It seems to me this is an example of someone clearly not dangerous, being targeted by surveillance and unjust charges which could be prevented if activists were using something like SAFE.
Whether or not we all agree about specific causes being just or unjust, I think we all believe in freedom of speech. Details of the specific incident aside, what I’m interested in is building the ties to social justice/activist communities that could eventually make that protection a reality.
I want to join the discussion on how we can start doing that, especially right now when all we have is the Testnet that’s not easily accessible and doesn’t yet guarantee security. Does anyone have successful/unsuccessful examples of reaching out to activists either IRL or online, and trying to spread the word? If not, what might that look like right now? What might that look like in future phases of the SAFENet’s development?
The SAFE Network is a neutral technology, like the wheel. People will do with it what they wish. Other than security, privacy, and freedom, no other political ontologies will be pre-loaded. Build what you wish on a layer above it if you wish but not at the foundational layer.
I don’t think @NatQuayle was advocating singularly “pre-loading the SAFEnetwork with ontological philosophies” of a particular strain. I think he’s simply advocating linking a demographic—social activists—to a tool—the SAFEnetwork—that could benefit their cause. In so doing the SAFEnetwork would very well turn into a home base for many, competing ideologies, yes, but the network would also be a space safe from censorship.
But I don’t think its impact will be at all neutral. It will be very hard on elitism and dogmatic elitests power structures. Bye bye to non sense like state secrecy.
How about interference in other country’s affairs, at the national level? Will it be easier for a state to pull this off (see Russian interference in U.S. presidential election)?
How about corporate interferance in US elections? Or corporate capture of elections? I am glad there is the finally some push back on this because it was beyond the most extreme idiocy to allow capture of the US election system through bribe based sponsored media. Equally idiotic was allowing the apparent pure criminality of entities like ALEC that allow laws to be straight purchased.
I think there’s two sides to the answer: The first (and probably most important) point is that elections won’t get directly hacked because that data will be well-protected. Second, that sinister organizations will also be better protected to make secret dealings. I can’t think of a way that would outweigh the first point, since they won’t be able to hack anyone. Any impact they want to have will have to be done in public forums. Right?
If something like a Web of Trust is put into wide use, we’ll have much better systemic tools for filtering out nonsense than we do on any existing social networks.
What makes it easy at the moment is centralised platforms.
Decentralisation isn’t going to prevent fake news, but if it fosters more independently operated feeds - or cooperative collation etc, I’m hopeful that will make it harder.
Activism is a symptom of WE THE PEOPLE already having lost.
I’ll bite my tongue for the moment while we wait for the ball to drop.
The SAFE Network is a new paradigm that requires expanded thinking.
I’m all for it. I often feel the pressure to be careful about what I say and to whom I say it on the clearnet. After all, I don’t want to wake up at some ungodly hour b/c the FBI’s dragging me out of my bed like said poor fellow in the article you posted.
Reaching out to them can be hard. They are often concerned about the motives of people reaching out to them.
I’d say we will see little trust by activists early on since the network is not yet proven on a large scale and they would be rightfully concerned over their data, communications etc being exposed. Or even worse apply conspiry theory and say the network is one large honey pot.
In my opinion the activist will learn of the SAFE network through some means and decide for themselves whether to use it or not. If we push it onto the activist then they will likely back away. So maybe a good avenue to follow is to ensure that there are packages (APPs) that can enable any group (not just social activists) to collaborate privately without being listened in on, like back in the days before the internet.
Of course the issue any group has is that of a plant that gains trust and is included. Any group be it activists or clubs or government party or ladies group or mens group or children club or whatever can be exposed by a plant and is not dependent on the method the group uses to communicate…
tl;dr
I think the tools and APPs developed will not be limited to activists but any group that wish for privacy from young children to old people. Groups from chess clubs, activity group through to activists will be using essentially similar set of tools (APPs) to do what they wish.
And yes like in any society there maybe the few who wish to use it for bad purposes, but we should not throw out the baby with the bath water by not doing it.
I did answer it. I don’t see a difference between Russia interfering with an election to try to prevent a nuclear war and Exxon interfering to try to cause a nucear war out of stupidity, greed and capture by mid east states. Rule by money is totalitarian, money as law is might makes right arbitrary. We’d way rather have commons based power sharing law.
