8 ms·

1) Laptop stolen, unlocked, you never encrypted anything: yep, you're hosed as far as I know. How else would your wallet be able to tell you a balance? 2) The

1) Laptop stolen, unlocked, you never encrypted anything: yep, you're hosed as far as I know. How else would your wallet be able to tell you a balance? 2) The creation of the genesis block involves a trust 'game' of sorts, in which many participants are asked to pick a number. The statement from zcash, which a better cryptographer than me could verify, is that only one of the participants need be trustworthy in order to make this step safe. I think anyone can participate in the genesis block creation, so you may be just who they need to get the genesis block in good shape. :) On a different note, it would take a juvenile and short-sighted thinker to want to be able to deanonymize the transactions; not that those people don't exist, but most rational adults would not wish to be emotionally and personally liable in some way for knowing the identities of the money launderers, child pornographers and others who will undoubtedly be drawn to a technology like this.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- ultramancool 11y ago
  > I guess I just don't see enhanced ability to enforce laws a compelling enough reason to deny everyone privacy. I think he's saying the exact opposite - that it'd be short-sighted to _want_ to deanonymize people and to have to deal with those identities.
Forbo 11y ago
Ah, two of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse rear their ugly heads: 8.3.4. "How will privacy and anonymity be attacked?" [...] like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- omginternets 11y ago
  I think this moral panic (for lack of a better term) is omnipresent because it's actually true to some degree. You can't seriously claim these groups wouldn't benefit from anonymous, secure payment systems. However: - They already have anonymous, secure payment systems (cash, drugs, jewels, shell companies, etc) - The cat is out of the bag, so they're going to have it anyway - These proverbial Horsement do more than just move money around; there's still plenty of room for detective work. Splitting the atom gave us nuclear power, viable cancer treatment, smoke detectors, and also Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the threat of radiological terrorism. The proverbial sword is always double-edged. To make an actual point: I think we'd do well as a community to acknowledge the degree of truth these moral panics hold, because I suspect we frustrate a lot of people by being dismissive of what they perceive to be an apocalyptic problem.
  - skybrian 11y ago
    I agree that we shouldn't be dismissive. However, I still think you are being somewhat dismissive when you say "The cat is out of the bag, so they're going to have it anyway." This is binary thinking but crime isn't binary. There are varying levels of crime. New technologies can make criminal behavior easier or more difficult. Just giving up on money laundering isn't something most people are willing to think about, particular for an experimental payment system that they don't care about and probably won't use. For someone who doesn't understand the benefits of a new technology and is rounding it to zero, the cost/benefit tradeoff isn't hard to decide, and making an analogy to splitting the atom is unlikely to be persuasive.
    - omginternets 11y ago
      >Just giving up on money laundering isn't something most people are willing to think about, particular for an experimental payment system that they don't care about and probably won't use. But nobody is actually advocating this, least of all me. The argument is that tracking every financial transaction is no longer viable, whether we like it or not. Moreover, digging your heels into the sand and saying "but it's not right to give up on money-laundering" doesn't change the reality: there exists technology that makes arbitrary, anonymous payments trivial to perform. What do you propose we do?
- pmarreck 11y ago
  > drug-dealers People profiting off the illegality of drugs who are drawn to high-risk/high-reward work. > money-launderers People who want to keep ANY of their income sources private. Also see: Anyone who uses cash. > terrorists "There is neither an academic nor an accurate legal consensus regarding the definition of terrorism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism This makes it a "weasel word" (or "appeal to anonymous authority" fallacy) pure and simple, like "treason" from back in the day. > pedophiles Most aren't active and suffer in silence. The rest can be managed. As the grain of truth of Louis CK's infamous "Most Offensive Joke Ever," if pedophilia wasn't as demonized as it is now, then most people would get their kids back after being abused, instead of them ending up dead in a ditch. The former being arguably not as bad as the latter.
  - pmarreck 11y ago
    Is there an actual reason this is getting downvoted? I have stated absolutely nothing untrue.
  - cyphar 11y ago
    > > money-launderers > People who want to keep ANY of their income sources private. Also see: Anyone who uses cash. That's not what money laundering is, I really wish people would stop perpetuating this misinformation. Money laundering is when somebody takes illegal income and "cleans" it by creating fake clients that pay a front business. You obviously have to pay taxes, etc but at the end of the day you have a completely clean cut of your illegal income. Anonymous payment methods only solve one (very small part) of the money-laundring problem: getting the money to someone who will clean it. After that, you still need to create fake clients and do your tax returns (which require believable income figures). So you're still stuck with trying to convince the IRS (or tax office of your choice) that the money you gained was legitimate.
    - pmarreck 11y ago
      > "illegal" income I found the problem. I don't think money has an intrinsic morality. It might be the result of (what some may deem) immoral action, but the money itself should not be illegal. There is nothing about "suddenly" having a lot of money which should be automatically illegal or prevented, and people should not have to explain every detail about how they obtained the money they did. This kind of thinking leads to things like asset forfeiture abuse, where merely having a bunch of money on your person is apparently grounds for confiscation. You may disagree, but I'm entitled to my opinion.
- vessenes 11y ago
  It's pleasant to be snarky or even in denial about the existence of those four archetypes. The sad truth is not only that they exist, but that they benefit from cryptocurrencies in general. I spent 2012 and 2013 vigorously parrying journalists who only wanted to write about Bitcoin and the four horsemen. I was wrong to do that. Most Bitcoin transactions of substance in 2012 were related to one of the four. While I'm pissed off that I spent time taking shots in the public limelight on behalf of asshole drug dealers, that was not actually the point I was raising above. I presume that the zcash folks are aware their inventions will be used for bad things, and have weighed the moral calculus, and are fine with the outcome. And, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that calculus. What I was saying is that a clear-headed individual needs to go into launching a cryptocurrency like this with the certain knowledge that their tool will be used, very rapidly, and perhaps very aggressively, to forward the agendas of the four horsemen. In fact, those will likely be the earliest adopters, or the earliest adopters with real money. That has some implications for how you design your own responsibility / rights / powers in a cryptocurrency. To think otherwise is terribly avoidant behavior.
- DyslexicAtheist 11y ago
  I remember the time the internet went mainstream and the general public (non-tech people) were very receptive to media spelling out all the negative horrors ... about all the potentially dark corners ... all the porn ... people dating online ... all which ultimately leading to a meltdown of society. In reality we sorted a lot of the problems out as we went along. We have muddled through somehow. The process I think was hardly linear or deterministic. And I think it never will be. Look at InfoSec where it is a constant game of catching up. Yet somehow our ancient technology stacks (DNS, SMTP, HTTP, ...) still seem to work and our world has not yet imploded. Society not yet collapsed. Our children who grew up with the Internet have turned out pretty well (people today seem a lot smarter than most of the guys I grew up with in the 70ies/80ies mainly because of the Internet) Seems that every time we're on the verge to discovering something totally radical (crypto currencies, big-data, IoT, ...) fear is strong. The only place (people) I have seen where the mainstream approaches technologies with an open mind is Japan. There even old people think robots are cute and innovation is ultimately good. In the rest of the world technology is something potentially evil that must be regulated at all cost before it is even invented. What if we succeed in creating a decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)[0] or an economy that doesn't answer to the state. We are pretty close to having the tools for it, and I'm sure this is scary as hell for a lot of nation states. See also the latest news about UK government creating their own version of a blockchain by removing the best feature (decentralization [1]). I doubt though that any of this will lead to anarchy (unless our system/society is already so broken that it was due to be replaced with a healthier model anyway). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ... [1] http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/01/19/uk-government-to-develop-a-centralized-blockchain-network/ http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/01/19/uk-government-to-develop-a...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ultramancool 11y ago
> I guess I just don't see enhanced ability to enforce laws a compelling enough reason to deny everyone privacy. I think he's saying the exact opposite - that it'd be short-sighted to _want_ to deanonymize people and to have to deal with those identities.

Forbo 11y ago

Ah, two of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse rear their ugly heads: 8.3.4. "How will privacy and anonymity be attacked?" [...] like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

omginternets 11y ago
I think this moral panic (for lack of a better term) is omnipresent because it's actually true to some degree. You can't seriously claim these groups wouldn't benefit from anonymous, secure payment systems. However: - They already have anonymous, secure payment systems (cash, drugs, jewels, shell companies, etc) - The cat is out of the bag, so they're going to have it anyway - These proverbial Horsement do more than just move money around; there's still plenty of room for detective work. Splitting the atom gave us nuclear power, viable cancer treatment, smoke detectors, and also Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the threat of radiological terrorism. The proverbial sword is always double-edged. To make an actual point: I think we'd do well as a community to acknowledge the degree of truth these moral panics hold, because I suspect we frustrate a lot of people by being dismissive of what they perceive to be an apocalyptic problem.
- skybrian 11y ago
  I agree that we shouldn't be dismissive. However, I still think you are being somewhat dismissive when you say "The cat is out of the bag, so they're going to have it anyway." This is binary thinking but crime isn't binary. There are varying levels of crime. New technologies can make criminal behavior easier or more difficult. Just giving up on money laundering isn't something most people are willing to think about, particular for an experimental payment system that they don't care about and probably won't use. For someone who doesn't understand the benefits of a new technology and is rounding it to zero, the cost/benefit tradeoff isn't hard to decide, and making an analogy to splitting the atom is unlikely to be persuasive.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    >Just giving up on money laundering isn't something most people are willing to think about, particular for an experimental payment system that they don't care about and probably won't use. But nobody is actually advocating this, least of all me. The argument is that tracking every financial transaction is no longer viable, whether we like it or not. Moreover, digging your heels into the sand and saying "but it's not right to give up on money-laundering" doesn't change the reality: there exists technology that makes arbitrary, anonymous payments trivial to perform. What do you propose we do?
pmarreck 11y ago
> drug-dealers People profiting off the illegality of drugs who are drawn to high-risk/high-reward work. > money-launderers People who want to keep ANY of their income sources private. Also see: Anyone who uses cash. > terrorists "There is neither an academic nor an accurate legal consensus regarding the definition of terrorism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism This makes it a "weasel word" (or "appeal to anonymous authority" fallacy) pure and simple, like "treason" from back in the day. > pedophiles Most aren't active and suffer in silence. The rest can be managed. As the grain of truth of Louis CK's infamous "Most Offensive Joke Ever," if pedophilia wasn't as demonized as it is now, then most people would get their kids back after being abused, instead of them ending up dead in a ditch. The former being arguably not as bad as the latter.
- pmarreck 11y ago
  Is there an actual reason this is getting downvoted? I have stated absolutely nothing untrue.
- cyphar 11y ago
  > > money-launderers > People who want to keep ANY of their income sources private. Also see: Anyone who uses cash. That's not what money laundering is, I really wish people would stop perpetuating this misinformation. Money laundering is when somebody takes illegal income and "cleans" it by creating fake clients that pay a front business. You obviously have to pay taxes, etc but at the end of the day you have a completely clean cut of your illegal income. Anonymous payment methods only solve one (very small part) of the money-laundring problem: getting the money to someone who will clean it. After that, you still need to create fake clients and do your tax returns (which require believable income figures). So you're still stuck with trying to convince the IRS (or tax office of your choice) that the money you gained was legitimate.
  - pmarreck 11y ago
    > "illegal" income I found the problem. I don't think money has an intrinsic morality. It might be the result of (what some may deem) immoral action, but the money itself should not be illegal. There is nothing about "suddenly" having a lot of money which should be automatically illegal or prevented, and people should not have to explain every detail about how they obtained the money they did. This kind of thinking leads to things like asset forfeiture abuse, where merely having a bunch of money on your person is apparently grounds for confiscation. You may disagree, but I'm entitled to my opinion.
vessenes 11y ago
It's pleasant to be snarky or even in denial about the existence of those four archetypes. The sad truth is not only that they exist, but that they benefit from cryptocurrencies in general. I spent 2012 and 2013 vigorously parrying journalists who only wanted to write about Bitcoin and the four horsemen. I was wrong to do that. Most Bitcoin transactions of substance in 2012 were related to one of the four. While I'm pissed off that I spent time taking shots in the public limelight on behalf of asshole drug dealers, that was not actually the point I was raising above. I presume that the zcash folks are aware their inventions will be used for bad things, and have weighed the moral calculus, and are fine with the outcome. And, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that calculus. What I was saying is that a clear-headed individual needs to go into launching a cryptocurrency like this with the certain knowledge that their tool will be used, very rapidly, and perhaps very aggressively, to forward the agendas of the four horsemen. In fact, those will likely be the earliest adopters, or the earliest adopters with real money. That has some implications for how you design your own responsibility / rights / powers in a cryptocurrency. To think otherwise is terribly avoidant behavior.
DyslexicAtheist 11y ago
I remember the time the internet went mainstream and the general public (non-tech people) were very receptive to media spelling out all the negative horrors ... about all the potentially dark corners ... all the porn ... people dating online ... all which ultimately leading to a meltdown of society. In reality we sorted a lot of the problems out as we went along. We have muddled through somehow. The process I think was hardly linear or deterministic. And I think it never will be. Look at InfoSec where it is a constant game of catching up. Yet somehow our ancient technology stacks (DNS, SMTP, HTTP, ...) still seem to work and our world has not yet imploded. Society not yet collapsed. Our children who grew up with the Internet have turned out pretty well (people today seem a lot smarter than most of the guys I grew up with in the 70ies/80ies mainly because of the Internet) Seems that every time we're on the verge to discovering something totally radical (crypto currencies, big-data, IoT, ...) fear is strong. The only place (people) I have seen where the mainstream approaches technologies with an open mind is Japan. There even old people think robots are cute and innovation is ultimately good. In the rest of the world technology is something potentially evil that must be regulated at all cost before it is even invented. What if we succeed in creating a decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)[0] or an economy that doesn't answer to the state. We are pretty close to having the tools for it, and I'm sure this is scary as hell for a lot of nation states. See also the latest news about UK government creating their own version of a blockchain by removing the best feature (decentralization [1]). I doubt though that any of this will lead to anarchy (unless our system/society is already so broken that it was due to be replaced with a healthier model anyway). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organ... [1] http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/01/19/uk-government-to-develop-a-centralized-blockchain-network/ http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/01/19/uk-government-to-develop-a...