
Love in the Time of Cryptography - keehun
https://backchannel.com/love-in-the-time-of-cryptography-dd3a74193ffb
======
avenoir
> “Every time I look at an old mail, I feel weird, like I prefer the memory I
> have of a thing than the accurate recording,” he told me.

I do have to say when I and my ex broke it off, reading that first
conversation logged in my Facebook chat between the two of us was a total
bitch to swallow. Everything was there. Every single word. Nothing's faded
into distant memory. There we were 2 years ago happy that we've met each
other. Here we are now - complete strangers to each other. It is definitely a
weird feeling.

~~~
groby_b
It gets weirder as the weight of the past accumulates. There are some bad
experiences I have only recorded in analog form. Throwing out that "evidence"
was extremely liberating.

There are others that exist online, forever. A constant record of horrible
experiences, never to be dulled by the fog that's cast over distant memories.
As a result, I've pretty much left the online services where these memories
are preserved.

These days, I write letters. Actual paper. With an enveloped sealed with wax,
using a signet ring, because I'm a romantic ;) Pictures I love are printed and
hung. It feels more... well, if not human, certainly humane.

(I'm still active online. Obviously. Just more judiciously. The more personal
it is, the less likely it is online)

~~~
ashark
Digital memories are so nice in many ways (backups so a fire doesn't destroy
them, with care they'll more or less never degrade, they take up little space,
and so on) but they're also burdensome—they seem to multiply endlessly since
storage is dirt cheap and takes little space, so that it becomes difficult to
sift through to find what you want, favorites that you look at again and again
(as in the case of photos) rarely arise because there are just _so many_ ,
ensuring it's all backed up, finding a way to make it organized, and doing
those things without handing all your data to private spy agencies all take
time and ongoing effort.

It's difficult even to find time to edit the record so it's manageable—and
_can_ you, anyway? _Can_ you delete 95% of the photos of your kids, or that
loved one you lost, or whoever? Even if you know the idea of looking through
them for pleasure or nostalgia brings on anxiety because there are _so many_ ,
and you never got around to tagging everyone in them or adding those notes you
wanted to, and oh no you've forgotten most of what you were going to write,
and so on? Looking at them becomes or reminds one of work and you'd actually
enjoy them _more_ if there were far fewer of them, but can you delete them?

What about your email archive from 20 years ago? You know there are emails
you'd love to read again in there, but now you need to find a program to read
the file, and go through deleting the 99% you don't care about at all, and
there's _still_ a lot, so now you're going through one-by-one to decide
whether "hey, wanna meet for lunch?" from a now-dead loved one is worth
keeping.

And you've got several
"misc/laptop_backup/documents/old_files_from_zip_disks"-type directories to go
through one of these days when you find the time (will you, ever?). All this
for a bunch of junk that will plummet in value to _anyone_ as soon as you die
and have nearly zero value to anyone in the world (except maybe as raw data
for some damned machine learning program) at most 150 years from now. And when
you die you'll burden your friends and relatives with the same data management
mess you've mostly-failed to deal with—on top of their own.

~~~
gglitch
Yes, this is a problem, and can be significantly generalized. In the
information age, one cannot define oneself without deciding what
channels/sites/content/streams/data one is _not_ going to try to manage or
keep up with.

------
jawns
A little bit about the author, Quinn Norton, for those who are unfamiliar:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_Norton)

She mentions in the article that "I came to the attention of a media storm
after being struck by a tragedy. My life imploded, and between grieving and
dealing with media controversy, my days became a sickening tragicomedy I
couldn’t turn off."

Could it have been this?

> Norton dated Aaron Swartz for three years. Articles in The Atlantic and in
> New York Magazine indicate that she was pressured by prosecutors to offer
> information or testimony that could be used against Swartz, but that she
> denied having information that supported prosecutors' claims of criminal
> intentions on Swartz's part. Prosecutors nevertheless attempted to use a
> public blog post on Swartz's blog that Norton mentioned, which may or may
> not have been co-authored by Swartz, as proof of a criminal intent.

~~~
apozem
As someone who's followed Norton's work for several years- yes, that seems
like the most likely cause. She appears in the documentary about Aaron Swartz,
"The Internet's Own Boy," and by her own account greatly struggled with that
whole tragedy.

It's a damn shame, in the least part because she is a superb writer. Her
eulogy for Occupy Wall Street is a sprawling, stunning work of journalism.

[https://www.wired.com/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-
occupy/](https://www.wired.com/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-occupy/)

~~~
killjoywashere
Note: in less kind light: this is the same Quinn Norton who burned Aaron
Swartz when she voluntarily went to an "interview" with the US attorney,
without counsel, against Aaron's pleas, and told them about his manifesto,
which they hadn't previously known of. And that interview is where his life
started going downhill fast.

~~~
koverstreet
And you know, I'd be willing to bet she's beaten herself up over that enough
without people on the internet trying to make sure no one ever forgets it.

------
tptacek
In which a reporter falls in love with a fellow nerd she meets at a European
hackerspace, maintains a long-distance relationship by messaging using showily
bad file encryption, decides to move to Europe to cohabitate, and, lacking
Facebook profiles to verify the relationship, relies on the testimony of
friends and other anecdotal evidence sources, like hundreds of millions of
other couples whose lives are imperfectly recorded by social networks.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, eat your heart out.

~~~
neilk
Criticizing someone else's choice of crypto is I guess par for the course on
HN. But I think her story is still noteworthy.

It's unusual to be someone who specializes in writing about digital activists
who need encryption.

It's unusual to be a nerd (your identity is online) and also be constantly
hiding your tracks (your identity is constantly erased, by your own action).

It's unusual to be an emigrant in this age, where they expect you to surrender
your voluntary self-surveillance at the border.

The thing is, what happens to nerds on the margins eventually happens to
everybody.

Personally – there's some of her story that already applies to me. And, even
if all of this is trivial in terms of technology, there aren't a lot of people
who can bring such evocative writing to the topic.

~~~
tptacek
It's _very_ unusual to be someone who specializes in writing about encryption
for digital activists. More unusual than you might know.

The rest of it: sure, this is all true. But that's my gripe: this story has
little to do with any of that. Ultimately, the only role surveillance played
in this story was something for a new couple to bond over. Sure, better that
than _The Sound And The Fury_ , which I swear to Christ a teenaged girlfriend
made me read, but so what? What's special about OpenSSL here that wouldn't be
special about Club Penguin or Overwatch or some other lower-status
technological detail?

~~~
harpocrates
I enjoyed your initial quip immensely. This one a bit less (I liked _The Sound
And The Fury_, although not nearly as much as _The Mansion_).

I think the OpenSSL line was only intended to emphasize that the communication
wasn't easy - thereby making it more meaningful. I often wonder what internet
messages would be like if sending them was has the same time/effort overhead
as sending physical letters (having to address them properly, walking to a
postoffice, etc.). Surveillance isn't really important here.

------
UnpossibleJim
I actual enjoyed this article and, more broadly, the subject of the governance
of love. How much intrusion into our private (truly private) lives is enough?
Are relationships, to a point, meant to be held in the public eye or can they
be private? Granted, I'm a bit paranoid and pretty private. I've had a
Facebook account in the past, but only used it to poke fun at people, but
didn't care for the inevitable drama that followed (turns out, when you have a
laugh at someone's outlandish political views face to face, you'll be fine but
online, with those same friends, they view that interaction completely
different). Obviously, by this small sampling of my personal self, I don't
think highly of a governmental intrusion into personal relationships, but I'm
pragmatic enough to understand their documentation and categorization. So I
ask you this, HN. How much governmental intrusion into our private lives in
enough? Also, how much intrusion into our personal lives do you think a semi-
connected group of peers (our Facebook "friends") should get?

~~~
tgragnato
Personally, I don't fear being snooped on or to have my comms eavesdropped.
What I really fear is the interpretation perpetrated by whatever machine or
whoever live-being. The view that more information produces better decisions
is at odds with the world around us. What has always made a difference is our
`incomprehensible` capacity to grasp someone with our emotional intelligence.
Until there will not exist digital computers equipped with (digital) mirror
neurons, until people will not think to empathy as something prioritized to a
bunch of data, I'm not going to accept the judgment of none.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
There's an excellent episode of Star Trek Voyager where the Borg crewmate
Seven of Nine installs a component into her brain that lets her sift through
Voyager's immense dataset, and results in her secretly telling the first
officer that she believes that the captain is a part of a grand and dark
conspiracy.

Then she runs the dataset again, and goes to the captain to say the exact same
thing about the first officer.

------
florianp
Interesting and well written but I can only disagree with the author. A few
months ago, I read the love letters my grand grandfather wrote to my grand
grandmother when he was at war. I seriously doubt anyone will be able to read
the emails I write in 70 years. Besides most of intellectuals of the past
centuries were prolific in sending letters to their relatives and we know a
lot from them through these letters. I don't expect the same to happen with
contemporary writers. Maybe our grand children will be able to get a few
pictures from us, that were printed and stored safely...

~~~
bryondowd
What makes you think digital content won't be preserved in quantity/quality
comparable to printed/handwritten content of earlier times?

Perhaps private messages and emails are less likely to be preserved after the
account-holder is deceased, but pretty much everything you do publicly on
Facebook is preserved and accessible to others after your death in a
memorialized account. It's not hard to believe that our descendants will be
able to casually search through our daily musings and pictures of our dinners
and whatnot, either on Facebook if it still exists, or an archived version of
it captured before the site is taken down/replaced.

I also wouldn't rule out more private writings finding their way along in some
form or another. People are often sentimental and keep things that belonged to
their loved ones. I recall reading a story not long ago of a man who kept his
father's video game save files, with the suggestion that he may try passing
them on to his children.

~~~
stinkytaco
But will Facebook exist in 70 years time? Or will it go the way of so many
other services. I wonder if the AOL chats I had 20 years ago are somewhere? Or
the forum posts on long defunct communities? Or the IRC chats.

Now, I want to be clear that many of these things _shouldn 't_ be saved. I
don't believe that the Internet should be archived, but rather that with
physical media the choice is simple: save it or throw it. With the Internet
there is less choice and what exists is complex and sometimes out of your
control.

------
mirimir
That is just so sweet :)

I have some long-term online friends. Mostly totally anonymous. But none
romantic. I don't even for sure know gender for some of them. It doesn't
really matter.

------
JohnJamesRambo
When I look back in my gmail I'm always glad it kept record of times and
snapshots of my life and conversations with those I love. I understand
encryption to prevent an outsider seeing in, but I'm glad I didn't go to their
extremes to leave no trace whatsoever. In this age of no printed photos, our
digital traces are all we often have to remember our life. You forget so much,
and when you go back, you remember so many things you had forgotten and see so
many things you remembered wrong.

------
dom0
Recommended Soundtrack for reading:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99h6iPRPN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99h6iPRPN8)
(Ludovico Einaudi - Elements)

------
peter_l_downs
Wow, strange to see this here. I created a photo series with a very similar
title ("Love in the Age of Strong Cryptography"): [http://freezine.xyz/0/love-
in-the-age-of-strong-cryptography...](http://freezine.xyz/0/love-in-the-age-
of-strong-cryptography/index.html)

~~~
dom0
I don't trust computers enough to freely publish encrypted private
communications. That being said, I avoid private communication through or near
computers when possible.

------
peterwwillis
OTR: the secure messaging protocol for cypherpunk hipsters.

OTR is useful if you go to great lengths to exchange public keys, and as soon
as the key changes you go through all of it again. (I don't really count
shared secrets as a secure means of authenticating your key, since if you have
the shared secret, the key can be substituted and thus is irrelevant)

That's probably fine if you're just chatting aimlessly and don't need to rely
on secure communication regularly. But it's a pain in the ass if you wanted to
rely on it for remote long-term secure communication. "Privacy" is about all
it's useful for (assuming more attacks aren't found in the protocol).

(Side note: to defeat all this complicated encryption and expose identities,
just become a member of the hacker community. They're quite gossipy)

~~~
tptacek
First: OTR has been pretty resilient, cryptographically speaking. And from a
code quality perspective, libotr gets a lot of shit, but I won a $1000 bet
with Matthew Green that nobody would find a sev:hi flaw in it for an entire
year, and despite stirring the shit on Twitter about the bet, nobody found
anything.

I wouldn't use OTR today, but in 2011, when this story started, libotr wasn't
a weird recommendation.

~~~
peterwwillis
I remember testing the plugin when it was first released for gaim. I certainly
thought it was weird, and a bit buggy.

Version 1 had plenty of holes. Later (including when it was used by the
author) version 2 had more holes. So I don't really buy the idea that
"stirring the shit on Twitter" for a grand would be enough to get serious
research done - and then published - to expose this fledgling protocol's
newest bugs.

It wasn't a weird recommendation _for a cypherpunk_ , of course, which is what
i'm really saying. It's a hipster messaging protocol.

~~~
tptacek
I don't think this is a reasonable way to sum up OTR, and I also suspect
you're conflating the security of the libotr C plugin itself with the security
of the protocol.

I don't think $1000 is a lot for a libotr bet, but from the caliber of people
who submitted attempts to end the bet (almost all of which were libpurple
problems), I'm satisfied that it got quite a bit of attention.

------
nikcub
The era where all of our conversations and online interactions are recorded
forever started in the mid 00's and ended in the last few years as apps
defaulted to ephemerality, end to end encryption and no logging

That <decade is a short period in most of our lifetimes, and a blip in the
context of government regulation

So how is love in the age of cryptography? Exactly the same as love was in the
1990s, and the 1980s, and the 70s, and the 60s ..

~~~
newscracker
> The era where all of our conversations and online interactions are recorded
> forever started in the mid 00's and ended in the last few years as apps
> defaulted to ephemerality, end to end encryption and no logging

Which apps _defaulted_ to ephemeral storage (other than Snapchat)? And how do
we know if the ephemerality is only in our view or applies to the underlying
data stored (in other words, how do we know our data is truly deleted vs.
being hidden from our view, used for devious purposes without us knowing)?
Also, where are the social apps with no logging? All the popular social
communication platforms seem to want to hoard every bit of data we can feed
them and never want to delete those at their end.

