Cypherpunk Nightmare Meditations

Privacy can and should be built into, but it will never be perfect.

Written by: Michael Goldstein

Compiled by: Liu Jiaolian 2024-01-08 12:06 Published in Beijing

“Some things are within our control, and some are not.”

——Epicurus, “On the Gifts”

Crypto-anarchy spreads

In his classic work, The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, Timothy C. May proposed a vision for the future in which society would face many challenges due to the adoption of public-key cryptography. . One particularly interesting challenge is the market for anonymous information:

"Of course, states will try to slow or prevent the spread of this technology, citing national security, its use by drug traffickers and tax evaders, and fears of social disintegration. Many of these concerns are valid; crypto-anarchy would allow state secrets Trade freely and allow illegal and stolen goods trading. An anonymous computerized market will even make the abominable assassination and extortion market possible. Criminals and foreign powers of all kinds will become active users of the cryptonet. But this will not stop The spread of crypto-anarchy.

"Just as printing technology transformed and weakened the power of guilds and social power structures in the Middle Ages, cryptographic methods will fundamentally change the nature of corporate and government intervention in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto-anarchy will Create a liquid market for all materials that can be expressed in words and pictures. Just as a seemingly trivial invention like barbed wire could fence vast tracts of ranches and farms, forever changing concepts of land and property rights on the Western frontier, from “The seemingly trivial discoveries that emerge from arcane branches of mathematics will also become the cord-cutters that tear down the barbed wire surrounding intellectual property.”

There are two lessons here:

1. All information will enter the market.
2. This market will exist whether you like it or not.

Also, when I say “will” I mean “already”.

We’ve seen WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden open the floodgates to state secrets, including yours. We’ve also seen Bitcoin facilitate the Fappening marketplace for celebrity nude photos.

Now, a website promoted by the WikiLeaks Twitter account hopes to take it to new heights. S promises to become WikiLeaks 2.0:

“S is an open source, decentralized and anonymous marketplace for selling secret information in exchange for Bitcoins. S is written in C, runs over the Onion Network, and conducts Bitcoin transactions via libbitcoin. Buyers and sellers are completely anonymous , there are no restrictions on the data to be auctioned. There is no fee for buying and selling data on the S market. Unless there is a dispute, a nominal fee will be paid to volunteers.”

From trade secrets to state secrets, from 0-day vulnerabilities to “complete databases of social media sites such as Facebook,” everything will be paid in Bitcoin.

My advice to anyone living in 2014 is to not only assume that your secrets will be revealed, but to live as if the secrets have already been revealed.

Ancient Wisdom

It’s not easy to deal with this kind of thinking, because each of us has said something in the past that we regret, or something we didn’t intend to say publicly. However, these problems are not new to the Internet. Instead, the Internet frees us from past illusions about privacy that had previously gone largely unchallenged. With this in mind, we can look to the ancient Stoics for timeless advice.

About changes

“The universe is changing: life is judgment.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book IV, 3.4)

If we take Timothy May’s words and empirical data seriously, the crypto-anarchy he describes is happening and will continue to happen. Technology is a double-edged sword that can be exploited by everyone from criminals to ethical individuals to achieve their own ends. However, this is simply a fact of nature, as the means to hope to prevent it are utopian at best and totalitarian at worst. When Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed unveiled Liberator to the world, we had to face the fact that technology is not democratic. There is no vote on whether 3D printed guns, public key cryptography, Bitcoin or BitTorrent should exist. Every technology is the product of the entrepreneurial ventures of Cody Wilson, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Herrmann, Satoshi Nakamoto and Bram Cohen. They appear and we must live with the consequences. If bad actors can take advantage of these technologies, we must make better use of them.

The world is changing, and there is nothing good or bad about it. All that matters is our perceptions and reactions.

About maintaining a virtuous heart

"You must avoid all random or aimless thoughts in the order of your thoughts, and especially any prying or malicious thoughts. Train yourself to think only about questions like this: When someone suddenly asks, “What are you thinking about right now?” You can immediately and frankly say what it is, this or that: in this way, your answer can directly prove that all your thoughts are straightforward, well-intentioned, and the thoughts of a social man who has no regard for pleasure. or a wider range of indulgent fantasies, without regard to rivalry, malice, suspicion, or anything else that would make one ashamed to admit that he or she has something in mind. "

—— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book III, 4.2)

Strong encryption works well at protecting information from prying eyes, but using encryption is a matter of risk management, not finding a magic bullet. Expecting encrypted or anonymized information to remain this way forever, even if it is possible, is problematic and not only tempts us to develop bad habits but also makes our thoughts and actions too risky. As Phil Zimmermann describes it, unencrypted communication is like sending a postcard that anyone can read.

The solution to this problem is to first be ethical in thought and action, making all public and private communications true to your goals and principles. Doing so will not make the disclosure of your confidentiality pleasant, however it will minimize the negative risk to your reputation. Even if that’s not the case, you’ll stay true to yourself, and that’s what matters.

About friendship and trust

"If you treat a person as a friend and don’t trust him as much as you trust yourself, then you are making a big mistake and you don’t fully understand what true friendship means. In fact, I hope you discuss it with your friends Everything, but first discuss the person himself. After friendship is established, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must judge. Some people do put last first and confuse their duties, and they violate Theo Theophrastus’s rule is to judge a person after making friends, not to make friends after judging. You have to consider for a long time whether to accept a person as your friend; but when you decide to accept When he comes, welcome him with all your heart. Speak to him as boldly as you would to yourself.”

——Seneca, “On True and False Friendship”

As mentioned above, strong encryption is not a panacea. Even the strongest end-to-end encryption can’t protect you from leaking information on the other side. Therefore, it is essential to know and trust the person you are communicating with, both in terms of character and security capabilities. Trust in encrypted communications should come from having confidence in your peers and understanding their weaknesses. Good people get hacked, too.

Therefore, make best friends. Build strong, trusted relationships with others and understand the limitations of those relationships. Sign keys, verify fingerprints, and most importantly, know what value you truly give to each other. Don’t let social media devalue the word “friend” and avoid falling in with the scammers.

in conclusion

There is no such thing as privacy. The Internet makes this fact obvious. Privacy can and should be built into, but it will never be perfect. To protect us from the dangers of crypto-anarchy, we must embrace it more fully and internalize and put into practice the virtues that have helped great men weather life’s storms since ancient times.