The ABC’s are staffed with arrogant people - some deservedly so, but arrogant nonetheless. They see Maidsafe’s work as incomplete and so haven’t done much to even develop counters for it yet.
Tor has been around a long time and I2P is out there and better than Tor for security but not so good as an out-proxy system … then there is freenet - super secure, super sluggish, and more recently zeronet … basically though these are all fringe and not a huge threat to the status quo.
I expect they envision Maidsafe’s efforts to be of the same or similar quality and that in the end it won’t attract the kind of attention needed to be a threat.
So, sure they will develop ways to attack it down the road (it has to be completed first) and I’m sure they written up a few reports on it and the team and those are sitting in a stack of reports on some administrators desk.
Understand that Statist government is highly bureaucratic with many higher priority (more political) items/agendas on their plate … they also don’t move anywhere near the speed of technology.
In short, don’t worry so much. The tech is open source and on the web - so it’s not going away. In time, it will reach the level of security required to achieve the goals of it’s founders and supporters - as we will all keep pushing it down that path. The ABC’s can only slow it, they cannot stop it and at this stage it’s just a tiny blip among many on their radar.
ABCs seems to be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to technology for the public. Seems like they wait until it is popular enough before throwing resources at it.
I have re-read them and cannot see actual scenarios, just calls for recommendations on how to do it (scenarios) in the OP and giving some starting points, and the post where you tell me how wrong I am is just general stuff. I thought you were calling for
And I’m sure we want to hear your recommendations (scenarios) on how to defuse, attenuate the future threats to TPTB. Might get others thinking on how they would approach it and get the discussions flowing.
Anyhow if you have none or I am so daft to not see the scenario in your posts then no need to answer as everyone else will see how daft I am and nicer to leave it at that.
Pretty sure they study the internet and its possible evolution. They have contacts in academia that watch areas and risks. They also look out for what can be used by them or against them. This project will have attracted their attention just through affiliation with Solid. Every good crypto expert will have heard of it. Look at the EUs Article 13 global spyware proposal and its censorship effect. Look at the US’s total info awareness- SAFE would break that program.
But any good people that work for these outfits might actually aid and abet SAFE.
“Solid (derived from “social linked data”) is a proposed set of conventions and tools for building decentralized social applications based on Linked Data principles.” https://solid.mit.edu
imho TLAs (three letter agencies) would be targeting SAFE once things like child pornography etc would be found to be stored on the network. until then we’re probably good. perhaps we’re heading towards some form of futuro-archaic direction where each individual would have to learn how to protect themselves outside of highly controlled enclaves where you can only use ‘approved’ digital products, or else. for the ones that are strong enough to call themselves free would have to learn to not rely on protection from police, provided energy sources etc… i hope im wrong!
ofcourse they would consider that. but first you have to define who ‘they’ are? the police? politicians? mi5/gchq? committee 300? vatican/washington/the city? banking cartel in charge of world’s central banks? annunaki’s demigods? reptiloids from orion system stuck at 4th dimension? non-physical interdimentional archons? whoever they are, ‘they’ sure know how to control us as it happened to collective human consciousness for thousands of years, perhaps since the last flood, maybe even beyond. lol. sorry, i used to wear a much larger tinfoil hat back in the day. but today i would rather gravitate towards neo’s opinion here as it seems the system of control is overrun at the moment by human spirit slowly but surely waking up. being highly compartmentalised the ‘system’ is very slow to react, but once it has you in the crosshair, ohh boy expect to go low as forcing its boot down your face is what the ‘system’ does the best.
You’re an optimist. I see many woken up people, but they are by and large being channeled into disempowering activities. And I see the huge majority remaining deeply sedated. I don’t see a significant, not to say ‘tectonic’, shift in the ratio between the two. Which means of course that the nefarious agendas are steamrolling ahead.
I see this project as the principal threat to all of that.
As for who wield the TLAs, that’s not so important. Not when we agree that the TLAs is the vanguard in TPTB’s endeavors to defuse all nascent phenomena that could become real threats to their hegemony.
I think you’d be surprised with the western intel community. I’m pretty sure they know about the project and are paying attention. David himself made comments illustrative of such interest years ago. Remember that the US Navy came up with TOR, right? Besides being comprised of fairly diverse perspectives, they may see more pros than cons in this project as the landscape of cyber-warfare evolves. Broadly labeling the intel community as against the interest of the citizens is dangerous. The CIA is a different beast than the NSA, and the NSA is still different from military intel. And even within groups, there are factions and rogue double agents. Smoke and mirrors. Oh, gosh, I never thought the day would come when I would defend the intel community! Certainly, many recent stories don’t reflect such a posture, but I think it’s temporary. There are more good than bad. With what they’re up against in terms of zero-days and hardware exploits, decentralization, encryption, and redundancy are likely to be more prioritized over software backdoors or threats to centralization. I think more bad news is to come also, so that will only highlight the positives of SAFE for them.
Someone mentioned the child porn aspect. Evil content is something that concerns me, because it can’t be stopped. We’ll have to evolve, I suppose. There are plenty of ways to stop the production of it that don’t need a backdoor, just simple analog detective work, building communities that work, etc. The dissemination of it though…well…who knows?
Digital aspect has only been one of the ways they find out about it and it has taken good old police/detective work to break the rings and stop the production. SAFE really doesn’t change the landscape for these groups that use their own encryption networks now and obviously they won’t trust SAFE for quite a while anyhow.
I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at what the Safe Network brings to the table in terms of hardcore anonymity and a censor-proof environment. The Tor network is no longer really trusted due to how the FBI infiltrated the Silk Road and the I2P network is too slow with too few people using it.
I won’t say what I imagine to be possible with real hardcore anonymity, and the ability to publish in a censor-proof environment … but if you think/imagine hard enough I suspect you can come up with a few things that will be really really bad for coercive monopolies and those who run/manage them.
IMO, the Safe Network is, no-joke, a big threat to all of ‘them’ … when it’s up and running. My advice for those who understand what I’m talking about and who intend to act on those ideas - keep a low profile here - as afterwards the three letter agencies will be mining this forum for leads. No Joke.
To all the alphabet-agencies out there now and in the future … it wasn’t me!!
I think the Safe Network, which I wholeheartedly support, is a big threat to all of us as we all have something to hide or some situation we wouldn’t like everybody else to see us in, at least according to today’s social norms. There won’t only be pictures of, say, Taliban beheadings that are impossible to take down or censor. There will be pictures your little brother/sister took when when you were in the shower because he was mad at you at the time. This probably means social norms or morals will change globally with respect to e.g. nudity and sexuality.
In the US of today a picture of a president having sex with a prostitute or his secretary is a catastrophe for his career. This will change also because of SAFE, I think. Although it already seems pretty obvious the CIA were dealing drugs and weapons at least in the 80’s and e.g. the US military routinely commits horrific crimes against humanity, pictures and documents proving these things will be more readily available on the Safe Network, which could possibly lead to changes in legislation. Maybe it will lead to e.g. dealing drugs and torturing people becoming accepted again, just because it’s so obvious “they” do it.
If this thing goes live I think we are in for some HUGE changes in society.
Not being able to bury stuff by threats or money is a game changer. How can you organise a cover up when a leak cannot be reversed?
I agree that social behaviours may change, but it may be that posting personal pictures irrevocably, will be considered more of a crime than to some place temporary or reversible. Regular detective work would likely be able to figure out who it was too.
I’m definitely for good old regular detective work, and that may increase as well, as opposed to agents just sitting around their computers gathering data and listening in on people in general. I certainly hope the law will go after the actual producers of e.g. child porn, rather than the sick consumers of the pictures. I find it revolting even thinking and typing these words, but I think this conversation is important to have within the project of SAFE.
I doubt stuff like revenge porn and the like will be considered more of a crime if/when the pictures become irreversible. Of course I may be wrong, but I think “pictures taken in the shower” will become so common that people will get used to them and the social norms will change in this respect.
Even in today’s Internet I think it is extremely difficult to take anything offline once it has been published. Remove something from one place and it gets posted/re shared somewhere else, or has been copied by someone else. Put something in the public cloud and it is likely there for good. This article is pretty interesting.
