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This have been on my mind recently about secure decentralized systems... but how do the devs cope with what they are doing would be most likely used for crimina

This have been on my mind recently about secure decentralized systems... but how do the devs cope with what they are doing would be most likely used for criminal stuff? And I'm not talking about pirated movies here. Feels like there is an idealistic view on secure tools ("we help people to rise up against regimes!", "say no to megacorps!") but in reality a huge chunk of use case would be straight up criminal. Make no mistake I'm not arguing against encryption or security, but still I'm thinking about this recently that how open source a lot of time ends up being used for very bad things and how might this can be mitigated. Or maybe we should just accept this as a necessary "side effect"?

drexlspivey 4y ago
How do telecommunications engineers cope with the fact that some times people use phones for crimes?
- jefftk 4y ago
  When you make a general purpose tool, sometimes people use it for harmful things, but the overall effect of telephones is clearly positive. On the other hand, when you make a decentralized encrypted tool in a space where other options already exist that handle the most common non-criminal use cases your balance of how much you are facilitating harmful vs beneficial use is pretty different. This doesn't mean that you should never create secure distributed tools, but it does mean that the trade-offs around them look pretty different from something like traditional phones.
capableweb 4y ago
You are raising a valid point, which does affect people who do work on encryption, security and protocols in general. You have to figure out if you think it's worth it or not. In the distant past, I was working on technology that aimed to avoid any sort of government control or inspection, and we frequently had in mind that what we were building could be used for bad just as much as it could be used for good. Ultimately, we decided it was worth it, after weighing the good against the bad.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
if i remember correctly the printing press was banned for a long time in turkey because they believed that would cause death to hand calligraphy workers. that might've been a good argument but the idea was more insidious. people would get fast access to knowledge and the government control would get less and less to what they could control. the same could've been said about telegraph or telephone when they first came out. telephone has been online for around 100 years or 150? it is centralized, every country IMO has wiretapping laws for law enforcement agencies but has that stopped criminals from using the tech? email must've felt the same, IM too. why should centralization be the panacea for everything? tomorrow android will be used by criminals to build their own crimeOS that is built on android><lineageOS and it is the single biggest criminal sindicate doing very nasty stuff. should android and lineage devs be concerned if a section of their users use it to build their own crimeOS that is made to evade police? more importantly, how are THEY responsible? one can argue, "well they should be responsible for their software if it falls into the wrong hands so they should build some sort of protection or backdoor for genuine law enforcement agencies".... would'nt this argument apply to knife makers too? what will they do? make you use the sharp edge in kitchen only by using NFC tags on the chopping board?
jazzyjackson 4y ago
it is idealism - which is to say, the righteousness of the cause (the right to keep and share secrets) outweighs the practical harms I consider dragnet surveillance to be more harmful to society overall than the existence of sex and drug trafficking
- immibis 4y ago
  Would you still consider it that way, if sex trafficking was much more prevalent? (BTW, it's probably more prevalent than you think)

drexlspivey 4y ago

How do telecommunications engineers cope with the fact that some times people use phones for crimes?

jefftk 4y ago
When you make a general purpose tool, sometimes people use it for harmful things, but the overall effect of telephones is clearly positive. On the other hand, when you make a decentralized encrypted tool in a space where other options already exist that handle the most common non-criminal use cases your balance of how much you are facilitating harmful vs beneficial use is pretty different. This doesn't mean that you should never create secure distributed tools, but it does mean that the trade-offs around them look pretty different from something like traditional phones.

capableweb 4y ago

You are raising a valid point, which does affect people who do work on encryption, security and protocols in general. You have to figure out if you think it's worth it or not. In the distant past, I was working on technology that aimed to avoid any sort of government control or inspection, and we frequently had in mind that what we were building could be used for bad just as much as it could be used for good. Ultimately, we decided it was worth it, after weighing the good against the bad.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago

if i remember correctly the printing press was banned for a long time in turkey because they believed that would cause death to hand calligraphy workers. that might've been a good argument but the idea was more insidious. people would get fast access to knowledge and the government control would get less and less to what they could control. the same could've been said about telegraph or telephone when they first came out. telephone has been online for around 100 years or 150? it is centralized, every country IMO has wiretapping laws for law enforcement agencies but has that stopped criminals from using the tech? email must've felt the same, IM too. why should centralization be the panacea for everything? tomorrow android will be used by criminals to build their own crimeOS that is built on android><lineageOS and it is the single biggest criminal sindicate doing very nasty stuff. should android and lineage devs be concerned if a section of their users use it to build their own crimeOS that is made to evade police? more importantly, how are THEY responsible? one can argue, "well they should be responsible for their software if it falls into the wrong hands so they should build some sort of protection or backdoor for genuine law enforcement agencies".... would'nt this argument apply to knife makers too? what will they do? make you use the sharp edge in kitchen only by using NFC tags on the chopping board?

jazzyjackson 4y ago

it is idealism - which is to say, the righteousness of the cause (the right to keep and share secrets) outweighs the practical harms I consider dragnet surveillance to be more harmful to society overall than the existence of sex and drug trafficking

immibis 4y ago
Would you still consider it that way, if sex trafficking was much more prevalent? (BTW, it's probably more prevalent than you think)