9 ms·

Snowden on the Lightning Network on Nostr

77 points by ca98am79 4y ago

lern_too_spel 4y ago
Every time he opens his mouth, I understand why he so completely misunderstood the PRISM slides he leaked. The future of money isn't going to be based on a system that requires 7 billion people to set up a lightning channel at a throughput of 3 transactions per second, unless this future of money is ~100 years from now. It's utterly naïve to expect that cross-border payments will remain unregulated on these networks, given how straightforward it is to regulate.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Misunderstanding intentional zero days for one secretive government agency, sure.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    PRISM doesn't have anything to do with zero days.
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Sorry confused that with something else. Still mass surveillance is OK for you?
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        PRISM doesn't have anything to do with mass surveillance.
        A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Um.. I nodded with your first response ( zero days ) as it was accurate, but this may be taking it a little too far. If PRISM has nothing to do with mass surveillance, how would you define it?
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        A data ingestion system for targeted (not mass) surveillance of particular Internet communication accounts (on US service providers) belonging to non-Americans living outside the US believed to have foreign intelligence value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696
        A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        I am hesitating to make a guess, but given various existing public lists of 'bad guys', it would be silly of me to assume that the targeted population has a smaller head count than those lists combined ( if not drastically extended ). If that is the case, the sheer number of those likely caught in that particular surveillance would likely be categorized as mass surveillance as opposed to targeted. I get that each industry likes to play with definitions, but you don't get to throw a grenade into lake and call it traditional fishing as it was always intended. Or are they are considered targeted, because they are on the list and the list just keeps growing? The whole conversation is silly. If you even buy this particular story ( we only look at accounts of non-Americans ), it gets dismantled rather quickly the moment you try to go through a basic thought exercise of how you would sift that data and ensure no 'foreign intelligence of value' was lost. The how is simple. We take everything in. That is the definition of mass surveillance. And before we get into 'well, none of that was ever disclosed', I would like to turn your attention to the one of those few times, when IC had a chance to come clean and chose not to[1] and lie in front of congress. Good times. In other words, I can't really take their words at face value. All this is before we get to Snowden and his revelations. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/james-clappers-least-untruthful-statement-to-the-senate/2013/06/11/e50677a8-d2d8-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/james...
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        > If that is the case, the sheer number of those likely caught in that particular surveillance would likely be categorized as mass surveillance No need to speculate. The internet companies that provide this data publish transparency reports showing ranges for how many accounts are affected. It's a small fraction of a percent. > The how is simple. We take everything in. That is illegal, and there is no evidence of that happening. PRISM, the program that we're talking about in particular, explicitly isn't that according to Snowden's documents and the declassified documents. > when IC had a chance to come clean and chose not to He came clean right after and declassified a bunch of documents on that phone metadata program (https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2013/item/908-dni-clapper-declassifies-and-releases-telephone-metadata-collection-documents https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-...). Remember, the line of questioning was about if the NSA builds dossiers on Americans, which it doesn't do. The questions then pivoted to whether it collects any information at all about Americans, which would include the phone metadata collection > I can't really take their words at face value You don't have to. There have been several leaks, including Snowden's massive leak, showing that the NSA doesn't do this. There is also the law, which says the NSA can't do this, and there is congressional oversight from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which ensures that the NSA doesn't do this. If what you claim was happening, leakers would be sure to leak that first over anything else because it is unquestionably illegal.
- danielEM 4y ago
  That guy is not objective as his life depends on good will of russian govt. I think he is playing "nicest" possible according to conditions he lives in, but at the end he has to "bend". Russia have a lot of difficulties with transferring money to and from abroad so it is kind of "natural" way for them to go into "promoting" something that can't be that easily controlled and tracked (yet).
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Eh. Sure, but do you remember why he was effectively forced to stay in Russia ( although with the benefit of hindsight, this may have worked out better for him than he initially anticipated ). Do you remember how US, allegedly, forced down an airplane over EU[1]? None of this happened in a vacuum and while I do not automatically subscribe to this particular 'app', I do not dismiss it purely based on the messenger. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
    - UberFly 4y ago
      Eh. Right but in this case you still have to take into account the messenger. He lives in a sobering reality and I'm sure everything he promotes and communicates he knows must walk a certain line.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Reality is we are in a proxy war with Russia ( some would argue we are past that ). The same reality that guides his actions guide actions of many entities in US ( note recent discussion of banning TikTok, but not FB, LinkedIn or other social media ). Naturally, some would argue that the comparison is not apt, but I would invite those to indicate why the comparison fails to expose the hollowness of those arguments. Naturally, others may feel a tinge of 'national fervor' and proclaim that no one tells me what to say, while immediately noticing that those that do not toe the official government line are brought to heel via more subtle means of coercion[1]. Those typically ask questions along the lines of whether I somehow equate US with Russia or China and suggest that , clearly, this is false equivalency. To those people I ask, how so? If we are all expected to toe the line, is it false at all? In short, I am not dismissing what you are saying, but how exactly is it that different from US? There are topics that were entirely verbotten not that long ago ( Foreign Policy discussions were fairly carefully left undebated with exceptions of professional diplomats ) and even today there are topics you simply cannot discuss openly, because you will be automatically banned/shadow banned/restricted/ridiculed in the digital world if you are lucky and doxxed in real world along with other nasty real world consequences if you are not. If anyone lives in a sobering reality, it is anyone looking at the world through the lens of an alien, who is slowly wondering if he belongs to the same species. edit: changed professional diplomats line; reads a little better [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- tossl568 4y ago
  Yes it is. And yes it will.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    The future of the global economy is being actively shaped in emerging power centers in Eurasia/BRICS+, not by idealistic libertarians in the West.
    - elefanten 4y ago
      Care to elaborate? What activities or policies from Eurasia/BRICS+ are you referring to?
      - pphysch 4y ago
        Zoltan Poszar lays it out clearly: https://plus2.credit-suisse.com/shorturlpdf.html?v=5h1o-8SW-V&t=-6f9o9gxfcir9ldit6fbbldzzx https://plus2.credit-suisse.com/shorturlpdf.html?v=5h1o-8SW-... The url/page looks dodgy but you can confirm it's CS.
    - friend_and_foe 4y ago
      Power centers have to contend with the largest source of power, the human population of the world. They go to great lengths to prevent it from being coordinated by dividing populations, and they do exercise true power, but at the end of the day they still have to react to what people want and do. If people begin to use bitcoin and the like, they'll find a way to preserve what they can of their power in that environment. They're not omnipotent, they don't win every fight they take on.
      - pphysch 4y ago
        There are all sorts of ideologies (including the one you describe) contingent on the masses spontaneously, and effectively, coordinating in pursuit of a common goal. However, they never describe how this will occur, except by some miracle. Practically, you'd need to control a sizeable chunk of the global media, internet, etc. It's especially ironic coming from libertarian circles, because hyperindividualists pride themselves on not participating in mass psychology.
- vkou 4y ago
  > I understand why he so completely misunderstood the PRISM slides he leaked. I wouldn't hold it against him, most of the tech community completely misunderstood those slides, too. PRISM was... A web front-end that would produce warrants, that would be served to the various internet companies, who would respond to them by providing the information requested. [1] But half the people in the tech community seem to think that it was some magical all-seeing-eye-of-Sauron that had backdoors and zero-day-exploits embedded in every webservice we use, where some spook could press a button, and your texts and emails and photos would immediately appear for him. The NSA also did things like spy on unencrypted cross-data-center traffic (SSL added and removed here ;-) ), and use zero-days against people and organizations, but that wasn't part of PRISM. [1] There's a lot to complain about, here, but its all splitting hairs about particular legal questions (FISA courts, whether the firms in question were pushing back on these warrants enough, etc), and agency mandates.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    > PRISM was... A web front-end that would produce warrants, that would be served to the various internet companies, who would respond to them by providing the information requested. [1] > But half the people in the tech community seem to think that it was some magical all-seeing-eye-of-Sauron that had backdoors and zero-day-exploits embedded in every webservice we use Those two are literally the same. The former is worse even, since there is no escaping from it - one way or the other they will get your data over some service you used or had to use at a point in history. The latter can be avoided in many ways.
    - vkou 4y ago
      No, one of them is done through the framework of law, the other one is just banditry. Like, you may not like the idea that the police can serve warrants, or that there are NSLs or a FISA court, but the agency was very much following the rules there. Rules can be challenged in court, rules can be changed.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    PRISM wasn't even that. It was an ingestion pipeline for data that was collected by the FBI (which is shown right there on the slide, already having the systems integrations with the providers to collect this data for warranted wiretaps on specific Americans) via Section 702 orders for the data of specific accounts known to belong to non-US citizens living outside the US suspected of being of national security interest. Snowden thought it allowed the NSA to read anybody's email, which of course is nonsense. He insisted that Gellman print those slides immediately, thinking he had discovered something obviously illegal, but Gellman wanted to verify his understanding first (https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edward-snowden-leaked-top-secret-national-security-agency-documents-showing-how-us-was-spying-its-citizens-heres-what-happened-next/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edwa...), causing Snowden to panic and bring in the undereducated Greenwald, who is prone to believe any conspiracy. In the meantime, his location had been discovered, so he shared information with the Chinese government about which Chinese networks had been compromised and when in a failed attempt to get asylum in Hong Kong (https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusiv...). This peabrain now finds himself stuck in Russia because he couldn't understand basic concepts spelled out in the documents he had access to (and had failed a test on those concepts not very long before, so the fact that he didn't understand them wasn't news to him). Now he's here again telling us about the future of money without understanding how any of it works.
- jonathan-adly 4y ago
  The Bitcoin base chain can handle about 7 transactions per second, lighting theoretical upper limit is up to 1,000,000 transactions per second. You can use lighting without managing a node yourself. There are even projects[0] in development that allows for community custody, so it stays trustless even when using a custodian. 0: https://fedimint.org/ https://fedimint.org/
  - legutierr 4y ago
    I think what OP is saying is that onboarding all of humanity onto the lightning network would exceed the capacity of the Bitcoin network. Yes, once everyone is onboarded onto lightning the 1,000,000 tps bandwidth would apply. But to benefit from that, at least one payment channel per person would have to be written to the Bitcoin blockchain—a process that would take at minimum 30 years if all of humanity is to be on-boarded—and would more likely take several centuries, considering that those payment channels would also be competing with other bitcoin traffic. Also consider that the security model of the lightning network requires that fraud penalties need to be written to the blockchain within a certain time window if a fraud is to be reversed. A clogged Bitcoin network where transactions are waiting too long to be added to the blockchain—or where blockchain fees are too high to justify adding a fraud-penalty transaction to the blockchain—would result in the entire security model breaking down.
    - narrator 4y ago
      Most small transactions would be via lightning channels between exchange providers. Basically, whomever was running the backend of the wallet app would be an exchange provider. In an ideal world, people would keep their long term savings in other instruments like bonds or even gold and keep day to day cash in exchange providers. Yes, they would be trusted, but not a lot. I think the fees on the Blockchain would be substantial enough that most people wouldn't be using it for coffee and it would only be for bank to bank transactions of these exchange providers. 7 transactions a second would mean 604k transactions a day which is a reasonable number for major counterparties with more than about 35 btc each. (21M/604k)
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago
jacooper 4y ago
Huh, didn't know that Nostr already had a UI, and good looking one too. Is snowden also on Activitypub?
- anonporridge 4y ago
  Nostr is just a protocol, and there are already many different implemented clients to interface with it. https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr#clients https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr#clients
legutierr 4y ago
How does someone use lightning on Nostr? I see a lightning link marked "Tip" on his profile page, but that seems to point to a plugin that you have to install in your browser: https://getalby.com/ https://getalby.com/. Is there some lower-level integration with lightning within Nostr, or is this it?
- kristianp 4y ago
  It would make sense that it requires a browser plugin to make integration seamless. Theres a popular plugin for Ethereum too.
- bubersson 4y ago
  It depends on which Nostr client you use? When you click on the "Tip" button it should give you couple options, like showing lightning QR code that you can scan with any lightning wallet, opening your wallet directly, or opening the extension (Alby is the main one).
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  I just generated an invoice from my Bluewallet, and posted that link in a post on Nostr. It starts with a lndhub://c98830f5cd81..... And within 2 minutes, people were tipping me Sats. So... profit?
  - kiwiidb 4y ago
    [flagged]
fefe23 4y ago
Uh I'm sorry but what makes you claim that that is Snowden? I see a rambling post by "Curly Cockroach". Nothing there says Snowden or I'm missing it.
- cypherpunks01 4y ago
  I think it's because Snowden sent out his public key to this account, on his twitter account: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1617623779626352640 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1617623779626352640
- anonporridge 4y ago
  It looks like this particular client gives account random names until it resolves their chosen name. It took several seconds for me for the name Snowden and his picture to pop up. Nostr is still quite rough, but improving fast.
lottin 4y ago
Not this nonsense again... the reason we don't have borderless payments isn't because we don't have the technology. It's because we don't want borderless payments. That's why nations set up borders in the first place.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  Who's "we"? Maybe you don't want borderless payments, you're in good company along with Xi Jinping, the Venezuelan government and the Ayatollah of Iran. Those of us that want to be the arbiters of our own lives are very happy having the capability to transact with whomever we want. I'd wager that that is the majority of human beings on this planet.
  - lottin 4y ago
    Okay, but be honest and call it for what it is — a tool to evade financial regulations. 'Borderless payments' is shameless cynicism. It's like calling illegal border crossings 'borderless travel'.
    - branon 4y ago
      And what of the people who crossed freely before your cabal constructed imaginary "borders" on someone else's land? Rules and laws are merely suggestions. I think and live on my own, and follow laws insofar as they benefit myself and others. Show me a tool used to undermine an unjust law, and I'll gladly employ it should the need arise. I'll accept the consequences too, in this venture or any other.
      - lottin 4y ago
        Good... I don't have a problem with that. I only have a problem with false advertising.
    - friend_and_foe 4y ago
      No, for me at least, and for most others I'd bet, it's simply about being able to engage in commerce with other people without an arbiter in the middle. Something like cash or commodity money, which was the norm for all of human history until very recently.
dmje 4y ago
Can someone explainlikeimfive please? What is nostr? What is iris? Decentralised matrixy thing? Something else? Should I care? Thksx
- janandonly 4y ago
  This website, Iris.to, is one of several clients that all run on the open protocol Nostr. Nostr is like SMTP: it's just a protocol that you are free to build software for.
  - dmje 4y ago
    Ok, thank you, appreciate it :-)
mypastself 4y ago
Anyone have a nice an easy explanation of whatever this is? Sounds like ActivityPub, but it’s also used as an extra layer on top of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network? Someone in the comments also mentions onion routing?
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  It's not like ActivityPub, and it doesn't use lightning as part of the transport on the network. It's basically a public key addressed messaging protocol that uses relays to complete transport. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
- interface1860 4y ago
  This blog posts gives and introduction to Nostr and how to use it: https://blog.getalby.com/how-to-use-nostr-with-the-alby-extension/ https://blog.getalby.com/how-to-use-nostr-with-the-alby-exte... It is recommended to managed your private key externally (e.g. with a browser extension) and not hand it over to a Nostr app for signing messages on the network.
janandonly 4y ago
I see a lot of question here and will try to answer them all in one big go: 1. What is Nostr? > Nostr is short for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". Nostr is the simplest open protocol that can create a censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all. See also https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr 2. How do I start using Nostr? > Since it's an open protocol, everyone could (and quite a few people and teams do) build their own client for using Nostr. > If you want to try it out on an iPhone, iPad or macOS, try Damus. It's a Twitter-style iOS client. Link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/CLwjLxWl https://testflight.apple.com/join/CLwjLxWl > Or simply log-in via one of several frontends what work in a browser, such as: https://hamstr.to/home https://hamstr.to/home 3. Nostr is new and small, does anybody really use it? > From December 13th to January 10th, the number of public key identities interacting with Nostr jumped from ~700 to ~250,000 Yes, you read that right, the number of identities increased >30,000%. You can check for yourself current statistics on usage here: https://nostr.io/stats https://nostr.io/stats 4. How does it differ from ActivityPub? > ActivityPub, and especially Mastodon, have been in the news a lot lately as possible replacements for, among other things, Twitter. The problem with ActivityPub is that you need to have an account on a instance that can censor contend and even block a user. When you are kicked off an ActivityPub instance, all your data is gone as well. Nostr is much simpeler: every post you make is encrypted via public key cryptography. You can either run your own relay or hook into one of several existing once. Even if a relay were to block you, it's trivially easy to switch to another one. Since you can post messages via multiple relays in one go, you might not even realise one has gone off-line or started blocking you. For a comparison with ActivityPub, Twitter, Secure ScuttleButt, see also: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#this-is-needed-because-other-solutions-are-broken https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#this-is-needed-becau...
janandonly 4y ago
How does Nostr work? (source:https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#how-does-nostr-work https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#how-does-nostr-work) * There are two components: clients and relays. Each user runs a client. Anyone can run a relay. * Every user is identified by a public key. Every post is signed. Every client validates these signatures. * Clients fetch data from relays of their choice and publish data to other relays of their choice. A relay doesn't talk to another relay, only directly to users. * For example, to "follow" someone a user just instructs their client to query the relays it knows for posts from that public key. * On startup, a client queries data from all relays it knows for all users it follows (for example, all updates from the last day), then displays that data to the user chronologically. * A "post" can contain any kind of structured data, but the most used ones are going to find their way into the standard so all clients and relays can handle them seamlessly.
- legutierr 4y ago
  > A relay doesn't talk to another relay, only directly to users. Is this universally the case? I'm sure a relay could be built that pulls messages from other relays and shares them with its own clients.
  - leishman 4y ago
    Yes relays could talk also serve as a client and subscribe to other relays. Nothing stopping them from doing this
  - fancy_pantser 4y ago
    They could, but it would be against the fundamental philosophy: > Relays don't talk to each other. Only the relays you are connected to will receive and store your events. This is an important aspect of Nostr. Relays don't communicate between them. For this reason, you should connect to as many relays as you want to send your data to.
fullsend 4y ago
Usage numbers to me mean nothing here because in my mind it’s the same 1,000,000 people using Nostr, setting up Mastadon instances, running crypto mining nodes, whatever else. There are two kinds of users - people who care about what window system their OS uses, and people who don’t even know what that means. One group uses every FOSS tool they can, the other doesn’t care at all. You don’t need to get the one kind of user, you need the other.
- alangibson 4y ago
  This is true, for a while. Those hard core geeks occasionally incubate technologies to the point that they become easy and useful enough that they break out into the mainstream. See: World Wide Web, eMail, etc.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Yep. This may be it. In my initial test I went from mild interest to posting in minutes. So far, the questions for mainstream people likely will be: -Can I delete it? -Can I cancel it? -Who do I complain to if things go wrong? I am not entirely sold yet, but the potential is definitely there.
cqwww 4y ago
I'm really bullish on nostr: https://krisconstable.com/check-out-the-nostr-protocol/ https://krisconstable.com/check-out-the-nostr-protocol/ If nothing else, know these two things: 1) It's a decentralized protocol, not a company or app -- there are man different clients that do completely different things on nostr, try them all and see which works best for you. 2) Unlike Twitter and Mastadon, the relay admins can not read your private DMs. If you want to generate a key pair, including a vanity one, and/or know how to NIP-05 validate it, to use nostr: https://krisconstable.com/generating-a-key-pair-with-nostr/ https://krisconstable.com/generating-a-key-pair-with-nostr/
- dTal 4y ago
  >Anyone can go to Damus Web for a world view... "Damus Web is down because there is someone trying to exploit browser loopholes to steal private keys. I would not recommend using a web client at this time. Damus iOS is not affected." >...or to give you a unique idea around things this protocol offers that others don’t, you can go to Damus webv2 and enter my public key "404 Not Found" Not an ideal onboarding experience.
pftg 4y ago
There is an irony here. Because in 2010 Bitcoin said the same that transactions should be cheap and fast, and now you see that they have failed to deliver that ;(
- pseudozach 4y ago
  Bitcoin transactions are cheap and fast but they are on Lightning (Layer-2 of Bitcoin stack).

77 points by ca98am79 4y ago

Every time he opens his mouth, I understand why he so completely misunderstood the PRISM slides he leaked. The future of money isn't going to be based on a system that requires 7 billion people to set up a lightning channel at a throughput of 3 transactions per second, unless this future of money is ~100 years from now. It's utterly naïve to expect that cross-border payments will remain unregulated on these networks, given how straightforward it is to regulate.

jacooper 4y ago
Misunderstanding intentional zero days for one secretive government agency, sure.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  PRISM doesn't have anything to do with zero days.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Sorry confused that with something else. Still mass surveillance is OK for you?
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      PRISM doesn't have anything to do with mass surveillance.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Um.. I nodded with your first response ( zero days ) as it was accurate, but this may be taking it a little too far. If PRISM has nothing to do with mass surveillance, how would you define it?
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        A data ingestion system for targeted (not mass) surveillance of particular Internet communication accounts (on US service providers) belonging to non-Americans living outside the US believed to have foreign intelligence value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696
        A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        I am hesitating to make a guess, but given various existing public lists of 'bad guys', it would be silly of me to assume that the targeted population has a smaller head count than those lists combined ( if not drastically extended ). If that is the case, the sheer number of those likely caught in that particular surveillance would likely be categorized as mass surveillance as opposed to targeted. I get that each industry likes to play with definitions, but you don't get to throw a grenade into lake and call it traditional fishing as it was always intended. Or are they are considered targeted, because they are on the list and the list just keeps growing? The whole conversation is silly. If you even buy this particular story ( we only look at accounts of non-Americans ), it gets dismantled rather quickly the moment you try to go through a basic thought exercise of how you would sift that data and ensure no 'foreign intelligence of value' was lost. The how is simple. We take everything in. That is the definition of mass surveillance. And before we get into 'well, none of that was ever disclosed', I would like to turn your attention to the one of those few times, when IC had a chance to come clean and chose not to[1] and lie in front of congress. Good times. In other words, I can't really take their words at face value. All this is before we get to Snowden and his revelations. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/james-clappers-least-untruthful-statement-to-the-senate/2013/06/11/e50677a8-d2d8-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_blog.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/james...
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        > If that is the case, the sheer number of those likely caught in that particular surveillance would likely be categorized as mass surveillance No need to speculate. The internet companies that provide this data publish transparency reports showing ranges for how many accounts are affected. It's a small fraction of a percent. > The how is simple. We take everything in. That is illegal, and there is no evidence of that happening. PRISM, the program that we're talking about in particular, explicitly isn't that according to Snowden's documents and the declassified documents. > when IC had a chance to come clean and chose not to He came clean right after and declassified a bunch of documents on that phone metadata program (https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2013/item/908-dni-clapper-declassifies-and-releases-telephone-metadata-collection-documents https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-...). Remember, the line of questioning was about if the NSA builds dossiers on Americans, which it doesn't do. The questions then pivoted to whether it collects any information at all about Americans, which would include the phone metadata collection > I can't really take their words at face value You don't have to. There have been several leaks, including Snowden's massive leak, showing that the NSA doesn't do this. There is also the law, which says the NSA can't do this, and there is congressional oversight from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which ensures that the NSA doesn't do this. If what you claim was happening, leakers would be sure to leak that first over anything else because it is unquestionably illegal.
danielEM 4y ago
That guy is not objective as his life depends on good will of russian govt. I think he is playing "nicest" possible according to conditions he lives in, but at the end he has to "bend". Russia have a lot of difficulties with transferring money to and from abroad so it is kind of "natural" way for them to go into "promoting" something that can't be that easily controlled and tracked (yet).
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Eh. Sure, but do you remember why he was effectively forced to stay in Russia ( although with the benefit of hindsight, this may have worked out better for him than he initially anticipated ). Do you remember how US, allegedly, forced down an airplane over EU[1]? None of this happened in a vacuum and while I do not automatically subscribe to this particular 'app', I do not dismiss it purely based on the messenger. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
  - UberFly 4y ago
    Eh. Right but in this case you still have to take into account the messenger. He lives in a sobering reality and I'm sure everything he promotes and communicates he knows must walk a certain line.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      Reality is we are in a proxy war with Russia ( some would argue we are past that ). The same reality that guides his actions guide actions of many entities in US ( note recent discussion of banning TikTok, but not FB, LinkedIn or other social media ). Naturally, some would argue that the comparison is not apt, but I would invite those to indicate why the comparison fails to expose the hollowness of those arguments. Naturally, others may feel a tinge of 'national fervor' and proclaim that no one tells me what to say, while immediately noticing that those that do not toe the official government line are brought to heel via more subtle means of coercion[1]. Those typically ask questions along the lines of whether I somehow equate US with Russia or China and suggest that , clearly, this is false equivalency. To those people I ask, how so? If we are all expected to toe the line, is it false at all? In short, I am not dismissing what you are saying, but how exactly is it that different from US? There are topics that were entirely verbotten not that long ago ( Foreign Policy discussions were fairly carefully left undebated with exceptions of professional diplomats ) and even today there are topics you simply cannot discuss openly, because you will be automatically banned/shadow banned/restricted/ridiculed in the digital world if you are lucky and doxxed in real world along with other nasty real world consequences if you are not. If anyone lives in a sobering reality, it is anyone looking at the world through the lens of an alien, who is slowly wondering if he belongs to the same species. edit: changed professional diplomats line; reads a little better [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
tossl568 4y ago
Yes it is. And yes it will.
- pphysch 4y ago
  The future of the global economy is being actively shaped in emerging power centers in Eurasia/BRICS+, not by idealistic libertarians in the West.
  - elefanten 4y ago
    Care to elaborate? What activities or policies from Eurasia/BRICS+ are you referring to?
    - pphysch 4y ago
      Zoltan Poszar lays it out clearly: https://plus2.credit-suisse.com/shorturlpdf.html?v=5h1o-8SW-V&t=-6f9o9gxfcir9ldit6fbbldzzx https://plus2.credit-suisse.com/shorturlpdf.html?v=5h1o-8SW-... The url/page looks dodgy but you can confirm it's CS.
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    Power centers have to contend with the largest source of power, the human population of the world. They go to great lengths to prevent it from being coordinated by dividing populations, and they do exercise true power, but at the end of the day they still have to react to what people want and do. If people begin to use bitcoin and the like, they'll find a way to preserve what they can of their power in that environment. They're not omnipotent, they don't win every fight they take on.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      There are all sorts of ideologies (including the one you describe) contingent on the masses spontaneously, and effectively, coordinating in pursuit of a common goal. However, they never describe how this will occur, except by some miracle. Practically, you'd need to control a sizeable chunk of the global media, internet, etc. It's especially ironic coming from libertarian circles, because hyperindividualists pride themselves on not participating in mass psychology.
vkou 4y ago
> I understand why he so completely misunderstood the PRISM slides he leaked. I wouldn't hold it against him, most of the tech community completely misunderstood those slides, too. PRISM was... A web front-end that would produce warrants, that would be served to the various internet companies, who would respond to them by providing the information requested. [1] But half the people in the tech community seem to think that it was some magical all-seeing-eye-of-Sauron that had backdoors and zero-day-exploits embedded in every webservice we use, where some spook could press a button, and your texts and emails and photos would immediately appear for him. The NSA also did things like spy on unencrypted cross-data-center traffic (SSL added and removed here ;-) ), and use zero-days against people and organizations, but that wasn't part of PRISM. [1] There's a lot to complain about, here, but its all splitting hairs about particular legal questions (FISA courts, whether the firms in question were pushing back on these warrants enough, etc), and agency mandates.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > PRISM was... A web front-end that would produce warrants, that would be served to the various internet companies, who would respond to them by providing the information requested. [1] > But half the people in the tech community seem to think that it was some magical all-seeing-eye-of-Sauron that had backdoors and zero-day-exploits embedded in every webservice we use Those two are literally the same. The former is worse even, since there is no escaping from it - one way or the other they will get your data over some service you used or had to use at a point in history. The latter can be avoided in many ways.
  - vkou 4y ago
    No, one of them is done through the framework of law, the other one is just banditry. Like, you may not like the idea that the police can serve warrants, or that there are NSLs or a FISA court, but the agency was very much following the rules there. Rules can be challenged in court, rules can be changed.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  PRISM wasn't even that. It was an ingestion pipeline for data that was collected by the FBI (which is shown right there on the slide, already having the systems integrations with the providers to collect this data for warranted wiretaps on specific Americans) via Section 702 orders for the data of specific accounts known to belong to non-US citizens living outside the US suspected of being of national security interest. Snowden thought it allowed the NSA to read anybody's email, which of course is nonsense. He insisted that Gellman print those slides immediately, thinking he had discovered something obviously illegal, but Gellman wanted to verify his understanding first (https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edward-snowden-leaked-top-secret-national-security-agency-documents-showing-how-us-was-spying-its-citizens-heres-what-happened-next/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/11/2013-edwa...), causing Snowden to panic and bring in the undereducated Greenwald, who is prone to believe any conspiracy. In the meantime, his location had been discovered, so he shared information with the Chinese government about which Chinese networks had been compromised and when in a failed attempt to get asylum in Hong Kong (https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusiv...). This peabrain now finds himself stuck in Russia because he couldn't understand basic concepts spelled out in the documents he had access to (and had failed a test on those concepts not very long before, so the fact that he didn't understand them wasn't news to him). Now he's here again telling us about the future of money without understanding how any of it works.
jonathan-adly 4y ago
The Bitcoin base chain can handle about 7 transactions per second, lighting theoretical upper limit is up to 1,000,000 transactions per second. You can use lighting without managing a node yourself. There are even projects[0] in development that allows for community custody, so it stays trustless even when using a custodian. 0: https://fedimint.org/ https://fedimint.org/
- legutierr 4y ago
  I think what OP is saying is that onboarding all of humanity onto the lightning network would exceed the capacity of the Bitcoin network. Yes, once everyone is onboarded onto lightning the 1,000,000 tps bandwidth would apply. But to benefit from that, at least one payment channel per person would have to be written to the Bitcoin blockchain—a process that would take at minimum 30 years if all of humanity is to be on-boarded—and would more likely take several centuries, considering that those payment channels would also be competing with other bitcoin traffic. Also consider that the security model of the lightning network requires that fraud penalties need to be written to the blockchain within a certain time window if a fraud is to be reversed. A clogged Bitcoin network where transactions are waiting too long to be added to the blockchain—or where blockchain fees are too high to justify adding a fraud-penalty transaction to the blockchain—would result in the entire security model breaking down.
  - narrator 4y ago
    Most small transactions would be via lightning channels between exchange providers. Basically, whomever was running the backend of the wallet app would be an exchange provider. In an ideal world, people would keep their long term savings in other instruments like bonds or even gold and keep day to day cash in exchange providers. Yes, they would be trusted, but not a lot. I think the fees on the Blockchain would be substantial enough that most people wouldn't be using it for coffee and it would only be for bank to bank transactions of these exchange providers. 7 transactions a second would mean 604k transactions a day which is a reasonable number for major counterparties with more than about 35 btc each. (21M/604k)
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago

jacooper 4y ago

Huh, didn't know that Nostr already had a UI, and good looking one too. Is snowden also on Activitypub?

anonporridge 4y ago
Nostr is just a protocol, and there are already many different implemented clients to interface with it. https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr#clients https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr#clients

legutierr 4y ago

How does someone use lightning on Nostr? I see a lightning link marked "Tip" on his profile page, but that seems to point to a plugin that you have to install in your browser: https://getalby.com/ https://getalby.com/. Is there some lower-level integration with lightning within Nostr, or is this it?

kristianp 4y ago
It would make sense that it requires a browser plugin to make integration seamless. Theres a popular plugin for Ethereum too.
bubersson 4y ago
It depends on which Nostr client you use? When you click on the "Tip" button it should give you couple options, like showing lightning QR code that you can scan with any lightning wallet, opening your wallet directly, or opening the extension (Alby is the main one).
zikduruqe 4y ago
I just generated an invoice from my Bluewallet, and posted that link in a post on Nostr. It starts with a lndhub://c98830f5cd81..... And within 2 minutes, people were tipping me Sats. So... profit?
- kiwiidb 4y ago
  [flagged]

fefe23 4y ago

Uh I'm sorry but what makes you claim that that is Snowden? I see a rambling post by "Curly Cockroach". Nothing there says Snowden or I'm missing it.

cypherpunks01 4y ago
I think it's because Snowden sent out his public key to this account, on his twitter account: https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1617623779626352640 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1617623779626352640
anonporridge 4y ago
It looks like this particular client gives account random names until it resolves their chosen name. It took several seconds for me for the name Snowden and his picture to pop up. Nostr is still quite rough, but improving fast.

lottin 4y ago

Not this nonsense again... the reason we don't have borderless payments isn't because we don't have the technology. It's because we don't want borderless payments. That's why nations set up borders in the first place.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
Who's "we"? Maybe you don't want borderless payments, you're in good company along with Xi Jinping, the Venezuelan government and the Ayatollah of Iran. Those of us that want to be the arbiters of our own lives are very happy having the capability to transact with whomever we want. I'd wager that that is the majority of human beings on this planet.
- lottin 4y ago
  Okay, but be honest and call it for what it is — a tool to evade financial regulations. 'Borderless payments' is shameless cynicism. It's like calling illegal border crossings 'borderless travel'.
  - branon 4y ago
    And what of the people who crossed freely before your cabal constructed imaginary "borders" on someone else's land? Rules and laws are merely suggestions. I think and live on my own, and follow laws insofar as they benefit myself and others. Show me a tool used to undermine an unjust law, and I'll gladly employ it should the need arise. I'll accept the consequences too, in this venture or any other.
    - lottin 4y ago
      Good... I don't have a problem with that. I only have a problem with false advertising.
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    No, for me at least, and for most others I'd bet, it's simply about being able to engage in commerce with other people without an arbiter in the middle. Something like cash or commodity money, which was the norm for all of human history until very recently.

dmje 4y ago

Can someone explainlikeimfive please? What is nostr? What is iris? Decentralised matrixy thing? Something else? Should I care? Thksx

janandonly 4y ago
This website, Iris.to, is one of several clients that all run on the open protocol Nostr. Nostr is like SMTP: it's just a protocol that you are free to build software for.
- dmje 4y ago
  Ok, thank you, appreciate it :-)

mypastself 4y ago

Anyone have a nice an easy explanation of whatever this is? Sounds like ActivityPub, but it’s also used as an extra layer on top of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network? Someone in the comments also mentions onion routing?

friend_and_foe 4y ago
It's not like ActivityPub, and it doesn't use lightning as part of the transport on the network. It's basically a public key addressed messaging protocol that uses relays to complete transport. https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr
interface1860 4y ago
This blog posts gives and introduction to Nostr and how to use it: https://blog.getalby.com/how-to-use-nostr-with-the-alby-extension/ https://blog.getalby.com/how-to-use-nostr-with-the-alby-exte... It is recommended to managed your private key externally (e.g. with a browser extension) and not hand it over to a Nostr app for signing messages on the network.

janandonly 4y ago

I see a lot of question here and will try to answer them all in one big go: 1. What is Nostr? > Nostr is short for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". Nostr is the simplest open protocol that can create a censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all. See also https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr 2. How do I start using Nostr? > Since it's an open protocol, everyone could (and quite a few people and teams do) build their own client for using Nostr. > If you want to try it out on an iPhone, iPad or macOS, try Damus. It's a Twitter-style iOS client. Link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/CLwjLxWl https://testflight.apple.com/join/CLwjLxWl > Or simply log-in via one of several frontends what work in a browser, such as: https://hamstr.to/home https://hamstr.to/home 3. Nostr is new and small, does anybody really use it? > From December 13th to January 10th, the number of public key identities interacting with Nostr jumped from ~700 to ~250,000 Yes, you read that right, the number of identities increased >30,000%. You can check for yourself current statistics on usage here: https://nostr.io/stats https://nostr.io/stats 4. How does it differ from ActivityPub? > ActivityPub, and especially Mastodon, have been in the news a lot lately as possible replacements for, among other things, Twitter. The problem with ActivityPub is that you need to have an account on a instance that can censor contend and even block a user. When you are kicked off an ActivityPub instance, all your data is gone as well. Nostr is much simpeler: every post you make is encrypted via public key cryptography. You can either run your own relay or hook into one of several existing once. Even if a relay were to block you, it's trivially easy to switch to another one. Since you can post messages via multiple relays in one go, you might not even realise one has gone off-line or started blocking you. For a comparison with ActivityPub, Twitter, Secure ScuttleButt, see also: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#this-is-needed-because-other-solutions-are-broken https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#this-is-needed-becau...

janandonly 4y ago

How does Nostr work? (source:https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#how-does-nostr-work https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr#how-does-nostr-work) * There are two components: clients and relays. Each user runs a client. Anyone can run a relay. * Every user is identified by a public key. Every post is signed. Every client validates these signatures. * Clients fetch data from relays of their choice and publish data to other relays of their choice. A relay doesn't talk to another relay, only directly to users. * For example, to "follow" someone a user just instructs their client to query the relays it knows for posts from that public key. * On startup, a client queries data from all relays it knows for all users it follows (for example, all updates from the last day), then displays that data to the user chronologically. * A "post" can contain any kind of structured data, but the most used ones are going to find their way into the standard so all clients and relays can handle them seamlessly.

legutierr 4y ago
> A relay doesn't talk to another relay, only directly to users. Is this universally the case? I'm sure a relay could be built that pulls messages from other relays and shares them with its own clients.
- leishman 4y ago
  Yes relays could talk also serve as a client and subscribe to other relays. Nothing stopping them from doing this
- fancy_pantser 4y ago
  They could, but it would be against the fundamental philosophy: > Relays don't talk to each other. Only the relays you are connected to will receive and store your events. This is an important aspect of Nostr. Relays don't communicate between them. For this reason, you should connect to as many relays as you want to send your data to.

fullsend 4y ago

Usage numbers to me mean nothing here because in my mind it’s the same 1,000,000 people using Nostr, setting up Mastadon instances, running crypto mining nodes, whatever else. There are two kinds of users - people who care about what window system their OS uses, and people who don’t even know what that means. One group uses every FOSS tool they can, the other doesn’t care at all. You don’t need to get the one kind of user, you need the other.

alangibson 4y ago
This is true, for a while. Those hard core geeks occasionally incubate technologies to the point that they become easy and useful enough that they break out into the mainstream. See: World Wide Web, eMail, etc.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Yep. This may be it. In my initial test I went from mild interest to posting in minutes. So far, the questions for mainstream people likely will be: -Can I delete it? -Can I cancel it? -Who do I complain to if things go wrong? I am not entirely sold yet, but the potential is definitely there.

cqwww 4y ago

I'm really bullish on nostr: https://krisconstable.com/check-out-the-nostr-protocol/ https://krisconstable.com/check-out-the-nostr-protocol/ If nothing else, know these two things: 1) It's a decentralized protocol, not a company or app -- there are man different clients that do completely different things on nostr, try them all and see which works best for you. 2) Unlike Twitter and Mastadon, the relay admins can not read your private DMs. If you want to generate a key pair, including a vanity one, and/or know how to NIP-05 validate it, to use nostr: https://krisconstable.com/generating-a-key-pair-with-nostr/ https://krisconstable.com/generating-a-key-pair-with-nostr/

dTal 4y ago
>Anyone can go to Damus Web for a world view... "Damus Web is down because there is someone trying to exploit browser loopholes to steal private keys. I would not recommend using a web client at this time. Damus iOS is not affected." >...or to give you a unique idea around things this protocol offers that others don’t, you can go to Damus webv2 and enter my public key "404 Not Found" Not an ideal onboarding experience.

pftg 4y ago

There is an irony here. Because in 2010 Bitcoin said the same that transactions should be cheap and fast, and now you see that they have failed to deliver that ;(

pseudozach 4y ago
Bitcoin transactions are cheap and fast but they are on Lightning (Layer-2 of Bitcoin stack).