Author: Michael Goldstein; Source: Liu Jiaolian
"Some things are within our control, and some are not."
< em>——Epicurus, "On the Gifts"
The Spread of Crypto-Anarchy
Timothy May C. May proposed a vision for the future in his classic work "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto". Due to the adoption of public key encryption technology, future society will face many challenges. One particularly interesting challenge is the market for anonymous information:
“Of course, states will try to slow or prevent the technology on grounds of national security, use of the technology by drug traffickers and tax evaders, and fears of social disintegration spread. Many of these fears are valid; crypto-anarchy would allow free trade in state secrets and allow illegal and stolen goods to be traded. An anonymous computerized marketplace would even enable the abhorrent market for assassinations and extortion. Criminals and foreign powers of all kinds will become active users of cryptonets. But that won’t stop the spread of crypto-anarchy.
“Just as printing technology transformed and weakened the Middle Ages As powerful as guilds and society's power structures are, cryptographic methods will fundamentally change the nature of corporate and government intervention in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto-anarchy will be the source of all material that can be expressed in words and pictures. Create a liquid market. Just as a seemingly trivial invention like barbed wire could fence vast tracts of ranches and farms, forever changing concepts of land and property rights on the Western frontier, so seemingly trivial inventions emerged from arcane branches of mathematics. Trivial discoveries will also be the cord cutters that tear down the barbed wire surrounding intellectual property."
There are two lessons here:
First, all information will enter the market.
2. Whether you like it or not, this market will exist.
In addition, when I say "will", I mean "already".
We’ve seen WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden open the floodgates to state secrets, including yours. We’ve also seen Bitcoin facilitate the Fappening marketplace for celebrity nude photos.
Now, a website promoted by WikiLeaks' Twitter account hopes to take it to new heights. S promises to be WikiLeaks 2.0:
"S is an open source, decentralized and anonymous marketplace for selling secret information in exchange for Bitcoin. S is written in C, runs through the Onion Network, and Bitcoin transactions are conducted through libbitcoin. Both buyers and sellers are completely anonymous, and there are no restrictions on the data auctioned. There are no fees for buying and selling data on the S market. Unless there is a dispute, a nominal fee will be paid to volunteers."
From trade secrets to state secrets, from 0-day vulnerabilities to "complete databases of social media sites such as Facebook," everything will be paid in Bitcoin.
My advice to anyone living in 2014 is to not only live with the assumption that your secrets will be revealed, but to live as if the secrets have already been revealed.
Ancient Wisdom
It is not easy to deal with this kind of thinking, because each of us has said something in the past that we regret, or something that is not Words intended to be public. However, these problems are not new to the Internet. Instead, the Internet frees us from past illusions about privacy that had previously gone largely unchallenged. With this in mind, we can look to the ancient Stoics for timeless advice.
About change
"The universe is changing: life is judgment."
—— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book IV, 3.4)
If we take Timothy May’s words and empirical data seriously, then what he describes Crypto-anarchy is happening and will continue to happen. Technology is a double-edged sword that can be exploited by everyone from criminals to ethical individuals to achieve their own ends. However, this is simply a fact of nature, as the means to hope to prevent it are utopian at best and totalitarian at worst. When Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed unveiled Liberator to the world, we had to face the fact that technology is not democratic. There is no vote on whether 3D printed guns, public key cryptography, Bitcoin or BitTorrent should exist. Every technology is the product of the entrepreneurial ventures of Cody Wilson, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Herrmann, Satoshi Nakamoto and Bram Cohen. They appear and we must live with the consequences. If bad actors can take advantage of these technologies, we must make better use of them.
The world is changing, and this is neither good nor bad. All that matters is our perceptions and reactions.
About maintaining a virtuous heart
“In the order of your thoughts, you must avoid all random or aimless thoughts, especially Any thoughts of prying or malicious intent. Train yourself to only think questions like this: When someone suddenly asks, “What are you thinking about right now? ”, you can immediately and frankly say what it is, this or that: in this way, your answer can directly prove that all your thoughts are straightforward, well-intentioned, and are the thoughts of a social person who does not consider Fantasy of pleasure or wider indulgence, without regard to rivalry, malice, suspicion, or anything else that makes one ashamed to admit that he or she has something in mind." —— Ma Cus Aurelius, Meditations (Book III, 4.2)
Strong encryption can work well to protect information from prying eyes, but using encryption is a risk Manage the problem rather than looking for a magic bullet. Expecting encrypted or anonymized information to remain this way forever, even if it is possible, is problematic and not only tempts us to develop bad habits but also makes our thoughts and actions too risky. As Phil Zimmermann describes it, unencrypted communication is like sending a postcard that anyone can read.
The solution to this problem is to first be ethical in thought and action, making all public and private communications true to your goals and principles. Doing so will not make the disclosure of your confidentiality pleasant, however it will minimize the negative risk to your reputation. Even if that's not the case, you'll stay true to yourself, and that's what matters.
About friendship and trust
“If you treat a person as a friend and don’t trust him as much as you trust yourself, then you Big mistake, you have not fully understood what true friendship means. In fact, I want you to discuss everything with your friends, but first discuss the person himself. After the friendship is established, you must trust; before the friendship is formed, you Judgment must be made. Some people do put last first and confuse their duty, and they violate the rule of Theophrastus by judging a person after he has made a friend instead of Make friends after judgment. You have to think long and hard about whether to accept a person as your friend; but when you decide to accept him, welcome him with all your heart. Speak to him as boldly as you would to yourself."< /em>
—— Seneca, "On True and False Friendship"
As mentioned above, strong encryption technology is not a panacea . Even the strongest end-to-end encryption can't protect you from leaking information on the other side. Therefore, it is essential to know and trust the person you are communicating with, both in terms of character and security capabilities. Trust in encrypted communications should come from having confidence in your peers and understanding their weaknesses. Good people get hacked, too.
So make best friends. Build strong, trusted relationships with others and understand the limits of those relationships. Sign keys, verify fingerprints, and most importantly, know what value you truly give to each other. Don’t let social media cheapen the word “friend” and avoid falling in with the scammers.
Conclusion
There is no such thing as privacy. The Internet makes this fact obvious. Privacy can and should be built into, but it will never be perfect. To protect us from the dangers of crypto-anarchy, we must embrace it more fully and internalize and put into practice the virtues that have helped great men weather life’s storms since ancient times.
JinseFinance
Pr0phetMoggy
Catherine
decrypt
Bitcoinist
Cointelegraph