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

[Nuno Cardoso]

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_(computer_security)>.
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
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