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The dangerous subtext within the concerned-dot-tech “Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy”
Back in 1991 I published an open-source password cracking tool which defined the state of the art for the next 5+ years, so much so that echoes of it can be found in all major password crackers of today. Some folk criticised me for doing this, choosing words like these to do so: I know…
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Things which are legal offline, should be legal online — e.g. having a conversation without state surveillance; by @alecmuffett licensed CC-BY-SA
I — Alec Muffett — created this image and coined this (admittedly fairly obvious and likely to be unoriginal) phrase, and I am licensing this image under CC-BY-SA terms.
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Messenger Interoperability: pushing for conformity, destroying functional diversity, enabling abuse and dangerous monocultures
There’s a genre of jokes about a city-slicker visiting the countryside, asking for directions and being told “…if you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here.” This is where we are today with messenger interoperability. Not only is there no way to fix it, but also any attempt to mandate delivery of full…
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Breaking Up “Ma Zuck” — how a generational divide amongst #DigitalRights #CivilSociety regarding #Messenger #Interoperability imperils the deployment of end-to-end encryption as a platform solution … for everyone
Personal Introductions This is the kind of essay which — hopefully — will draw people who ask “who is this author, and what are his interests?” — so I thought I’ll spend a moment up front to explain. I’m Alec, and since approximately 1990 I have worked to highlight, combat or change laws which seek to…
Fediverse reactions
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Two threads on Twitter regarding online surveillance: it happens because our governments demand it
Thread 1 Nokia appears to have been instrumental to the operation of Russia’s surveillance infrastructure. Everyone in that article asking why Nokia was allowed to sell these services. And of course the company’s answer is “Western countries demand the same capabilities.” This is an underappreciated component of the surveillance debate. When folks in the US/Europe…
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The more I think about it, the more I realise quite what a *genius* ploy #messenger #interoperability is for those who want to surveil the world or resist it gaining “mass end-to-end encryption” #IOP
Interoperability as currently called-for … extends the social graph beyond individual platforms so that they crosslink with each other, leak disjoint identities, etc; see: XKeyScore sows confusion regarding any particular platform’s security (“…am I using E2E in this group chat, or not?”) any new, secure platform that gets big will be hobbled eventually, to the…
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MatrixDotOrg actively calling for everyone’s security to be weakened so that perhaps more people will adopt them
Unroll 2/ No exaggeration about “extremism” here, for instance this is today’s blogpost from @matrixdotorg regarding the proposal, and frankly I am horrified in multiple dimensions that they could propose any of this, for the following reasons: 3/ In reverse order: THE WHOLE POINT of an end-to-end encrypted environment is that “your data” is locked…
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Explaining fundamental problems of the EU #DMA demanding instant #messenger #interoperability, via fun analogies with food & sex — #endtoendencryption #e2ee
Thomas Urbain (AFP) Thanks for getting back to me. Here are some questions: What are the main issues with implementing interoperability for messaging apps ? Would it require standard protocols to be implemented by all participating players ? How far are we from it becoming a reality ? Could end to end encryption work from…
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Notes for interview with @DanMilmo in saturday’s @Guardian regarding @Twitter, @TorProject and bypassing censorship
Dan asked me some questions in respect of an upcoming article, and this is what I wrote in response, as well as one additional postscript which I added for Dan, and another postscript from another conversation I had elsewhere, which I am sharing here for relevance. Very little of my input survived the editing process.…
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Why offer an Onion Address rather than just encourage browsing-over-Tor?
There are a bunch of reasons to launch an onion site, and a bunch of benefits, all of which have provided value to platforms such as Facebook, the BBC or NYT Onions. The first benefits are authenticity and availability: if you are running Tor Browser and if you click/type in exactly the proper Onion address,…