A short Twitter Essay (twessay?)
The thing which makes me cringe in this @rj_gallagher piece on @signalapp is the quote from @greggcorp, attached.
I gut-feel like: dude, do you even “dual use”?
How is it that the consequences of enabling free, disintermediated speech… /1
How is it that the consequences of enabling free, disintermediated speech seem only concrete regarding one’s outgroup?
Progressives fear fascists will get privacy. The left fear privacy on the right, & the right fear the left. The old fear privacy of the young, & vice versa. 2/
All modern debate regarding privacy pivots on “who should not be permitted to have it”, and the bogeymen are generally personal.
This sucks, and is not scalable.
*Everybody* deserves good security.
Even your monsters; because you are surely someone else’s monster. 3/
Perhaps I am simply fortunate that 30 years ago I had many people calling for my head on a pike, for releasing password cracking software to the unwashed public, for the greater good.
Greater good. That phrase is very important to me.4/
We should not be gatekeeping privacy.
We should give it to as many people as possible – even the people we detest or who revolted us, even the people who may kill us.
Privacy is a net “enabler”, and we should be changing society to address the inevitable disbenefits. 5/5
ps: (6/5) make sure that you enable two-factor authentication for social media, and use a good password management tool with distinct/different passwords everywhere.
Passwords, alone, have never been truly adequate security.
Fortunately we do better nowadays, for some reason.
Originally tweeted by Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) on 2021/05/28.
Footnote
I think I get that, and I hope I’ve not misrepresented him here in observing that he, and likewise many other people, express “concerns”.
That’s the problem: “Concerns”.
“Oh my giddy aunt, if we let people communicate, some of them might do *BAD* things!”
When’s the last time you heard anyone express concerns that motor vehicles enable armed robbery? Or (pointedly) sometimes are used to assault or murder people?
If 1000 people is “too big”, how big should a forum morally max-out at?
Arbitrary limits are arbitrary, and where are they are supposed to be moral at most they exist within some kind of artificial Overton window.
Not many years ago it was immoral, illegal even, for non-americans to have cryptography greater than 40 bits in length. Now: not so much.
Communications has a downside, and we have known it long enough that Douglas Adams (not least) lampooned the fact in 1978. (attached)
It would be good for us to acknowledge this, rather than live in a world of infinite concerns.
Originally tweeted by Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) on 2021/05/28.
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