS, IPsec, ssh, ... came from outside.

I'd rather see security and cryptography packaged so it can be widely used by
normal app developers, vs. relying on privacy/security aficionados to do
everything.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
SSL, IPsec and the like are for banks, PGP / otr / mixmaster / tor are for
dissidents and paranoids. I don't think these are equivalent. (Of course, SSL
is very useful.)

------
chris123
On the margin, there are some people (Brill) who are self-censoring to
avoid/minimize the attention of the ever-growing police state. The hardest
core "Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 3: We had to Destroy
Democracy in Order to Save It": <http://goo.gl/s7u6T>

------
cabalamat
> all of the Cypherpunks, Crypto-Anarchists and techno-libertarians seem to
> have gone into hiding, or disappeared.

Maybe they joined the Pirate Party?

~~~
drstrangevibes
maybe they are just keeping their communication private by using encryption.

------
nirvana
This is the inevitable result of social news sites. Most people are not
libertarian, and so they down vote comments that don't fit their ideology. On
Reddit in many subreddits (including the politics one everyone is subscribed
to by default) they practice outright censorship.

Here on HN the down vote seems to be deployed for disagreement, even against
well written comments that include substantiation.

Fortunately, Libertarianism is far more mainstream now, even if the Ron Paul
movement has managed to dilute it to some extent.

~~~
Zak
_Fortunately, Libertarianism is far more mainstream now, even if the Ron Paul
movement has managed to dilute it to some extent._

I think that may be inherent to making anything more mainstream. It's useful
to have people who remain attached to the core ideology of a movement, but
getting things done generally requires working with other people. If the Ron
Paul movement brings a bunch of people to libertarianism then other
libertarians should support it, even if Ron Paul is pretty far from their idea
of the ideal libertarian candidate.

I'm the creator and moderator of /r/ronpaul. In my observation, the idea of
voting based on quality rather than agreement is entirely absent from larger
political subreddits. People vote to promote their side and are particularly
likely to vote that way in a fight that has degenerated in to name calling
when the ideal situation would be downvotes for all involved.

~~~
Retric
That's part of it, but also the 'core' of most political movements tend to be
whack jobs. The type of people that say "Keep the government out of my
medicare!!!" are often willingness support the cause both financially and by
donating their time, even if they don't actually understand what's going on.
After all it's not really rational to spend but so much effort when it's
unlikely that you will make any type of noticeable difference.

