The Sceptic's view on SAFENet (+refutations)

Glimpse of the future…

SAFE is the only ‘Super App’ I’d use personally. Pooling ALL of that data in one place a la WeChat or QQ absolutely terrifies me.I suspect there are quite a few others who feel the same way.

11 Likes

This video is truly scary and encapsulates everything I’ve been worrying about concerning the possibilities for corporate-government enabled by ubiquitous connectivity. And it’s all happening so fast.

WeChat keep changing the rules, always in the direction of authoritarianism of course. They suck punters in with the lure of convenience - free money transfers, cheap prices, cashless transactions and chat groups - then the net closes.

In the latest change, as of a week ago, anyone who creates a chat group on WeChat (has to be a Chinese citizen with real ID) is now responsible for the content published in that group. So if anyone in your group ‘misbehaves’ it’s your neck on the block. Chinese people I know here in the UK are outraged, but what can they do? WeChat is already the only game in town.

Most sinister of all, in the background the Chinese government is building a detailed digital profile on all of its citizens, with the aim of creating a single number representing the ‘trustworthiness’ of the citizen. So if you’re a human rights lawyer or even just a protester or the ‘wrong sort of person’ you may find you can’t open a bank account, or buy or rent a house, or travel to certain areas, or educate your kids, or go online. Make too many jokes about President Xi looking like a corrupt panda and you might find thugs turn up at your house to show you the error of your ways.

As this video (made in 2016 so already out of date) points out, where China leads the rest will surely follow (waiting in the wings and licking their lips are Facebook, Google, Microsoft, NSA, GCHQ etc etc - everyone’s a winner so long as you’re on the right side). Legal niceties will soon be brushed aside by the awsome power of this technology, even in countries with a long history of democracy. Ponderous checks and balances and due process will be no match for the simple convenience of sucking everything up and letting machines sort wheat from chaff.

This all strengthens my belief that the first step in the fightback against the creeping - more like galloping now - tech-enabled authoritarianism happening around the world must be a technological one, so that people are at least able to speak, share and transact in private. So godspeed SAFE Alphas 3, 4, beta, resistance, change.

17 Likes

What it in its inception 9 out of 10 sites are using the technology for illegal purposes and the idea of being a part of that puts of new adopters?

VERY unlikely since the early adopters have often declared enough of themselves (incl IP address) for the authorities to track them down if they post truly illegal stuff

Now that aside if 9 out of 10 sites are illegal then the search engines of SAFE will likely filter them out and the visitors will mostly get search results for the 1 out of 10. So if 100,000 sites then the visitors will be choosing from 10,000 sites and ignore the rest.

Now if the search engines don’t filter out any then the visitors will get to choose from all the sites and like now they go to the sites they want to go to and ignore the ones that they don’t want to go to.

Firstly I find it highly unlikely that early on the ones who create illegal sites will even trust that SAFE is not some big honey pot to catch them

Secondly nearly all of those illegal site creators probably won’t even hear of SAFE till its large enough to be noticed. Maybe about 1 million pages or more (around 50-100,000 sites.

3 Likes

Then adoption will be slower, but security will become heavily tested by the authorities.

1 Like

What would have been the fate of the VCR if 9 of 10 had NOT been used to copy and share TV shows and movies, porn, etc.?

What would the security and development of bitcoin have been if The Silk Road had NOT shown that it could be used to circumvent what “the man” deemed illegal?

How many people would know all the details of Game of Trones if Pirate Bay had NOT proven over time that it was unkillable and bittorrent tech is a genie that could not be put back in the bottle?

Those most desperate for Privacy, Security and Freedom will be the first to adopt the SAFE Network, regardless of whether they are “good” or “bad”, as things have ever been–peasant, meet crossbow. :wink:The fact that no one can stop them will be the driver for deeper adoption and confidence in the tech, especially if it’s easy to use, SAFE by default.

4 Likes

I haven’t been given an argument against SAFENet yet, but if someone where to question the practicality of safecoin, i.e., ask why it’s better than dollar, then I’d explain that safecoin’s a good alternative because it’s easy to make and easy to spend. Not only that, but it’s optimized for the SAFENet purpose. Maybe skeptics should consider credit cards with points systems as an example. One can earn airline “miles” by spending money on their card. Imagine then if the airline miles could be traded. Trading and exchange would create a mini economy of points/miles. People could buy miles from others who have a lot of miles, or sell miles back for money, or other goods. Well, SAFENet (and crypto currencies) are the same, just with the internet/computing/privacy.

4 Likes

How can we ‘know’ it’s secure? I mean, after all, don’t all projects like this put in backdoors for CIA, NSA, MI6?

Thats what the security audit is for. Also being opensourced people at some stage will find the flaws. Just look at the 2 security flaws presented at a conference this week. (WiFi WPA2 broken & digitial ID cards cracked) People do check out these security systems at some stage and reveal the flaws. But a security audit should detect most and hopefully all before it goes live.

4 Likes

Help, I’ve found compromising photos of my spouse, child, priest. How do I get them, and other offensive images removed from the network?

1 Like

The same way you get them off Mainstream Internet, you don’t.

4 Likes

Gopher :smiley:

3 Likes

LOL - there are pathways, whether it’s DMCA, LEO, … for Ye Olde Interweb

Given the UK government’s anti-terror campaigns, I could see an issue with not having a takedown mechanism, particularly when authors are anonymous and content threatens public safety. This one will cause future heartburn in one way, another, or many ways.

Hope I’m wrong, but in many ways, popularity would be the greatest threat. After all, no one goes after the little fish, when there are big fish headlines to be made.

Probably why Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts was the target of so many resources.

1 Like

I haven’t seen a Gopher Server in 30’ish years. Ah the good old days heheh.

2 Likes

Sure you can get them taken down, and once it’s put on the net it’ll just pop right back up again.

This is why child porn is an ever persistent problem.