|
I have the
highest
respect for David Chaum ... or I did before reading this
article and
the comments posted to Wired. I've just posted the following
to Wired: Chaum's technical feat is impressive, and I have every reason to assume it will work as designed – in a purely technical sense of the word "work". But Chaum doesn't really understand the underlying social problem nor the political dynamics that would play out with his scheme. His view of society is naïve at best, and creepy at worst. Chaum says, “You have to perfect the traceability of the evil people and the untraceability of the honest people.” Sorry, David, but there are no “evil people” and “honest people”. Everyone struggles between good and evil, and everyone commits both. That's what being human is all about. One has to be remarkably out of touch not to know this. Chaum defines “evil” in the context of his scheme as “serious abuse, something that leads to death and real harm to people or major economic malfeasance.” This is exactly the accusation leveled by many highly-placed officials in multiple democratic governments against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Do all reasonable people agree that Snowden and Assange are devils? Others have mentioned that a government could subvert Chaum's scheme simply by sending thugs to “persuade” 9 sys admins to do its bidding. But even easier (and more gentle) would be for a 3-letter agency to divert a trivial part of its budget to 9 sys admins, offering them a comfortable retirement in return for “recognizing the evil” of the government's enemies. Chaum is simply automating a social problem, not solving it. Bill On 01/07/2016 09:19 AM, Michael Muller wrote: Disclaimer: I haven't reviewed the information or even completely read the article, but this is interesting.David Chaum (creator of DigiCash and ecash among many other things) has come up with a system called "PrivaTegrity." It facilitates TOR-like anonymity and private, anonymous communication but has an interesting twist: there's a backdoor that allows de-anonymization but only in the case of agreement of a set of parties to be distributed around the world. Apparently, this involves the use of 9 servers. Control of all 9 is required to de-anonymize communications. http://www.wired.com/2016/01/david-chaum-father-of-online-anonymity-plan-to-end-the-crypto-wars/ |
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org https://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College * Mar 2 - Consuming The Cloud: Shoot Out
