Tag: Technology

The Future is Bright

A writer at The Guardian, which seems to be primarily known for propagating left-wing statist propaganda, has shown a slight glimmer of understanding. While neoconservatives and neoliberals fight for power over other people, crypto-anarchists have been busy working in the shadows to develop technology that allows individuals to defend themselves from the State:

The rise of crypto-anarchism might be good news for individual users – and there are plenty working on ways of using this technology for decent social purposes – but it’s also bad news for governments. It’s not a direct path, but digital technology tends to empower the individual at the expense of the state. Police forces complain they can’t keep up with new forms of online crime, partly because of the spread of freely available encryption tools. Information of all types – secrets, copyright, creative content, illegal images – is becoming increasingly difficult to contain and control. The rash of ransomware is certainly going to get worse, exposing the fragility of our always connected systems. (It’s easily available to buy on the dark net, a network of hidden websites that are difficult to censor and accessed with an anonymous web browser.) Who knows where this might end. A representative from something called “Bitnation” explained to Parallel Polis how an entire nation could one day be provided online via an uncontrollable, uncensorable digital network, where groups of citizens could club together to privately commission public services. Bitnation’s founder, Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, hopes Bitnation could one day replace the nation state and rid us of bureaucrats, creating “a world of a million competing digital nations”, as she later told me.

The biggest threat to statism is individual empowerment. While technology is a two-edged sword, serving both the State and individuals without concern for either’s morality, it is difficult to argue that it hasn’t greatly helped empower individuals.

A combination of Tor hidden services and cryptocurrencies have done a great deal to weaken the State’s drug war by establishing black markets where both buyers and sellers remain anonymous. Weakening the drug war is a significant blow to the State because it deprives it of slave labor (prisoners) and wealth (since the State can’t use civil forfeiture on property it can’t identify).

Tor, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), Signal, and many other practical implementations of encryption have marvelously disrupted the State’s surveillance apparatus. This also cuts into the State’s revenue since it cannot issue fines, taxes, or other charges on activities it is unaware of.

3D printers, although still in their infancy, are poised to weaken the State’s ability to restrict objects. For example, the State can’t prohibit the possession of firearms if people are able print them without the State’s knowledge.

But if the State disables the Internet all of these technologies fall apart, right? That would be the case if the Internet was a centralized thing that the State could disable. But the Internet is simply the largest network of interconnected networks. Even if the State shutdown every Internet Service Provide (ISP) in the world and cut all of undersea cables, the separated networks will merely have to be reconnected. That is where a technology like mesh networking could come into play. Guifi.net, for example, is a massive mesh network that spans Catalonia. According to the website, there are currently 33,191 operating nodes in the Guifi.net mesh. Shutting down that many nodes isn’t feasible, especially when they can be quickly replaced since individual nodes are usually cheap off-the-shelf Wi-Fi access points. Without the centralized Internet a span of interconnected mesh networks could reestablish global communications and there isn’t much the State could do about it.

Statism has waxed and waned throughout human history. I believe we’re at a tipping point where statism is beginning to wane and I believe advances in individual empowering technologies are what’s diminishing it. Voting won’t hinder the State. The Libertarian Party won’t hinder the State. Crypto-anarchists, on the other hand, have a proven track record of hindering the State and all signs point to them continuing to do so.

It’s Not Your Data When It’s in The Cloud

I’ve annoyed a great many electrons writing about the dangers of using other people’s computer (i.e. “the cloud”) to store personal information. Most of the time I’ve focused on the threat of government surveillance. If your data is stored on somebody else’s computer, a subpoena is all that is needed for law enforcers to obtain your data. However, law enforcers aren’t the only threat when it comes to “the cloud.” Whoever is storing your data, unless you’ve encrypted it in a way that make it inaccessible to others before you uploaded it, has access to it, which means that their employees could steal it:

Chinese authorities say they have uncovered a massive underground operation involving the sale of Apple users’ personal data.

Twenty-two people have been detained on suspicion of infringing individuals’ privacy and illegally obtaining their digital personal information, according to a statement Wednesday from police in southern Zhejiang province.

Of the 22 suspects, 20 were employees of an Apple “domestic direct sales company and outsourcing company”.

This story is a valuable lesson and warning. Apple has spent a great deal of time developing a reputation for guarding the privacy of its users. But data uploaded to its iCloud service are normally stored unencrypted so while a third-party may not be able to intercept en route, at least some of Apple’s employees have access to it.

The only way you can guard your data from becoming public is to either keep it exclusively on your machines or encrypt it in such a way that third parties cannot access it before uploading it to “the cloud.”

Keybase Client

Keybase.io started off as a service people could use to prove their identity using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). I use it to prove that I own various public accounts online as well as this domain. Back in February the Keybase team announced a chat client. I hadn’t gotten around to playing with it until very recently but I’ve been impressed enough by it that I feel the need to post about it.

Keybase’s chat service has a lot of similarities to Signal. Both services provided end-to-end encrypted communications, although in slightly different ways (Keybase, for example, doesn’t utilize forward secrecy except on “self-destructing” messages). However, one issue with Signal is that it relies on your phone number. If you want to chat on Signal with somebody you have to give them your phone number and they have to give you theirs. This reliance on phone numbers makes Signal undesirable in many cases (such as communicating with people you know online but not offline).

Keybase relies on your proven online identities. If you want to securely talk to me using Keybase you can search for me by using the URL for this website since I’ve proven my ownership of it on Keybase. Likewise, if you want to securely talk to somebody on Reddit or Github you can search for their user names on those sites in Keybase.

Another nice feature Keybase offers is a way to securely share files. Each user of the Keybase client gets 10GB of storage for free. Any data added to your private folder is encrypted in such a way that only you can access the files. If you want to share files amongst a few friends the files can be encrypted in a way that only you and those designated friends can access them.

On the other hand, if you’re into voice and video calls, you’re out of luck. Keybase, unlike Signal, currently supports neither and I have no idea if there are plans to implement them in the future. I feel that it’s also important to note that Keybase, due to how new it is, hasn’t undergone the same level of rigorous testing as Signal has so you probably don’t want to put the same level of trust in it yet.

What Happens When You Rely on a Third Party for Revenue

Earlier this year many gun channels on YouTube reported that their videos were suddenly disqualified from receiving ad revenue. This change in policy happened without warning and the rules established by YouTube were vague to say the least. In the hopes of appeasing both advertisers and content creators, YouTube attempted to clarify its rules. But if you read YouTube’s guidelines you’ll notice that they remain incredibly vague.

A lot of people have been screaming about free speech but that’s irrelevant. YouTube is a private entity and therefore can make whatever rules it wants. The real issue here is relying on a third party for revenue.

There are two ways content creators can guard their income from arbitrary rule changes made by their hosts. The first is having a contractual agreement where the host can face penalties if they arbitrarily change the terms. The second, and this is the one I generally prefer, is to host their own material on their own systems. This is what I do with this blog (and every other service I rely on). If you own everything you get to make the rules. If, for example, I decided to monetize this site, there would be no way for a third party to cut of my revenue by changing the rules.

YouTube looks like a sweet deal because content creators can put their material online without facing the costs of hosting the material themselves. But there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. The price content creators pay for using YouTube is being entirely at the mercy of its one-sided user agreement, which can be changed at any moment without prior notice being given. Content creators can scream about free speech or censorship or whatever else makes them feel oppressed. But they only have themselves to blame because they put themselves into a position where their revenue source could be cut off by a third party at any moment.

What Could Kill Bitcoin

I greatly appreciate Bitcoin. By enabling pseudonymous transactions it has made many forms of commerce, specifically those deemed illegal by various governments, easier. It also offers an opportunity for individuals to conceal at least some of their wealth from the State. However, Bitcoin exists in a market environment, which means a superior competing product could come along at any moment and topple it.

When Bitcoin first came on the scene its community promised low transaction fees. They often compared the transaction fees of, say, Western Union to the miner fees of Bitcoin for sending money across the globe. At the time sending money via Bitcoin was significantly cheaper.

Fast forward to today. The price of sending Bitcoin has skyrocketed. If you want a Bitcoin transaction to clear in a reasonable amount of time you’re looking at a transaction fee of over $2.00 (as of this writing). Why is this? It’s because the Bitcoin network is running into a block size ceiling problem. This problem has created an environment where more transaction are being made then can be processed so convincing miners to process your transaction requires offering a significant reward. No problem, right? It’s just the market at work after all.

It’s true, Bitcoin’s current state is an example of supply and demand. Demand has exceeded the supply of miners so the price to get transactions cleared has increased. But markets are finicky things. If enough people decide that they’re unwilling to spend $2.00 on a transaction fee for a $5.00 coffee they’re going to look for a better solution. Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency in town so failing to address the block size ceiling problem will likely encourage consumers to find an alternate cryptocurrency.

Considering this you would think that the Bitcoin community is working diligently to solve the problem, right? As it turns out, not so much. Now a lot of the Bitcoin community is changing its tune. Instead of addressing the issue they are denying the fact that low transaction fees were a selling feature of Bitcoin not too long ago. In addition to denying the past they’re trying to explain how high transaction fess are acceptable. I highly doubt most consumers see the “wisdom” in paying a $2.00 transaction fee to buy a $5.00 espresso at Starbucks. And that’s the thing, for a cryptocurrency to succeed it needs to be useful.

I can hear some Bitcoin advocate saying, “But, Chris, Bitcoin will simply become the new gold while another cryptocurrency will become its silver!” Gold and silver run into a divisibility problem. You can only divide gold so far until it becomes difficult to use. Nobody is going to pay for a coffee using gold dust because it’s a pain in the ass. Instead they use a less valuable metal, silver, for smaller payments. Cryptocurrencies don’t have this problem. You can divide a cryptocurrency down to as many decimal places as you want and it’ll be equally easy to use. Whether a cup of coffee costs me 1 Bitcoin or 0.000001 Bitcoin doesn’t make a usability difference to me. This means that any cryptocurrency that takes over Bitcoin’s current task of handling small transactions will likely rise to dominance overall.

Governments have been unable to destroy Bitcoin but the unwillingness of its community to address technical problems very well could lead to its destruction.

Hiding Public Records in the Private Sector

Axon, the company formerly known as Taser, announced that it would give free body cameras and one year of online video storage to any department in the United States for one year. This seems like a phenomenal deal but there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. The deal is meant to make Axon money and to please its biggest customers, the police:

But isn’t just video. Police agencies and local governments are using Evidence.com to store other evidence, too. Defense attorney Rick Horowitz recently put up a post about how in order to access discovery in a case, the district attorney told him to log on to the website. And in order to log on, Horowitz had to sign this user agreement:

You consent to Axon’s access and use of the Account Content in order to….improve Axon’s Products and Services. In addition, for content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP Content”), you specifically give us the following permission: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use any IP Content that you post on or in connection with the Services (IP License).

[…]

Second, this isn’t just any public record. We’re talking about evidence in criminal investigations. To have that evidence stored on servers owned by a private company creates some bad incentives. The company’s primary client isn’t the public; it’s the police agency. And it’s primary interest isn’t just outcomes in courtrooms; it’s keeping the client happy. For example, the company might win favor with police agencies — for example, allowing officers to take certain liberties with body camera video in a way that keeps the courts or opposing attorneys in the dark.

Body cameras were sold as a tool for police accountability but it has become clear that they were meant to collect evidence that the State can use to prosecute more individuals. Axon’s primary customer is the State and therefore it is incentivized to help the State use body cameras to collect evidence against individuals while not allowing the footage to be used to hold police accountable.

People often wonder why the State empowered corporations so much. At one point I thought it was primarily a protection racket, the State offers corporations extra legal privileges in exchange for money. But now I’m starting to think that the primary purpose was so the State could conceal its dirty laundry from the public by hiding behind the shield of the private sector. Remember, the State has given you permission to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request against it but not against a private entity. So long as it can give a corporation the job of hiding information the State can rightfully say that it has no information pertaining to your FOIA request.

Rise of the Machines

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest topics in technology at the moment. If you listen to the people developing AIs, you will likely start to believe that they will solve all of the world’s problems. If you listen to the critics of AI, you will likely start to believe that they are the catalyst that will lead to a Terminator future.

AI probably won’t solve all of our problems but it probably won’t wipe our species out either. However, it is undeniable that algorithms are shaping our lives more and more. This isn’t a problem when those algorithms offer suggestions on what to read based on what you’re currently reading or what to buy based on what you’re currently buying. It is a problem when they decide whether or not you will be kept in a cage or not:

Police in Durham are preparing to go live with an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to help officers decide whether or not a suspect should be kept in custody.

The system classifies suspects at a low, medium or high risk of offending and has been tested by the force.

It has been trained on five years’ of offending histories data.

The story cites the claimed accuracy rate of the AI as if a high accuracy rate should be enough for everybody to implicitly trust the system. But the system is proprietary so it’s impossible for outside parties to verify the claims of accuracy or to know how the system decides who should be kept in a cage. It’s also a black box. Can an officer override the system? If they can, does that override get included in the AI’s data that will color its future decisions? There are hundreds of questions one can ask but cannot answer about the system.

The problem with relying on AIs to make decisions about law and order is that the judicial system, at least in most so-called developed nations, is supposed to be transparent (although it usually isn’t). Proprietary systems aren’t transparent by definition, which makes them easier for the State to abuse.

DHS is Banning Laptops in the Cabins of All Flights Coming from Europe

Are you flying from Europe to the United States? If so, you might be required to place your laptop in your checked baggage:

The Department of Homeland Security plans to ban laptops in the cabins of all flights from Europe to the United States, European security officials told The Daily Beast. The announcement is expected Thursday.

Initially a ban on laptops and tablets was applied only to U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in North Africa and the Middle East. The ban was based on U.S. fears that terrorists have found a way to convert laptops into bombs capable of bringing down an airplane. It is unclear if the European ban will also apply to tablets.

Why would the Department of Fatherland Motherland Homeland Security (DHS) do this? It’s not for security reasons. Laptops that are carried onto planes go through an x-ray machine so screeners can see if anything looks amiss inside of them. As the article points out, putting laptops in the storage area of the plane is also more dangerous on average since detecting igniting lithium-ion batteries is more difficult. If this ban was for security reasons it would make no sense. However, if the ban is for creating a general state of anxiety, then it makes perfect sense.

Governments rule through fear. If a people believe there is a threat that only the government can defend them against, they’re much more likely to role over and take whatever abuse the government is inflicting upon it. The United States government exploits this fear but constantly reminding its people that there might be terrorists hiding under any bed and in any closet. This constant fear mongering reminds people that there are people out there who might try to kill them and the government hopes that will convince them that they need it.

The Environmentally Friendly Internal Combustion Engine

Most environmentalists believe that the world’s worst polluter, the State, is the only way to save the environment. They scoff when you mention the environmentally friendly advances that have been made by market actors. Worse yet, they often disparage market advancements that have greatly improved the environment, such as the internal combustion engine:

The internal-combustion engine began improving the environment, however, long before global warming became a concern. Consider the fact that in 1900 a large percentage of the available horsepower really was horse power, or mule power, or ox power. As the power of the internal-combustion engine began to be substituted for animal power in the early 1900s, we began to substitute the emissions coming out of the tailpipes of cars and trucks for those coming out of the tailpipes of animals. The result was that the environment started becoming far cleaner and healthier.

Consider horse manure’s effect on the environment and health of New Yorkers in 1900. Robert Fogel, a Nobel Prize-winning economic historian, writes:

We complain a lot about air pollution today, but there were 200,000 horses in New York City, at the beginning of the 20th century defecating everywhere. And when you walked around in New York City, you were breathing pulverized horse manure—a much worse pollutant, than the exhausts of automobiles. Indeed in the United States, the automobile was considered the solution to the horse problem because pulverized horse manure carried a lot of deadly pathogens.

No serious person denies that photochemical smog from gas-powered vehicles is a health risk. It would be silly to do so. It would be even sillier, however, to deny Fogel’s observation that the air and water pollution from horse manure was a far greater health risk than the pollution from cars and trucks. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, and diphtheria were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans in the early twentieth century. As cars and trucks began replacing horses and other beasts of burden, these deaths began to decline dramatically. Medical improvements get some of the credit, but most of the credit during the early decades of the twentieth century goes to the reduced filth in the environment from animal waste.

People forget the past. Environmentalists, who often rant about how much more environmental damage humans are causing today than in the past, seem to have forgotten just how terrible living conditions were barely a century ago. Humanity’s agricultural knowledge was far more limited, which means farmers commonly practiced more damaging forms of agriculture. Horses were the primary mode of transportation, which introduced a great amount of biological contaminants to metropolitan areas. Trash was often discarded in place instead of collected and moved to a designated dump.

Our species has come a long ways in terms of environmentalism and not because of the State but because of rational self-interest. Having a cleaner environment benefits us so market forces have been hard at work reducing humanity’s environmental impact. This hard work continues today. Energy production continues to cause environmental damage. While the State has continued to hinder cleaner forms of energy production such as nuclear power plants, the market has been hard at work making more power efficient devices. Devices that use less energy reduce the load on power production facilities, which means less new facilities have to be built to meet demands. Mining is another activity that causes notable environmental damage and the market is once again responding. Apple has announced that it will rely on recycled materials instead of newly mined materials and other companies are likely to follow suit.

Environmentalists should be cheering the market, not condemning it.

License, Please

Occupational licenses are sold to the public as a mechanism for protecting consumers from fraudulent providers. Licenses don’t actually provide such protections since they’re just pieces of paper. More importantly, they can actually reduce protections since their existence convinces people that actual protections, such as regular inspections by private independent inspection organizations, aren’t as necessary. So what purpose do occupational licenses server? They serve as a source of revenue for the State as well as a mechanism for it to lash out at its critics:

In September 2014, Mats Järlström, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state’s engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don’t last long enough, which “puts the public at risk.”

“I would like to present these facts for your review and comments,” he wrote.

This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat. The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying responded with this dystopian message:

“ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration … at a minimum, your use of the title ‘electronics engineer’ and the statement ‘I’m an engineer’ … create violations.”

In January of this year, Järlström was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of “practicing engineering without being registered.”

How dare he practice engineering without a license? The audacity of this criminal scum!

You almost have to admire the vindictive nature of the State. An individual came forward offering information that could potentially lead to the correction of a bug in a system and the State slaps him with a fine for daring to question its authority. Welcome to America, the freest goddamn country on Earth!