4 ms·

It’s fairly common, given the presence of Disroot and Riseup. The problem for political groups is that they can’t necessarily trust non-aligned hosts not to bet

It’s fairly common, given the presence of Disroot and Riseup. The problem for political groups is that they can’t necessarily trust non-aligned hosts not to betray them. A warrant is one thing, you have to comply regardless, but non-aligned hosts may hand over data upon request even if there is no warrant.

impossiblefork 2mo ago
Yeah, but it is possible to make distributed systems. I've written up a little toy in Erlang where you have lots of connections to peers and send dummy messages, all of the same size, to all your peers continuously and then, because of this, you can obviously send a message to whoever you like without anyone being able to know to whom you sent it. With a bit of extra delay you can add retransmission, and then you can have huge networks. Complete resistance to traffic analysis. The only thing you need to accept to have this kind of security is to accept that message timing might be 1/s, or 0.1/s, but for things like e-mail that isn't a problem at all. My system is not done. I had intended to finish it if ChatControl 2.0 passed, but since it didn't, and there's upon that a war on I didn't put it out, and I thought it was a bad idea to popularize this kind of thing since there was a war on, but it's quite straightforward. Many here could probably write something like it.
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  There are plenty of P2P and anonymous collaboration tools out there, but the problem for these groups is that members will use insecure tools unless they are as convenient and capable as what they are used to. This is the same reason that the government constantly screws up its own opsec. Nontechnical people in any group are a serious problem for maintaining security. (This is also why law enforcement concerns about encryption are overblown.)
  - impossiblefork 2mo ago
    Yes, but then you have to accept that they can't be part of a group that needs security. If they aren't willing to do things correctly, not be lazy etc., and you tell them that this means that adversaries will be able to pinpoint them, and pinpoint you and everybody else, and they don't express that they're going to take the effort to be reasonable, then maybe you shouldn't talk to them.
    - iamnothere 2mo ago
      True. If you look at the average person who gets involved in radical politics, many often have issues sticking to a strict security regime. I think this may be why “black bloc” groups and the like are normally smaller splinter groups within the larger movement. Garden variety protestors, activists, and local organizers are probably fine using something like Signal.
      - godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
        They are splinter groups because they are violent cowards who use mainstream protests (that might actually have a shot of convincing people of something) as a meat shield for their vandalism. Minneapolis showed us the way. Sandwich guy showed us the way. The civil rights movement showed us the way. Black bloc is embarrassing and associated with the consistent failures of post 60s left wing bubble politics. The most obviously incompetent right wing government in the United States in years, and we are talking about black bloc? How about getting someone capable to make an argument against them instead of resorting to street tactics - literally the one thing this administration is salivating for as it would offer them an opportunity at mainstream redemption. Left wing politics is truly so depressing. At this point I would respect a movement that openly argued/modeled a path for blue state secession more than the multitude of left wing degenerates who seem to have gotten their civics from V for Vendetta.
        StilesCrisis 2mo ago
        [flagged]
        iamnothere 2mo ago
        I mean, you’re not wrong, but that’s not really on topic. POSIWID applies to political groups as well. Real change would require hard work, vision, and group discipline. We don’t do that here!
- StilesCrisis 2mo ago
  Doesn't that scale up terribly? If everyone has 100 friends and is constantly pinging them every second, you're just flooding the internet with junk.
  - impossiblefork 2mo ago
    Yes, but it's fine. If you receive 10,000 messages per second, that's nothing. That means that you can have 10,000 people online simultaneously with 1 message per second and 100,000 people online simultaneously with 1 message every ten seconds even in the version where there is no retransmission.
godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
American companies have contested warrants have they not? The jump from request to warrant is not the major hurdle. Imo people often make the wrong tradeoff here. If the government really wants something jurisdictional questions will not stop them. You're actually inviting them to just steal it at that point. Better to keep things in the US where there will at least be a clear paper trail. And instead of wasting money on non-aligned infra budget for a half decent lawyer. American companies and citizens will have an easier time holding the American government accountable than "non-aligned" hosts. The current administration in particular is routinely embarrassed in the courts. Sometimes I read about left wing civic groups and their privacy efforts and it feels delusional. You would think many of them would relish a paper trail of persecution and the publicity of a victorious court battle. The US government will not be deterred because you are hosting something in Europe or your homegrown service. It's really a bit of a joke to think so. Plus what do you think is going to happen in two years? It feels like now is the time to lean into being on the shit list (if you can manage it - most of them are so ineffective they barely even register) so you can benefit when the tables turn in two years.
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  To be fair, most US companies aren’t particularly sympathetic to radical politics, and many will cave in with only a little pressure. There may also be concerns of a secret FISA warrant. The downside of hosting overseas is that you’re exposing yourself to the full NSA toolkit, without the usual fig leaf of legal protection. Dark web P2P is probably the best option. You forget that a portion of the radical left truly believes that there won’t be an election.
  - godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
    [flagged]
  - autoexec 2mo ago
    > The downside of hosting overseas is that you’re exposing yourself to the full NSA toolkit, without the usual fig leaf of legal protection. We know that the NSA is spying on every American, and every communication they make no what the source or destination. Sending traffic overseas might cause the collected data to surface more often or be subjected to additional scrutiny but it's all going to be collected and scanned over either way.

impossiblefork 2mo ago

Yeah, but it is possible to make distributed systems. I've written up a little toy in Erlang where you have lots of connections to peers and send dummy messages, all of the same size, to all your peers continuously and then, because of this, you can obviously send a message to whoever you like without anyone being able to know to whom you sent it. With a bit of extra delay you can add retransmission, and then you can have huge networks. Complete resistance to traffic analysis. The only thing you need to accept to have this kind of security is to accept that message timing might be 1/s, or 0.1/s, but for things like e-mail that isn't a problem at all. My system is not done. I had intended to finish it if ChatControl 2.0 passed, but since it didn't, and there's upon that a war on I didn't put it out, and I thought it was a bad idea to popularize this kind of thing since there was a war on, but it's quite straightforward. Many here could probably write something like it.

iamnothere 2mo ago
There are plenty of P2P and anonymous collaboration tools out there, but the problem for these groups is that members will use insecure tools unless they are as convenient and capable as what they are used to. This is the same reason that the government constantly screws up its own opsec. Nontechnical people in any group are a serious problem for maintaining security. (This is also why law enforcement concerns about encryption are overblown.)
- impossiblefork 2mo ago
  Yes, but then you have to accept that they can't be part of a group that needs security. If they aren't willing to do things correctly, not be lazy etc., and you tell them that this means that adversaries will be able to pinpoint them, and pinpoint you and everybody else, and they don't express that they're going to take the effort to be reasonable, then maybe you shouldn't talk to them.
  - iamnothere 2mo ago
    True. If you look at the average person who gets involved in radical politics, many often have issues sticking to a strict security regime. I think this may be why “black bloc” groups and the like are normally smaller splinter groups within the larger movement. Garden variety protestors, activists, and local organizers are probably fine using something like Signal.
    - godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
      They are splinter groups because they are violent cowards who use mainstream protests (that might actually have a shot of convincing people of something) as a meat shield for their vandalism. Minneapolis showed us the way. Sandwich guy showed us the way. The civil rights movement showed us the way. Black bloc is embarrassing and associated with the consistent failures of post 60s left wing bubble politics. The most obviously incompetent right wing government in the United States in years, and we are talking about black bloc? How about getting someone capable to make an argument against them instead of resorting to street tactics - literally the one thing this administration is salivating for as it would offer them an opportunity at mainstream redemption. Left wing politics is truly so depressing. At this point I would respect a movement that openly argued/modeled a path for blue state secession more than the multitude of left wing degenerates who seem to have gotten their civics from V for Vendetta.
      - StilesCrisis 2mo ago
        [flagged]
      - iamnothere 2mo ago
        I mean, you’re not wrong, but that’s not really on topic. POSIWID applies to political groups as well. Real change would require hard work, vision, and group discipline. We don’t do that here!
StilesCrisis 2mo ago
Doesn't that scale up terribly? If everyone has 100 friends and is constantly pinging them every second, you're just flooding the internet with junk.
- impossiblefork 2mo ago
  Yes, but it's fine. If you receive 10,000 messages per second, that's nothing. That means that you can have 10,000 people online simultaneously with 1 message per second and 100,000 people online simultaneously with 1 message every ten seconds even in the version where there is no retransmission.

godwinson__4-8 2mo ago

American companies have contested warrants have they not? The jump from request to warrant is not the major hurdle. Imo people often make the wrong tradeoff here. If the government really wants something jurisdictional questions will not stop them. You're actually inviting them to just steal it at that point. Better to keep things in the US where there will at least be a clear paper trail. And instead of wasting money on non-aligned infra budget for a half decent lawyer. American companies and citizens will have an easier time holding the American government accountable than "non-aligned" hosts. The current administration in particular is routinely embarrassed in the courts. Sometimes I read about left wing civic groups and their privacy efforts and it feels delusional. You would think many of them would relish a paper trail of persecution and the publicity of a victorious court battle. The US government will not be deterred because you are hosting something in Europe or your homegrown service. It's really a bit of a joke to think so. Plus what do you think is going to happen in two years? It feels like now is the time to lean into being on the shit list (if you can manage it - most of them are so ineffective they barely even register) so you can benefit when the tables turn in two years.

iamnothere 2mo ago
To be fair, most US companies aren’t particularly sympathetic to radical politics, and many will cave in with only a little pressure. There may also be concerns of a secret FISA warrant. The downside of hosting overseas is that you’re exposing yourself to the full NSA toolkit, without the usual fig leaf of legal protection. Dark web P2P is probably the best option. You forget that a portion of the radical left truly believes that there won’t be an election.
- godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- autoexec 2mo ago
  > The downside of hosting overseas is that you’re exposing yourself to the full NSA toolkit, without the usual fig leaf of legal protection. We know that the NSA is spying on every American, and every communication they make no what the source or destination. Sending traffic overseas might cause the collected data to surface more often or be subjected to additional scrutiny but it's all going to be collected and scanned over either way.