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Indeed, at least with Tox, all I need is a separate key exchange, somewhere. In person works wonders. So does random email, or instant message, or you name it.

by kefka 10y ago

Indeed, at least with Tox, all I need is a separate key exchange, somewhere. In person works wonders. So does random email, or instant message, or you name it. At least for communications that need that layer of security and anonymity, it's certainly there. And as I implied, rubber hoses won't work on anonymous and encrypted digital identities "somewhere else". At least regarding Silk Road, that's because he made amateur mistakes by posting his real name and then changing it on StackExchange, about making a e-commerce .onion website. And that was the beginning of his fuckups, with the final one by paying for an assassination attempt.

stinkytaco 10y ago
> And that was the beginning of his fuckups, with the final one by paying for an assassination attempt. That's my point. At some point he needed to leave the digital world and live in the real world. There is no perfect false identity, not one that does anyone any good. Whether you are looking to overthrow a regime, sell drugs, or just keep your recent pregnancy on the down low, at some point that leaves the digital space and enters meat space. It's at that point that powerful actors can get what they want from you. Encryption might help you evade detection, but it is not a guarantee of privacy, even for a regular person. Believe it or not, I expect we agree in the end. The existence of encryption is precisely why dragnetting doesn't work for catching actual bad guys. What brought down Silk Road was old fashioned police work. Get people on the inside, record some chats, get some warrants and so on. They seized him after he had decrypted his laptop, even. It's also precisely why I think political solutions are going to be the most effective in the end. The expectation of privacy we have established outside the digital space (say, no wiretapping, no illegal searches or arrests) still gives tools for protecting the public. Perhaps we need to somewhat tweak those tools for the digital world, but that doesn't mean we need to give the government the keys to our house.

by kefka 10y ago

stinkytaco 10y ago

> And that was the beginning of his fuckups, with the final one by paying for an assassination attempt. That's my point. At some point he needed to leave the digital world and live in the real world. There is no perfect false identity, not one that does anyone any good. Whether you are looking to overthrow a regime, sell drugs, or just keep your recent pregnancy on the down low, at some point that leaves the digital space and enters meat space. It's at that point that powerful actors can get what they want from you. Encryption might help you evade detection, but it is not a guarantee of privacy, even for a regular person. Believe it or not, I expect we agree in the end. The existence of encryption is precisely why dragnetting doesn't work for catching actual bad guys. What brought down Silk Road was old fashioned police work. Get people on the inside, record some chats, get some warrants and so on. They seized him after he had decrypted his laptop, even. It's also precisely why I think political solutions are going to be the most effective in the end. The expectation of privacy we have established outside the digital space (say, no wiretapping, no illegal searches or arrests) still gives tools for protecting the public. Perhaps we need to somewhat tweak those tools for the digital world, but that doesn't mean we need to give the government the keys to our house.