Surveillance strategies in the UK and Israel often go global
These people are clueless
they are evil, not necessarily clueless.
What is the fundamental difference. Evil men and arrogant idiots might as well be the same thing.
focusing on the ‘they are idiots’ fallacy completely misdirects blame and disencourages deeper critical thought. they have a plan and we need one too.
the real misdirection is focusing on individuals and their blame. The real question is why does UK political system produces these people rule and how do they keep ruling.
Both parties were captured by the aristocracy/super rich, call them what you will, and they support a total surveillance of a population they obviously fear and want tools to persecute as they see fit. Starmer is a perfect example of this, he’s done more damage arguably than the tories did in over a decade. Their betrayal of the country will throw the elections to the far right too, that is the only protest vote against the status quo, and they will affix themselves in power and implement even worse privacy.
A popular reform party would fix the problems but the aristocracy is too greedy and arrogant for that, thinking they can control a far right party or otherwise shut them out electorally indefinitely and continue to sell out the public to the rich, even as discontent is increasing and the plutocratic rot is visible on the surface and spread throughout the whole.
sure, focusing on how dumb they are isn’t very condusive to discussing the intricacies of capitalism.
seriously though, they do have a plan. we need to figure out ours.
Ironically that’s kinda the argument being made in the document above
“Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.”
or something like that…
No way this lasts or holds up to basic scrutiny. End to end encryption is a de-facto standard for so fucking much technology.
Like fucking HTTPS.
Well if they commit to this, it will never affect “e2ee” options that collaborate with feds e.g. whatsapp, imessage. If you can kill Refaat Alareer with it rest assured you will be able to keep it in your phone anytime
Yes, the trick is to outlaw it entirely then enforce the law selectively against those whom you find politically awkward.
TLS is not typically considered end-to-end encryption. It’s transport encryption.
Our governments are hostile. Act accordingly.
“Innocence proves nothing”
Some 40k shit.
Seems appropriate, since the game was invented by brits and the Imperium is an unholy amalgamation of the Roman and British Empires
Does it say that explicitly in the document? I know that’s the overall message they’re getting at, but actually typing that out in the doc is darkly funny.
It’s just a fancy, rosy version of just saying “innocence proves nothing”.
Paving roads makes it easier for an invading army to get around.
No-one’s invading Lincolnshire then.
Easier, not possible.
A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto
By Eric Hughes
Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.
Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.
Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.
Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one’s identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor’s younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.
We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.
Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can’t get privacy unless we all do, we’re going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don’t much care if you don’t approve of the software we write. We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down.
Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation’s border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.
For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one’s fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.
The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.
Onward.
Eric Hughes
9 March 1993
This was written in 1993? Huh, I keep seeing cyber punks around in different contexts too, like some music mixes from some cyber punk festival at least.
In the old days, the British Empire steamed open everyone’s mail and read it, at least coming from the colonies like India.
This is cypherpunk, not cyberpunk. Common roots, but important distinction.
Cyberpunk is an aesthetic style.
Cypherpunk is not.
Cyberpunk is a genre first and foremost. A critique of capitalism set in a corporate dystopia with transhumanist themes.
A lot of the aesthetic is rooted in the culture of the time period that it was created in (the 80s). The cultural fear, more specifically. A time where American corporations, and by extension the US government and population, were afraid of the Japanese economic boom and saw a future where the dollar was replaced by the yen and Japanese supplanted English as the lingua franca of the world, Japanese culture was exported the way American culture is, and Americans started eating their meals with chopsticks instead of forks.
Yes end to end encryption is for hostile actors why don’t you send your nuclear launch codes in plain text.
Rules for thee not for me.
If I were to send a physical letter written in code that can only be decrypted with a cipher would I now be breaking the law?
What about radio or telephone conversations in code?
Can I still password protect my zip files or encrypt my NAS or PC before boot?
Using password protection for files is definitely work of terrorists you should be imprisoned for life. \s
According to this legislation, using https is against the law.
If so we should all start sending cryptic sounding gibberish around the world. Like from random lists send emails to foreigners with some random gibberish like product codes written in that look like encrypted messages, xg0-fs39450, or whatever, just as a form of protest.
if im alone in my car, i’ll just start talking gibberish or about that time i kicked a cyber-dolphin through the moon. just in case the man is training some ai on what my phone’s microphone picks up.
The speedquack cyrocrunk failed, need pryoram ciclicogram asap,
Make sure you only use transparent envelopes.
Gee why does the capitalist oligopoly fear communication they can’t monitor it’s not like they are doing anything wrong and have anything to fear from little old us
Shit-flinging desperation at the realization that they have failed to contain dissent via internet-based coordination. Elbit and the UK’s protection of property was defeated by persistent disruption thanks to the work by Palestine Action. Unlike previous forms of communication, the empire has had tremendous difficulty wrestling control away because the materiality of the internet is so dispersed, accessible, and impossible to restrict without dire economic and military consequences.
I’m just baffled Labour is trying to die on this hill.
I think Labour is just trying to die.
At this point it feels like they’re being paid to make people vote for Reform who will then make great use of all the surveillance infrastructure that Labour and Tories have put in place
The autonomous murder bots are not complete yet
thats what happens when we as society become ignorant and inept, and therefore we vote for inept and ignorant people to represent us.
They are not all inept.
They know exactly what they are doing.
It is a hostile act to create information the state isn’t privy to. That is a very deliberate act.
Fascista
When has the majority not been ignorant and inept?
Back when societies collective knowledge was like 4 things?
to me when they defended their rights and prevented certain toxic people from staying in power
That doesnt mean they werent ignorant or inept, they were just aware of what was happening to them, and in most cases for rights it was only after decades or centuries of mistreatment. Its a reaction not a prevention.
As for toxic people in power, thats a lot harder to argue but toxic people enter and leave government all the time. It can be obvious sometimes who will be shit but theres only so many choices and again a significant portion of people are ignorant or inept.
I think this is more malice than it is ineptitude tbh.
So google, amazon and Microsoft are hostile actors.every cloud provider is an enemy of uk government. They have gardeners (at best) or lawyers ( most probably), which did their own research.before writing these abominations. At the same time, they want to give all medical datas in the NHS to palantir. This is the apoteosis of incompetence.
All those companies willingly hand over our data when asked. At this point it’s almost a feature
So google, amazon and Microsoft are hostile actors
Obviously not. They’re happy to give MI5 a backdoor into all their systems.
This is the apoteosis of incompetence.
The age old question - malicious or stupid.
What I see here is that the UK is a hostile entity towards humanity. So, fuck the UK government and all their parties. Since we’re here, fuck the French government as well, just in case.
Was this written by a native English speaker?
It’s hard to take seriously with so many grammatical errors
It’s called legalese.
No, beyond the legalese. For example, the comma placement in:
which, unknown to them threatens,
The comma should go after “them”, because “unknown to them” constitutes the entire aside.
If you delete the aside in this, it reads “which national security”, whereas it should read “which threatens national security”.
This is just the first one I found; I didn’t go hunting for them. It’s one of those grammatical mistakes that actively ruins the cadence of the sentence as you read it in your head.
And worse mistakes:
where there must be at least possibility that
I have complete sympathy for non-native speakers writing papers, but it also raises the question of whether they properly understand the source material they’re referencing.
I will inform you that this excerpt is correct English. There needn’t be an article like “a” or “the” before “possibility”. It reads awkwardly in everyday language, but that really is just innocent “legalese” phrasing.
Thanks for the correction. Rereading it I can kind of see if they mean possibility as an abstract concept, so I’ll take the L on it.
But I still maintain it’s a pretty fucked way of phrasing it.
That is perfectly grammatical English, especially in legal texts.
Probably ai generated let’s be honest here
It’s British, so no.
Oh yeah? I’ll train an army of crows to transfer messages in exchange for specific shiny objects.
Seriously though - the constant hypocrisy and attempt to make our lives undeniably worse for their control obsession is either going to force our hand or end with the enslavement of the human race. These people are truly mad.
They choose force your hand. Draw the line where you wish. They will arrive at it given enough time.
