[pp.int.general] MeowCat, a new internet messaging platform

Sun Aug 5 22:08:50 CEST 2012

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com>wrote:

>  You are proving my point, Nuno... considering the present sociological
> mix... if you can't make programs and protocols foolproof... security and
> privacy depends on the paranoia (or lack thereof) of ALL the users. If you
> stick to those you trust... you'll be only a few. As a political
> movement... you'll imperatively need to be more... so you'll lower your
> exigences and start communicating with people taking security risks.
>

No, you are the one who is proving, once more, that you don't know what you
are talking about. You don't know the program, you don't now the protocols
used, you don't want to know and yet you speak and criticize with the
presumption of knowing.
Furthermore, even with my explanation you fail to grasp that the network
can be huge even if you only connect to a few friends.
Let me put it in a simple example. If everyone had only 10 direct trusted
friends, the part of the network that everyone can reach with only 6 hops
could go up to more than a million people.
Finally you fail to understand that because of the way the program and it's
protocols work, the only one affected by the bad judgement of
adding untrustworthy "friends" is the one who add's them and him alone.

> I do not have to know technical details of Retroshare or any other
> solution to assert that...
>

See, you even contradict yourself, you say that you don't need to know
program and protocols, as if there is nothing that can change your
assertions, when in the previous paragraph you say that making "programs
and protocols foolproof" would solve things.

> it follows automatically from standard social and political imperatives
> under present circumstances. Security and trust are antagonists to
> political spreading like wildfire... and as the latter is what we long
> for... the first will be given up.
>

That is nothing more than your opinion, mine is different...

Consider the ongoing discussion about opening up and bringing transparency
> to the pp-leaders mailing list. Majority, under present circumstances, will
> not consider drawbacks... they will blindly ask for what they take as the
> ultimate solution against corruption and power-grabbing, no matter how
> naive a position this is. You won't get the time to convince them of the
> fact that they are wrong.
>

See, although I don't agree with this particular paragraph you wrote, that
is an issue I mostly agree with you, and even wrote there on that thread
agreeing with you<http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/2012-July/012238.html>on
most of the things. But again you are contradicting yourself. Just in
the previous paragraph you said that "security and trust" need to "be given
up" in favor of "political spreading like wildfire", and in that discussion
you defend "security and trust" for the pp-leaders mailing list, thus, in
your own assertion, implicitly defending that our movement shouldn't be
"spreading like wildfire". Sadly, seeing some of your recent posts about
the situation in
Spain<http://lists.pp-international.net/pipermail/pp-eu.euroliquid/2012-August/000011.html>I
rather think that is really what you'd love. :(

So, we have to be very careful with the tools we propose, because once the
> majority finds them fit for any purpose they can imagine... you won't be
> able to take it back from them... for any reason, even good ones.
>

The problem is not about the tools it's how you use them. For example, I
know you must love mailing lists because you spend so much time writing on
them, and in the case of the pp-leaders list you're concerned with how it
is used, yet you don't attack the tool. That is the correct approach.
However with other tools, that you don't even know and don't want to know,
because you are concerned of the way you think they may be used, you attack
the tools themselves fiercely. That is the incorrect approach.

> I've got similar concerns about Liquid Feedback.
>

Yes, I know, and all your arguments can be applied to any form of
Democracy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy>that allows anyone to
vote, because you keep saying that only a few are
smart enough to know how to do it right...actually that whole logic is also
flawed:

most people are dumb to vote and make dumb choices => we need just a few
smart elected representatives

however that leads to:

most people are dumb to vote and make dumb choices => the elected
representatives will be dumb choices

See the problem? ;)

Anyway, I think that until you choose to inform yourself about the
platforms, programs, protocols, whatever that you want to criticize, there
is really no point in discussing things, so I'll leave this thread at
that...

Pirate regards,
Nuno

> Antonio
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 16:43:43 +0100
>
> From: nuno.cardoso at pp-international.net
> To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] MeowCat, a new internet messaging platform
>
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 5:49 PM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com>wrote:
>
>  Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:45:19 +0100
> From: nuno.cardoso at pp-international.net
> To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] MeowCat, a new internet messaging platform
>
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com>wrote:
>
>  Nuno,
>
> If you can trace all the connections... sooner or later you will have
> access to enough indiscretions, or even maybe force a few :( , so that the
> encryption in itself will not really matter.
>
>
> Retroshare is a F2F system. You only connect to those you trust.
>
> >> Then you have to admit it is not suitable for a political party trying
> to get heaps of new members soon, to have also a voters base that will
> bring it some results in elections. If you stick only to those you trust to
> adhere to the same strict standards on trust as you handle... you are bound
> to stay alone or have no privacy at all. Those really adhering to the
> necessary standards are a very small minority... and you always have to
> fear finally trusting someone that does not care at all.
>
>
> Again your words prove that you didn't even look into the program you are
> commenting on. Please, inform yourself before you comment.
> You only connect to those you trust, and they connect to those they trust,
> and so on, and those subsets don't have to intersect and end up creating a
> larger network. Connections despite being made only to those you trust, can
> reach the larger network anonymously hopping through trusted connections
> using a Turtle router<http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Documentation:TurtleHopping>
>  (original idea <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_F2F>). You do know
> the concept of six degrees of separation<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation> right?
> Same thing...
>
>
> >> This is mass dinamics and mere factual statistics. You can ignore the
> facts, it will get you no closer to a solution.
>
>
> So please, follow your advice and don't ignore the facts of Retroshare,
> learn them first before speaking of what you don't fully know yet.
>
>
> Everything is encrypted from connection to connection, so you can't track
> a single packet beyond any hop, you can't even know if the information it
> contained stopped or continued to a final destination.
>  The only possible "indiscretions" are those you are willing to connect
> to, your Friends, and "force a few" you can't do unless you break
> the mathematical laws that provide PGP it's strengths.
>
> >> Yes, your friends. Unless you choose them very well, vulnerable to
> ordinary phishing, no need to break their encryption keys. Not everyone is
> plenty aware of the dangers.
>
>
> So please stop throwing FUD concepts at a technology that you clearly
> don't know and that don't even apply. Phishing? Really?
> If someone is going to start adding and trusting people he doesn't really
> know into a Friend2Friend system it's is own problem, he's basically
> transforming it for himself into a normal Peer2Peer, or as I like to call
> them, Promiscuous2Promiscuous, but that doesn't affect anyone beyond him,
> precisely because of the technology. That user may be an idiot, but the
> technology protects everyone else from his stupidity.
>
>
> Please inform yourself on the technologies before spreading FUD<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%2c_uncertainty_and_doubt>,
> and if you really found a way to break it please provide a working example
> and not some vague rambling that doesn't even make sense. I already saw
> this pattern in the LQFB/eVoting debate on the PP-EU list and it starts to
> hint a bit of Technophobia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophobia>.
> Sorry to put it so bluntly, but it really, really, really looks like it.
>
> >> I am no technophobe at all. The security breach is in our brains and
> our statistical behaviour as members of the crowd, not necessarily in the
> technology.
>
>
> OK, then just stop attacking the technologies with FUD and focus on the
> real problem then, the people. If you concern is phishing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing>,
> start educating them about phishing, how it works, and that it can even
> work without computers under other names on the greater scope of Social
> Engineering<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_%28computer_security%29>.
> It's a problem about trusting things blindly just because they look
> official or whatever, not because this or that technology.
>
>  Yesterday someone was talking about a new service from Google... who
> would scramble the faces on videos you upload for you.
>
> Now, people might find it an interesting feature... but if I were police
> searching for people and evidence... I would have paid for google to offer
> such a service, as a honeypot for naive activists.
>
>
> So you are comparing a libre open source program with
> full scrutiny available by looking at the source code (I did, I even
> compile my own copy from source) where the User is in full control to a
> proprietary service from mega corporation where the User is the product
> being sold and that has policies that force cooperation with governments on
> demand? O....K....
>
> >> Well, no, you seem biased ;( ... I was not talking about the technology
> at all, let even comparing more than one... I was talking about
> inconscience of the people towards danger and risks.
>
> >> I was saying that if you upload UNSCRAMBLED faces and trust Google to
> scramble them for you... the police might be highly interested in obtaining
> from Google the unscrambled version you gave them... of the faces someone
> thought were worth scrambling... there is a higher probability for finding
> interesting faces there... than in randomly uploaded videos of crowds. And
> at that moment it is Google who decides, not you. You may not even get to
> know you turned in your friends with your ignorant and irresponsible
> behaviour.
>
>
> Ok, so forget about the technology, my reasoning persists with the same
> wording, you are comparing a situation "where the User is in full control"
> to one "where the User is the product being sold"... No need for bias
> or technology in the reasoning.
>
>
> >> See, technology was just attrezzo for the reasoning.
>
>
> Yet a reasoning that makes no sense because it puts in the same bag two
> very distinct things...
>
>
> >> Let's not forget to be intelligent just because technology can help us
> to be lazy.
>
>
> Sometimes people don't need to be geniuses to gain from technology, even
> if they are lazy, they just need to NOT be stupid.
> If one is going to use a F2F as a promiscuous P2P then I guess he's using
> a hammer on a screw and a screwdriver on a nail.
>
> Pirate regards,
> Nuno
>
> ____________________________________________________ Pirate Parties
> International - General Talk pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/attachments/20120805/a4c2c8cc/attachment-0001.html>