Gulp, Rand Report a bit scary!

This article “The RAND report goes one step further and suggests that governments should use advanced technical means to actively disrupt virtual currencies. That includes terrorist groups, but also peaceful deployments of digital currencies by other non-state actors, and a general war on privacy and encryption.”…
“[Virtual currencies] represent the latest step toward decentralized cyber services,” notes the report. “In particular, the historical trend suggests the development of a resilient public cyber key terrain, which this report defines as the ability of unsophisticated cyber actors to have persistent, assured access to cyber services regardless of whether a highly sophisticated state actor opposes their use.”

The report suggests that the U.S. Department of Defense should disrupt decentralized digital currencies to prevent “unprecedented global access to information and communication services that, at its core, is agnostic to the national security interests of the United States.”

talking about this

Better make sure we get testnet up soon and get lots of people on board quickly… we don’t want safenetwork to be subject to malicious attack from ‘da man’ :confused:

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Have you checked the original source? Bitcoinmagazine is misquoting it on purpose to make it more dramatic. Example:

The report suggests that the U.S. Department of Defense should disrupt
decentralized digital currencies to prevent “unprecedented global access
to information and communication services that, at its core, is
agnostic to the national security interests of the United States.”

Original website:

the trend toward decentralized cyber service will only make it easier
for unsophisticated cyber actors to have increasingly resilient access
to cyber services, which is a two-way street that could enable
unprecedented global access to information and communication services
that, at its core, is agnostic to the national security interests of the
United States.

The report doesn’t say that it should attack them, only how they could be attacked and what crypto-currencies have to offer potential enemies. They’re not screaming “KILL ALL CRYPTO ASAP!!” or something like that, which is what Bitcoinmagazine implies.

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Btw, does anyone know of any high quality general crypto-currency related websites/blogs? The ones I know all regularly pull of shit like this, and it pisses me off. Can’t trust what I read there.

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It seems like they push the witch hunt against encryption. If everything was unencrypted a person who wants to terrorize others would have an easier time engaging in terrors.

I found the line about interesting:

Isn’t a state not very sophisticated in such a case where the decentralized technology supersedes the integrity of the nation-state’s technology.

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Its a good example of spin.

The Daily Decrypt (Cryptocurrency and P2P tech talk) is a new early stage venture (video blog) by a lady called Amanda B Johnson and her partner.

It will be interesting to see what can be produced once they find their feet…at least they seem to be of good character, imo

http://thedailydecrypt.tumblr.com/

Eeeek. ABJ wrote the most awful unchecked and innaccurate piece about MaidSafe and David Irvine a year or so ago.

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@happybeing, found it!

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I think it should be expected the gov’t would resist decentralization and encryption. We should just treat it like we would a brute force or DDoS attack. Work the problem people. If he gov’t tries to hack your system how do you counter?

Imagine a world…

In this illusionary world govs over the world decide to forbid the use of encryption by all means.
Every person in possession of encryption software, or using it would be violating laws on encryption and could eventually end up in jail.
This decision could be taken with the believe that people are safer in a world where govs and national security are able to spy on communications around the globe to counterfeit terrorism.

Are we truly safer in a world without encryption?

Could we really benefit of giving up privacy to make our daily life safer,
or giving it up with the intention to attack terrorism?

As we’re currently growing into the explosion of IOT devices, communication is growing exponential, and more and more services are relying on encryption schemes to secure the channels of communication between them.
Operators give commands through those channels to give devices instructions on their behavior and/or to save/retrieve data all kinds of sorts.
In a world without encryption these communications are way more easier to manipulate by third parties not allowed to intercept the data exchange between the different parts communicating.

In a world where privacy (encryption) isn’t allowed bad parties can still obtain a stolen laptop and using different wireless techniques to use network bandwidth not registered on their name (small or long range doesn’t matter) to fulfill their purposes without leaving traces to them.

Perhaps a bad actor (local, oversees, …) could manipulate personal systems.
Let’s assume your local enemy has access to:

  • Smart meters
  • Home automation (doors, ports, rolling shutters, …)
  • Alarm systems
  • Water, pumps (swimming pool)
  • HVAC/Cental heating system
  • Personal computer, tablet, phone
  • External services offering personal information
  • Medical records
  • Upcoming electric cars
  • Drones

Even worse, bad actors/groups could control more intriguing systems more easily:

  • Scada systems (Remember stuxnet)
  • Trains, railway systems
  • Airplanes (control towers, navigation … )
  • Satellite
  • Radio all kinds off
  • Water dams (flooding)

This is only a small resume off the things that eventually could make our world more dangerous and causing many injuries or deaths.
Some of them are even not related to bringing trouble to the masses, but actually attack a persons life in a way much more realistic than having the bad luck of being part of acts of terror.

Did those folks even reconsidered what brings our daily safety!?
Actually many think they did, which makes questions arise about the actual purpose of their intentions.
If we want to ban encryption we have to ban technology.
We can’t simple go back 25 (tech)years in time on one side and evolving like we’re currently doing
on the other side.

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https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/the-daily-decrypt
she now guest host on TDD :stuck_out_tongue:

I remember the Cointelegraph article now , it was bad. Thanks for reminding me…sorry about that everyone. I heard her talk with Ernest Hancock who was mentioning safe network (briefly) during the interview, and she seemed receptive, i failed to recognise her from the cointelegraph article

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Amanda reached out to me a couple months back about this article and our subsequent interactions over it. Since it was a personal situation, no details are needed here about that but regarding the article, she has come around to the fact that working towards a freed society is a step by step approach. So while patents and IP are necessarily demolished for a truly freed (read: stateless) society (a vision Amanda and I share), the means of reaching such a society comes through a process which ironically can make use of the very state-sanctioned controls which we aim to ultimately destroy. :smile:

Since the beginning of Daily Decrypt she has been playing around with cryptocurrency price tickers/announcements and has included MAID in a lot of the early iterations and has kept it listed in her current default ticker. I expect once she can use SAFE to store videos she’ll have positive reports to share in the DD.

She mentioned she’d happily chat with anyone that wants to reach out to her.

Anyways, this convo is way of topic now (sorry to OP) but I felt compelled to reply to y’all talking about her.

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@ioptio that’s interesting but not, to me, at all relevant to the problems of her article which were IMO not that she had different views on patents etc. The issue was that she wrote very unprofessionally about the issue, making statements which were false, unresearched, and including factual errors that demonstrated she hadn’t done even basic investigation or checking. It was to me a naked polemic, an all out attack on a project she had not bothered to research or understand, and on a person she clearly knew nothing about, which could have caused great damage - all because of her personally held prejudices and opinions.

This to me is a personality disorder as much as unprofessionalism, both of which seem to me to make her unsuitable for journalistic roles. Now, I know I’m basing this on one article, because I’ve largely avoided reading her since for obvious reasons, but it was a a hell of a demonstration of how not to do journalism IMO.

It’s all very well for her to reach out to you, or anyone, or to suggest we are welcome to reach out to her, but I would be very reluctant to see someone capable of this behaviour being welcomed as a reformed character without first being able to explain or acknowledge past behaviour.

She’s welcome to post here of course, in order to do that, or to learn and contribute like anyone else, but personally I’d be very careful about getting too close to her based on her behaviour.

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I was really put off by ABJ’s Maidsafe article as well and although she deserved a failing grade for that article she did inadvertently open up a dialogue that helped many of us better understand the necessity of patents in as much as they are the only defense against patent trolls and unscrupulous businesses that might hijack the project. Lately her daily update videos are well done and her grasp of blockchain tech is impressive. We should hope that she becomes just as enthusiastic about the safenetwork as she is about blockchain tech.

This is off topic with respect to RAND but it is on topic with respect to objectivity and ethics in journalism which as @Seneca pointed out is lacking in the bitcoin mag article.

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