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And even if all these things were solved, you'd still trust the others to not publish the logs. It's not a case against crypto. You're actually proving my poin

by lawl 11y ago

And even if all these things were solved, you'd still trust the others to not publish the logs. It's not a case against crypto. You're actually proving my point.

laumars 11y ago
> And even if all these things were solved, you'd still trust the others to not publish the logs. But those things aren't solved. That's my point. The fundamental design of IRC makes these points hard to solve; and even if you did set out to solve them, you'd ultimately end up with a new protocol that was originally based on IRC but now not compatible with it. So it wouldn't be IRC any longer. IRC is about open chat and it does that very well. There's better protocols for sharing sensitive information. I just don't get this modern obsession with shoehorning features into every piece of software or protocol and expecting everything to work perfectly. Even with chat protocols, there's a multitude of different paradigms - many of which aren't necessarily compatible with others. Why can't we just concentrate on making secure communication platforms better instead of bastardising an open platform to behave like a crappier implementation of a secure platform? > It's not a case against crypto. You're actually proving my point. That makes no logical sense. Crypto wouldn't solve the issues I raised and you've completely glossed over the part why I say privacy is only as good as the weakest link. It's easy to argue about how to harden IRC from snoopers, but a great deal harder to actually fix those problems in practice since you only need one weak link in the design of the platform and the whole security model falls flat on it's face. Simply put: in terms of privacy there are far too many weak links in IRC. It just not a good protocol for secure conversations. And frankly I think it's best left that way as changing IRC to be secure would detract it from what makes IRC so great to begin with. eg it's openness, hack-ability and so forth. Honestly, I think you're chasing an impossible vision. Sure, in an ideal world you could fix all those issues, but then it wouldn't be IRC any longer since you've now broken support for ZNC, bots, and so on.

by lawl 11y ago

And even if all these things were solved, you'd still trust the others to not publish the logs. It's not a case against crypto. You're actually proving my point.

laumars 11y ago

> And even if all these things were solved, you'd still trust the others to not publish the logs. But those things aren't solved. That's my point. The fundamental design of IRC makes these points hard to solve; and even if you did set out to solve them, you'd ultimately end up with a new protocol that was originally based on IRC but now not compatible with it. So it wouldn't be IRC any longer. IRC is about open chat and it does that very well. There's better protocols for sharing sensitive information. I just don't get this modern obsession with shoehorning features into every piece of software or protocol and expecting everything to work perfectly. Even with chat protocols, there's a multitude of different paradigms - many of which aren't necessarily compatible with others. Why can't we just concentrate on making secure communication platforms better instead of bastardising an open platform to behave like a crappier implementation of a secure platform? > It's not a case against crypto. You're actually proving my point. That makes no logical sense. Crypto wouldn't solve the issues I raised and you've completely glossed over the part why I say privacy is only as good as the weakest link. It's easy to argue about how to harden IRC from snoopers, but a great deal harder to actually fix those problems in practice since you only need one weak link in the design of the platform and the whole security model falls flat on it's face. Simply put: in terms of privacy there are far too many weak links in IRC. It just not a good protocol for secure conversations. And frankly I think it's best left that way as changing IRC to be secure would detract it from what makes IRC so great to begin with. eg it's openness, hack-ability and so forth. Honestly, I think you're chasing an impossible vision. Sure, in an ideal world you could fix all those issues, but then it wouldn't be IRC any longer since you've now broken support for ZNC, bots, and so on.