[Discuss] Mr Robot

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On
> Behalf Of Eric Chadbourne
> 
> I don't think either of us are going to
> be beaten by the CIA tomorrow.
> 
> Criminal gangs with rubber hoses probably
> aren't going come hunting for you if you try to write or implement good
> crypto on your backup project.

That's what everyone says. It's nothing more than willful, sheepish ignorance, akin to blindly accepting all the Terms of Service on every app. 

Do you follow any of the news or politics in this country? We have politicians voting - unanimously - to show they believe climate change is a hoax, risking the future of the world in order to support the fossil energy lobby, despite overwhelming consensus of the actual scientists who study it. We have politicians, and even the director of the FBI, and prime minister of the UK, pushing for encryption backdoors and saying "don't make us force you into it" despite overwhelming consensus of the security experts saying that it can never work and would be harmful and destructive to try. Meanwhile, everything is getting backdoors anyway. Ask Ladar Levison what would have happened to him if he had stayed in business and refused to provide the backdoor. They might not have used the rubber hose on him, but indefinite detention would certainly be on the menu.

Look up Frank Olson. There's also an incredibly well done special covering his case, by Dr. G's America's Most Shocking Cases (which is actually just an excellent series - I'm bummed that it only ran for one season). Every government around the world has procedures to make assassinations look like accidents. We've seen cases of radioactive material dropped onto a Japan politician's rooftop by miniature drone, and drive-by parabolic radiation emitters, used to "accidentally" kill people via cancer or radiation poisoning a few months later. Recently, China tries to silence Miss World Canada's human rights advocacy by threatening her father. http://bit.ly/1Vikv6B 

Every blogger, journalist, and activist receives death threats. It comes with the job. We've had at least 3 bloggers killed this week. And Al-Jazeera journalists imprisoned in Egypt. As evidence against them, prosecutors played footage of a trotting horse, and the music video for "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye. It sounds so insane you don't want to believe it, you think "Am I reading The Onion?" but then every news source reports the same thing, for over a year. Now the guys are in prison, trying to work with The Committee to Protect Journalists, and lawyers and activists abroad, trying to get deported from Egypt. We like to sit in our protective bubbles, thinking "That's just oppressive foreign regimes," which makes you think, "That must be exactly how people abroad view us and 'indefinite detention without sufficient evidence for a trial' and 'enhanced interrogation' at Gitmo." So at some point, you have to give up denial and accept that it's reality. Not only is it reality, but it happens in this country too, and it happens against our own citizens such as Ladar and Frank.

The goal we're pushing for in https://cbcrypt.org is a universal standard login protocol that allows logins and encryption to happen without ever exposing passwords or encryption keys. We're working on a video that explains it, but that video is to be released about a week or two from now. Follow @Conceptblossom or like Concept Blossom on facebook, or just email me off-list if you want to be alerted when that video is available. Yes, I am definitely afraid of the backlash for being an activist and trying to fix big problems. At stake are billions of dollars in criminal organizations - billions of dollars in legitimate companies such as Dropbox and Google and Microsoft that legally use and share their users' data - political leanings of many governments around the world - and many lives of many people.