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This reads like a conspiracy theory. Who are the pro HTTPS everywhere people that are _also_ secretly trying to further censorship? This would have to be a fair

This reads like a conspiracy theory. Who are the pro HTTPS everywhere people that are _also_ secretly trying to further censorship? This would have to be a fairly vast conspiracy, but, you don't provide any evidence.

posterboy 9y ago
It's a simple fact. It doesn't need to be planned or conspirated. The fact that root CAs are at the top, modulo self signed certs exchanged person to person IRL, is certainly no secret. The conspiracy would be that they might use the fact to censor or listen, whoever they are. The conspiracy would be not to tell anyone beforehand, because otherwise it wouldn't be a conspiracy anymore. What kind of exhaustive evidence do you expect for the claim that they are not saying something? And maybe you are right, this is extremely hypothetical, they would never take action to invalidate certs... Hey, wait a second!!! The real conspiracy would be to know a better system and not tell anyone. Which is like sponsoring scientific discoveries and then hiding those behind a pay wall. Oh wait again.
- dagenix 9y ago
  Who are "they"? Google? Mozilla? Microsoft? Apple? The 100s of CAs? And, are they all working together? And there hasn't been a single whistleblower to expose this? What do you mean "listen"? CAs can invalidate certs at will, but, they have no mechanism to listen on communications (unless you give them your private key, but, then anyone you give your private key to can eavesdrop). The CA system has lots of issues. It would be a pretty big conspiracy if there were thousands of people that knew of something better and said nothing. But, there is absolutely no proof that anyone has any idea how to do better than the CA system. Do you know of such a system or have any evidence that someone else does? Google, despite their flaws w.r.t. privacy, has done quite a bit of work to improve the CA situation - Certificate Transparency, for example.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    > Who are "they"? A court seizing a domain thereby invalidating a cert. > What do you mean "listen"? If I accept a custom cert, but don't validate the key, I might as well use none, basically. That's the extent of my knowledge, I don't know what Certificate Transparency is doing, for example. > The CA system has lots of issues. It would be a pretty big conspiracy if there were thousands of people that knew of something better and said nothing. But, there is absolutely no proof that anyone has any idea how to do better than the CA system. Do you know of such a system or have any evidence that someone else does? > It would be a pretty big conspiracy Exactly, so why do you expect that twitter sized post could it explain it convincingly? > if there were thousands of people that knew of something better and said nothing Ironically, it might be the ability to censor communication to suppress such voices, however hypothetical that is, that triggered the GP. > But, there is absolutely no proof that anyone has any idea how to do better than the CA system. PGP is used with key exchange in real live. I'm not using it, just arguing for the sake of the argument. It has problems, too, but "better" is not a binary value , except in the limited scope of the specific problem. PGP doesn't need root CAs.

posterboy 9y ago

It's a simple fact. It doesn't need to be planned or conspirated. The fact that root CAs are at the top, modulo self signed certs exchanged person to person IRL, is certainly no secret. The conspiracy would be that they might use the fact to censor or listen, whoever they are. The conspiracy would be not to tell anyone beforehand, because otherwise it wouldn't be a conspiracy anymore. What kind of exhaustive evidence do you expect for the claim that they are not saying something? And maybe you are right, this is extremely hypothetical, they would never take action to invalidate certs... Hey, wait a second!!! The real conspiracy would be to know a better system and not tell anyone. Which is like sponsoring scientific discoveries and then hiding those behind a pay wall. Oh wait again.

dagenix 9y ago
Who are "they"? Google? Mozilla? Microsoft? Apple? The 100s of CAs? And, are they all working together? And there hasn't been a single whistleblower to expose this? What do you mean "listen"? CAs can invalidate certs at will, but, they have no mechanism to listen on communications (unless you give them your private key, but, then anyone you give your private key to can eavesdrop). The CA system has lots of issues. It would be a pretty big conspiracy if there were thousands of people that knew of something better and said nothing. But, there is absolutely no proof that anyone has any idea how to do better than the CA system. Do you know of such a system or have any evidence that someone else does? Google, despite their flaws w.r.t. privacy, has done quite a bit of work to improve the CA situation - Certificate Transparency, for example.
- posterboy 8y ago
  > Who are "they"? A court seizing a domain thereby invalidating a cert. > What do you mean "listen"? If I accept a custom cert, but don't validate the key, I might as well use none, basically. That's the extent of my knowledge, I don't know what Certificate Transparency is doing, for example. > The CA system has lots of issues. It would be a pretty big conspiracy if there were thousands of people that knew of something better and said nothing. But, there is absolutely no proof that anyone has any idea how to do better than the CA system. Do you know of such a system or have any evidence that someone else does? > It would be a pretty big conspiracy Exactly, so why do you expect that twitter sized post could it explain it convincingly? > if there were thousands of people that knew of something better and said nothing Ironically, it might be the ability to censor communication to suppress such voices, however hypothetical that is, that triggered the GP. > But, there is absolutely no proof that anyone has any idea how to do better than the CA system. PGP is used with key exchange in real live. I'm not using it, just arguing for the sake of the argument. It has problems, too, but "better" is not a binary value , except in the limited scope of the specific problem. PGP doesn't need root CAs.