8 ms·

Catalan separatists have tooled up with decentralized app for civil disobedience

98 points by elies 7y ago

ChristianBundy 7y ago
Very cool. I'm curious to see how this compares to SSB.
- rsre 7y ago
  This is not a protocol and it's not decentralised at all. Only the admins can control the app and its users. It's not related to Scuttlebutt at all.
jdc 7y ago
There's any interesting spectrum of tools could rub the powers that be the wrong way all the way to all out rebellion. That being said maybe this app is just well-marketed groupware.
stretchwithme 7y ago
There won't be peace on Earth until people give up on the idea that they have the right to coerce other people into political relationships.
- slapshot 7y ago
  We (USA) fought a war over that. The "if we agreed to stay together then we have to stay together" side won.
  - jdc 7y ago
    But the scope of what "stay together" means has steadily grown since then.
  - scythe 7y ago
    The Civil War was not about some kind of ideal of decentralization and certainly was not about today's pining for city-states. It was mostly about slavery, with some esoteric political theory tacked on to the Confederate Constitution to save face.
    - wolco 7y ago
      It was about only allowing white labor in the west. It was about the Lincoln winning without any representation from the south.
  - labster 7y ago
    If it was about that, they would have made a case for secession before Congress prior to attacking Fort Sumter. Surely the right of revolution should only be invoked after at least making an effort at a compromise before attacking.
  - stretchwithme 7y ago
    Not exactly. Those who wanted out of that fairly free arrangement did not want others to get out of literal bondage. The freedom to oppress is not what I was talking about.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    The domestic political processes of the United States, even when they amount to a civil war, are not binding on other states, however similar or dissimilar they be. I can imagine California would be prevented if they asked for independence today, but Scotland looked pretty much free to go if they'd wanted it recently.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> Behind the scenes — where unknown administrators are accessing its data and devising and managing protest actions to distribute via the app — there may be an entirely centralized view of available human protest resources. But it’s not clear what the other side of the platform looks like. Our source was unable to show it to us or articulate what it looks like. It doesn’t seem as decentralized as advertised. The authorities just have to coerce some of the admins and they have a very nice view of what is going on in the movement in real-time.
- narag 7y ago
  The authorities are the admins. Everybody knows Torra is behind the protests.
  - nomusuari 7y ago
    That is no true. It is not known who the admins are.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    Torra is the Catalan premier isn't he? But the one to worry about is the Spanish PM. Even the Catalan authorities are subject to their anti-democratic, anti rule-of-law authoritarian whim and fancy: Some are living in exile and others are living in prison for work they did will Catalan authorities.
    - Oletros 7y ago
      > to their anti-democratic, anti rule-of-law authoritarian whim and fancy From whom?
t20n 7y ago
It's like a human botnet.
t-away-123568 7y ago
I have trouble with first world separatist/independence movements (Quebec, Scotland, Basque, Catalan, etc) where it seems there is little real present day issue other than what seems from the outside to be historical grievance and ego.
- WanderPanda 7y ago
  Does it matter? If a locally grouped majority wants to seperate from a bigger structure they should be allowed to, everything else is evil.
  - oliverx0 7y ago
    What majority? In Catalonia less than 50% of people want independence. It just so happens that the minority is louder.
    - kilburn 7y ago
      > In Catalonia less than 50% of people want independence. Citation needed. The main historical request by pro-independence people has always been for a vote to be held on the matter. Spain has always replied that there will never be such vote.
      - pvaldes 7y ago
        The results of the TRUE/LEGAL/non-SCAM elections are public for anybody to see it. Five millions of people can vote, 2 millions voted independentist parties. Three millions NOT. Is an easy calculus. The majority of people do not want to lose their EU and spanish status, and they never wanted it.
        kilburn 7y ago
        "TRUE/LEGAL/non-SCAM" elections are not a referendum about independence, whether you like it or not. They are evidence, evidence that doesn't confirm the very strong claim that "less than 50% of people want independence". According to the latest such election (2019 spanish general elections), we had [1]: 1.626.001 votes for parties clearly supporting independence (ERC + JxCat + Front Republicà) 1.784.129 votes for parties clearly opposing independence (PSOE + Cs + PP) 678.451 votes for parties that claim other issues are more important (UP + PACMA) The total numbers for/against independence are not clear and could swing either way. We would need either much more skewed results (to extrapolate from them) or an actual vote on the issue to support the claim that was made here. Note that I haven't made the opposite claim (more than 50% of people want independence). I just said that in the current situation the way to know would be to hold a vote, and that Spain has always opposed this option. [1] https://www.abc.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/resultados/cataluna/ https://www.abc.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/resultado...
annoyingnoob 7y ago
Recently spent a couple of weeks in Barcelona. I love the culture there. The passion of the Catalan people is impressive.
Lucadg 7y ago
It seems to have a central point of failure. Not really uncensorable after all. And not even open sourced. If the government takes over the admins many people will be in trouble.
kilburn 7y ago
TLDR: Everyone seems to be assuming that there's a single point of failure, and someone gets to see all the information. I would definitely not build the thing like that if I was the one doing it. There's not much information about how the application works. What we know is: - The app seems to use a RetroShare network behind-the-scenes [1]. - RetroShare is a decentralized, serverless, peer-to-peer, meshed, distributed network. When you join you generate a pgp key for yourself and then add "friends" by grabbing their public keys. - The app needs to be activated through a QR generated from another person's app who's already in. - The app monitors your location and only shows you close-by actions. What I would like to confirm: - Whether the QR is the same for everyone, the same for every person sharing it, or generated on a by-share basis - Whether RetroShare is actually used or not. Assumptions I make: - There's a non-trivial organization behind this - The organizers do not want to be discovered, and want to have as much "plausible deniability" as possible (they are risking jail time) Given all the above, here's how I would build this application: - Create 3 (or 5) "root" keys. The very top people in the org get those. - When you join the network (by scanning someone's QR), you join the RetroShare network, but also get the root keys id's. - The app is now ready to handle some message types from the root keys: 1. STOP. Accepted when signed by any of the active root keys. The app stops sending messages. 2. ADD_ZONE. Accepted when signed by a majority of the root keys. Adds a new zone (a geographical bounding box) along with the public key of the zone's commander (someone who can organize stuff in that area). 3. REMOVE_ZONE. Accepted when signed by at least two root keys. Removes a zone because it either has no activity or has been compromised. - During normal operation, the app tracks the currently active zones and the corresponding zone-masters. It monitors your location, and if you are within a zone it sends "in-zone" notifications to the zone-master. - The zone-master collects such notifications and sends direct messages to people in their zone when an action is to take place. As I see it, this would be the simplest setup to accomplish the organizations' goals without much possibility for compromise. As soon as a zone is compromized it can be nuked, and the whole thing can be nuked quickly if some root is compromised too. You could then start refining this basic idea with extra functionalities. For instance: - Add/remove root keys to avoid having to nuke everything if a root gets compromised. - Get the app to send "in-zone" messages to random zones from time to time and then filter received actions according to actual location. This would prevent the organizers (or someone who gets to observe the traffic) from inferring the users' real location. [1] https://retroshare.cc/ https://retroshare.cc/
descala 7y ago
Spanish police has begun seizure of the web site distributing the app https://app.tsunamidemocratic.cat/ https://app.tsunamidemocratic.cat/

98 points by elies 7y ago

ChristianBundy 7y ago

Very cool. I'm curious to see how this compares to SSB.

rsre 7y ago
This is not a protocol and it's not decentralised at all. Only the admins can control the app and its users. It's not related to Scuttlebutt at all.

jdc 7y ago

There's any interesting spectrum of tools could rub the powers that be the wrong way all the way to all out rebellion. That being said maybe this app is just well-marketed groupware.

stretchwithme 7y ago

There won't be peace on Earth until people give up on the idea that they have the right to coerce other people into political relationships.

slapshot 7y ago
We (USA) fought a war over that. The "if we agreed to stay together then we have to stay together" side won.
- jdc 7y ago
  But the scope of what "stay together" means has steadily grown since then.
- scythe 7y ago
  The Civil War was not about some kind of ideal of decentralization and certainly was not about today's pining for city-states. It was mostly about slavery, with some esoteric political theory tacked on to the Confederate Constitution to save face.
  - wolco 7y ago
    It was about only allowing white labor in the west. It was about the Lincoln winning without any representation from the south.
- labster 7y ago
  If it was about that, they would have made a case for secession before Congress prior to attacking Fort Sumter. Surely the right of revolution should only be invoked after at least making an effort at a compromise before attacking.
- stretchwithme 7y ago
  Not exactly. Those who wanted out of that fairly free arrangement did not want others to get out of literal bondage. The freedom to oppress is not what I was talking about.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  The domestic political processes of the United States, even when they amount to a civil war, are not binding on other states, however similar or dissimilar they be. I can imagine California would be prevented if they asked for independence today, but Scotland looked pretty much free to go if they'd wanted it recently.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

> Behind the scenes — where unknown administrators are accessing its data and devising and managing protest actions to distribute via the app — there may be an entirely centralized view of available human protest resources. But it’s not clear what the other side of the platform looks like. Our source was unable to show it to us or articulate what it looks like. It doesn’t seem as decentralized as advertised. The authorities just have to coerce some of the admins and they have a very nice view of what is going on in the movement in real-time.

narag 7y ago
The authorities are the admins. Everybody knows Torra is behind the protests.
- nomusuari 7y ago
  That is no true. It is not known who the admins are.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  Torra is the Catalan premier isn't he? But the one to worry about is the Spanish PM. Even the Catalan authorities are subject to their anti-democratic, anti rule-of-law authoritarian whim and fancy: Some are living in exile and others are living in prison for work they did will Catalan authorities.
  - Oletros 7y ago
    > to their anti-democratic, anti rule-of-law authoritarian whim and fancy From whom?

t20n 7y ago

It's like a human botnet.

t-away-123568 7y ago

I have trouble with first world separatist/independence movements (Quebec, Scotland, Basque, Catalan, etc) where it seems there is little real present day issue other than what seems from the outside to be historical grievance and ego.

WanderPanda 7y ago
Does it matter? If a locally grouped majority wants to seperate from a bigger structure they should be allowed to, everything else is evil.
- oliverx0 7y ago
  What majority? In Catalonia less than 50% of people want independence. It just so happens that the minority is louder.
  - kilburn 7y ago
    > In Catalonia less than 50% of people want independence. Citation needed. The main historical request by pro-independence people has always been for a vote to be held on the matter. Spain has always replied that there will never be such vote.
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      The results of the TRUE/LEGAL/non-SCAM elections are public for anybody to see it. Five millions of people can vote, 2 millions voted independentist parties. Three millions NOT. Is an easy calculus. The majority of people do not want to lose their EU and spanish status, and they never wanted it.
      - kilburn 7y ago
        "TRUE/LEGAL/non-SCAM" elections are not a referendum about independence, whether you like it or not. They are evidence, evidence that doesn't confirm the very strong claim that "less than 50% of people want independence". According to the latest such election (2019 spanish general elections), we had [1]: 1.626.001 votes for parties clearly supporting independence (ERC + JxCat + Front Republicà) 1.784.129 votes for parties clearly opposing independence (PSOE + Cs + PP) 678.451 votes for parties that claim other issues are more important (UP + PACMA) The total numbers for/against independence are not clear and could swing either way. We would need either much more skewed results (to extrapolate from them) or an actual vote on the issue to support the claim that was made here. Note that I haven't made the opposite claim (more than 50% of people want independence). I just said that in the current situation the way to know would be to hold a vote, and that Spain has always opposed this option. [1] https://www.abc.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/resultados/cataluna/ https://www.abc.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/resultado...

annoyingnoob 7y ago

Recently spent a couple of weeks in Barcelona. I love the culture there. The passion of the Catalan people is impressive.

Lucadg 7y ago

It seems to have a central point of failure. Not really uncensorable after all. And not even open sourced. If the government takes over the admins many people will be in trouble.

kilburn 7y ago

TLDR: Everyone seems to be assuming that there's a single point of failure, and someone gets to see all the information. I would definitely not build the thing like that if I was the one doing it. There's not much information about how the application works. What we know is: - The app seems to use a RetroShare network behind-the-scenes [1]. - RetroShare is a decentralized, serverless, peer-to-peer, meshed, distributed network. When you join you generate a pgp key for yourself and then add "friends" by grabbing their public keys. - The app needs to be activated through a QR generated from another person's app who's already in. - The app monitors your location and only shows you close-by actions. What I would like to confirm: - Whether the QR is the same for everyone, the same for every person sharing it, or generated on a by-share basis - Whether RetroShare is actually used or not. Assumptions I make: - There's a non-trivial organization behind this - The organizers do not want to be discovered, and want to have as much "plausible deniability" as possible (they are risking jail time) Given all the above, here's how I would build this application: - Create 3 (or 5) "root" keys. The very top people in the org get those. - When you join the network (by scanning someone's QR), you join the RetroShare network, but also get the root keys id's. - The app is now ready to handle some message types from the root keys: 1. STOP. Accepted when signed by any of the active root keys. The app stops sending messages. 2. ADD_ZONE. Accepted when signed by a majority of the root keys. Adds a new zone (a geographical bounding box) along with the public key of the zone's commander (someone who can organize stuff in that area). 3. REMOVE_ZONE. Accepted when signed by at least two root keys. Removes a zone because it either has no activity or has been compromised. - During normal operation, the app tracks the currently active zones and the corresponding zone-masters. It monitors your location, and if you are within a zone it sends "in-zone" notifications to the zone-master. - The zone-master collects such notifications and sends direct messages to people in their zone when an action is to take place. As I see it, this would be the simplest setup to accomplish the organizations' goals without much possibility for compromise. As soon as a zone is compromized it can be nuked, and the whole thing can be nuked quickly if some root is compromised too. You could then start refining this basic idea with extra functionalities. For instance: - Add/remove root keys to avoid having to nuke everything if a root gets compromised. - Get the app to send "in-zone" messages to random zones from time to time and then filter received actions according to actual location. This would prevent the organizers (or someone who gets to observe the traffic) from inferring the users' real location. [1] https://retroshare.cc/ https://retroshare.cc/

descala 7y ago

Spanish police has begun seizure of the web site distributing the app https://app.tsunamidemocratic.cat/ https://app.tsunamidemocratic.cat/