3 ms·

> Why can't we build distributed networks? We can... but I'll argue, very hard, that we shouldn't. Because it's the wrong technology to solve the problem, bei

by Syonyk 4y ago

> Why can't we build distributed networks? We can... but I'll argue, very hard, that we shouldn't. Because it's the wrong technology to solve the problem, being based on the very things that are well targeted, understood, and frequently compromised. If the problem is "Cell phones are compromised through and through," which I'll argue they are, and Apple's addition of Lockdown to work through the fact that even their best sandboxing efforts have been bypassed argues for as well, then "doing things with cell phones" is a horrible idea, because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire. Both of those are basically certain in a protest.

anta40 4y ago
Hmm... if "doing things with cell phones" is horrible idea, then what's possibley the good idea?
- Syonyk 4y ago
  Doing things in person, with offline techniques. If your location (which implies who you're with) and at least the metadata of your communications (who you communicate with, when, how frequently, how long of messages, etc) are sensitive, I don't believe there's any way to use a cell phone safely for those tasks. And having grown up before cell phones, I assure you, there are ways to coordinate things offline. We just need to bring them back.
  - plugin-baby 4y ago
    > having grown up before cell phones, I assure you, there are ways to coordinate things offline Landlines?
    - paganel 4y ago
      Good old secret associations and secret meetings. The Italians did it quite well 200 years ago [1]: > Cardinals Ercole Consalvi and Bartolomeo Pacca issued an edict forbidding all secret societies, to become members of these secret associations, to attend their meetings, or to furnish a meeting-place for such, under severe penalties It also f.cks with the head with those in power, having secret associations and secret meetings, that is. Having it all out in the open gives them (the authorities) the illusion of control, and, I'd argue, actual control over any significant protest movement. Moving it in the "shadows" is a good tactic because it helps make things blurry and it starts "attaching" doubts to said authorities' monopoly of violence. The authorities will ask themselves: "whom should I punish? where are the revolutionaries? is everyone a revolutionary?", and, as such, that will decrease their legitimacy and their hold on actual power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonari#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonari#Origins
      - avar 4y ago
        Even if you could get that to work someone would take a cellphone to the secret meeting and share a geotagged selfie, people just can't help themselves. Hello secret police! Or, they'd somehow manage to control themselves, but would only turn off their cellphone just before they got there. It would be easy to figure out the pattern of a bunch of likely instigators heading to the same location. Or, people would somehow learn to leave their cellphone at home. If anyone's then stopped by the police not having a cellphone in your pocket would be extremely suspicious in a totalitarian dictatorship. Even then it's not Italy in the 1800s. There's surveillance cameras on every corner, and you're right back to the problem of no signal being the signal. Nobody in Naples was filing multiple notices in their local papers before they had a normal meeting with their friends on a Tuesday, but that's what everyone's doing via social media. You can tease out suspicious meetings of any non-trivial size as being those without such a signal. The only way this is going to work for any amount of time is if it's organized like modern terrorist cells, but that's assuming a lot of steps between angry students staging demonstrations and covert operatives.
        paganel 4y ago
        > There's surveillance cameras on every corner Yeah, that's a big no-no, I'm starting to realise it more and more. I honestly don't know if there's a solution to it. I remember leaving some piece of advice about 10 years ago on this forum about how best to attend an anti-government protest without getting into potential trouble afterwards (in the context of these protests [1]). My advice back then was to take a tram/bus to about 2 or 3 stations away from the location of the protests themselves, and then to walk to said location, that way one would have avoided the security cameras located at the metro stations or in some buses back then. Nowadays, unfortunately, that piece of advice is null because there are cameras actually everywhere (including at the location of the protests), and the government, if it so desires, has access to them almost at will. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_protests
        godelski 4y ago
        Not to mention that it isn't uncommon for the government to fly planes in the sky with cameras. These can track quite far.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Doing things in person, with offline techniques. Also be sure that nobody carries cellphones into in-person meetings, otherwise location correlation will associate them.
    - Syonyk 4y ago
      > Also be sure that nobody carries cellphones into in-person meetings, otherwise location correlation will associate them. Correct. Which is why it's good to start cultivating the habits now of "not always having your phone with you, powered on, or connected to the network." If you turn it off right before going somewhere, and that's the only place it's ever off, well, huh. That's interesting. If you're cultivating the forgetful 70 year old approach to cell phones of "I don't know where I left it and I think the battery is dead," so much the better.
godelski 4y ago
> because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire This is hogwash because it is the wrong threat model. The encryption in this kind of communication is nearly pointless. If you're trying to organize a protest where you have to be messaging 100+ people then there's no way you can vet everyone. There's going to be a mole. In fact, we saw this with some of the militias at Jan 6th. Despite using Signal their texts got turned over. You just have to turn one person to compromise the system. Would I rather have the communications encrypted? Hell yeah. I'm that annoying friend that makes everyone use Signal. But it is absurd to think that wire tapped mass communication is worse than no mass communication. Revolutions and protests are won my shear mass. They often show their faces and are demonstrating in a public space (where there are often plenty of cameras: CCT, Police, and the protestors themselves!), so there's no concern about privacy already. Many get arrested, you can't arrest a large group. Arresting everyone would be nearly impossible. Furthermore, people still use covert speech. People are doing it in Iran right now. People are doing it on highly censored platforms like WeChat. Hell, there's covert speech on Twitter. There's definitely an advantage to using phones rather than going down to the public square and organizing that way. If you think everything is/was organized in back rooms and in complete secrecy, you're gravely misinformed at how these things work in reality. You have the wrong threat model.

by Syonyk 4y ago

anta40 4y ago

Hmm... if "doing things with cell phones" is horrible idea, then what's possibley the good idea?

Syonyk 4y ago
Doing things in person, with offline techniques. If your location (which implies who you're with) and at least the metadata of your communications (who you communicate with, when, how frequently, how long of messages, etc) are sensitive, I don't believe there's any way to use a cell phone safely for those tasks. And having grown up before cell phones, I assure you, there are ways to coordinate things offline. We just need to bring them back.
- plugin-baby 4y ago
  > having grown up before cell phones, I assure you, there are ways to coordinate things offline Landlines?
  - paganel 4y ago
    Good old secret associations and secret meetings. The Italians did it quite well 200 years ago [1]: > Cardinals Ercole Consalvi and Bartolomeo Pacca issued an edict forbidding all secret societies, to become members of these secret associations, to attend their meetings, or to furnish a meeting-place for such, under severe penalties It also f.cks with the head with those in power, having secret associations and secret meetings, that is. Having it all out in the open gives them (the authorities) the illusion of control, and, I'd argue, actual control over any significant protest movement. Moving it in the "shadows" is a good tactic because it helps make things blurry and it starts "attaching" doubts to said authorities' monopoly of violence. The authorities will ask themselves: "whom should I punish? where are the revolutionaries? is everyone a revolutionary?", and, as such, that will decrease their legitimacy and their hold on actual power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonari#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonari#Origins
    - avar 4y ago
      Even if you could get that to work someone would take a cellphone to the secret meeting and share a geotagged selfie, people just can't help themselves. Hello secret police! Or, they'd somehow manage to control themselves, but would only turn off their cellphone just before they got there. It would be easy to figure out the pattern of a bunch of likely instigators heading to the same location. Or, people would somehow learn to leave their cellphone at home. If anyone's then stopped by the police not having a cellphone in your pocket would be extremely suspicious in a totalitarian dictatorship. Even then it's not Italy in the 1800s. There's surveillance cameras on every corner, and you're right back to the problem of no signal being the signal. Nobody in Naples was filing multiple notices in their local papers before they had a normal meeting with their friends on a Tuesday, but that's what everyone's doing via social media. You can tease out suspicious meetings of any non-trivial size as being those without such a signal. The only way this is going to work for any amount of time is if it's organized like modern terrorist cells, but that's assuming a lot of steps between angry students staging demonstrations and covert operatives.
      - paganel 4y ago
        > There's surveillance cameras on every corner Yeah, that's a big no-no, I'm starting to realise it more and more. I honestly don't know if there's a solution to it. I remember leaving some piece of advice about 10 years ago on this forum about how best to attend an anti-government protest without getting into potential trouble afterwards (in the context of these protests [1]). My advice back then was to take a tram/bus to about 2 or 3 stations away from the location of the protests themselves, and then to walk to said location, that way one would have avoided the security cameras located at the metro stations or in some buses back then. Nowadays, unfortunately, that piece of advice is null because there are cameras actually everywhere (including at the location of the protests), and the government, if it so desires, has access to them almost at will. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_protests
        godelski 4y ago
        Not to mention that it isn't uncommon for the government to fly planes in the sky with cameras. These can track quite far.
- jjav 4y ago
  > Doing things in person, with offline techniques. Also be sure that nobody carries cellphones into in-person meetings, otherwise location correlation will associate them.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    > Also be sure that nobody carries cellphones into in-person meetings, otherwise location correlation will associate them. Correct. Which is why it's good to start cultivating the habits now of "not always having your phone with you, powered on, or connected to the network." If you turn it off right before going somewhere, and that's the only place it's ever off, well, huh. That's interesting. If you're cultivating the forgetful 70 year old approach to cell phones of "I don't know where I left it and I think the battery is dead," so much the better.

godelski 4y ago

> because once either an endpoint is compromised, or a tap is within range, you're still giving your adversaries everything they could desire This is hogwash because it is the wrong threat model. The encryption in this kind of communication is nearly pointless. If you're trying to organize a protest where you have to be messaging 100+ people then there's no way you can vet everyone. There's going to be a mole. In fact, we saw this with some of the militias at Jan 6th. Despite using Signal their texts got turned over. You just have to turn one person to compromise the system. Would I rather have the communications encrypted? Hell yeah. I'm that annoying friend that makes everyone use Signal. But it is absurd to think that wire tapped mass communication is worse than no mass communication. Revolutions and protests are won my shear mass. They often show their faces and are demonstrating in a public space (where there are often plenty of cameras: CCT, Police, and the protestors themselves!), so there's no concern about privacy already. Many get arrested, you can't arrest a large group. Arresting everyone would be nearly impossible. Furthermore, people still use covert speech. People are doing it in Iran right now. People are doing it on highly censored platforms like WeChat. Hell, there's covert speech on Twitter. There's definitely an advantage to using phones rather than going down to the public square and organizing that way. If you think everything is/was organized in back rooms and in complete secrecy, you're gravely misinformed at how these things work in reality. You have the wrong threat model.