VPN blocking is substantially easier though… Traffic going all to one place makes it much easier to take down than traffic going everywhere.
But they’re past that. That was before. Later the VPN guys resorted to gateway randomization, but even that has proven to be insufficient. The state firewall looks at traffic patterns and drop connections independently of where you’re connecting to.
Still a pretty discernible pattern when I look at any of my firewall logs. There are only so many protocols to hook up to VPN and each of them leave a pretty distinct signature… I don’t think it would be hard to block at all – sometimes it happens on accident if you have multiple NAT layers…
This is a command and control structure for those who would oppose the agenda of increasing power through increasing or concentrating wealth. The money people will do anything they can to kill this structure and their efforts will increase once viability and efficacy is proven. Its an arms race. The only thing that will keep the network safe is making their attempts to thwart it impractical. But using the network to thwart them and undermining their money and power by legal, political and technological means is also crucial. Use the network for its highest purpose. They’ve been waging war on the global population, you can’t just resist, you have to end this conflict by winning it as peacefully and quickly as possible.
A first step is making them transparent. A consensus has to form against them and transparency is the first step. Another step is tech that decentralizes the money making and cuts the cord on centralized money. This network and tech like it the transparency these bring can make sure such decentralized approaches aren’t suppressed.
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The corporate world will not see SAFE as a threat. They can use it just like anyone else can. It will do a really good job of holding any secrets that the choose to put there – and there are a lot that ought to be put there… (My credit card numbers for example)
Political social agendas are what they are – political and social agendas. SAFE is technology, and it will work for both sides without preference.
The more corporate use the better – because they prevent the levers of power from being wielded against it.
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I think it will help prevent abuse of power by the corporate and help lead to radical restructuring of corporate power. I think the top down corporate structure is a form of power and organization that is it self at the root of our problems. I think we’ve outgrown the corporate.
We are getting off topic. We covered that on the other thread. You aren’t going to be able to build things like locomotives and aircraft carriers without a corporate structure… Just way too much logistics to handle in a decentralized manner.
Your personal politics have little bearing on the realities of building selling and maintaining complex systems… It might be a nice pipe dream but corporations are corporations because that is the best logistical fit for most companies.
Back to SAFE… Governments can make whatever they darn well please illegal. Nothing can be done about that… All that really can be done is to make it nearly indistinguishable from other traffic… The projects like Crust and CJDNS will help with that. Advancing these in lots of other projects will make cryptography even more commonplace than it already is…
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Except that’s simply not true. The format matters immensely in terms of quality of life and quality of society. Mondragon is as capable of making things like nukes and jets as GE but its not a corporation in anything like the sense we are used to. In fact they seem to outperform and be more resilient. Its not a top down structure run by a petty tyranito or group of them. Its a democratic structure.
And its not what is right for companies that matters its what’s right for society. The change is coming. MaidSAFE is an example as an organization so is the free(dom) software movement. So its not just my politics its at the heart of what matters, its the decentralization of power enough to give people livable lives and breathing room.
Mondragon is still a corporation.
And we are still off topic –
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Mondragon self labels as co-op or wholly employee owned. Recently married United Steel Workers Union.
Ok back on topic.
I’ve been concerned about these attacks from the very beginning and although I’ve received some intense criticism for expressing my concerns I do not think these risks are going to be mediated any time soon.
SAFE Network is extremely easy to politically attack early on and very difficult to politically defend early on. This is because a lot of the positive uses aren’t built yet, and the network is sort of just out there for politically motivated talking heads in the media to seize upon the moment they can find any uncouth morally inappropriate activity. The media is able to shame anyone associated with SAFE Network which is the real risk.
The point is that SAFE Network may initially violate social norms, and the fact that it is decentralized doesn’t necessary make it safe to the mainstream. It very well could be banned and if it is banned then what is supposed to happen?
The only thing we can do is find out when it happens. I would say if some government does decide to crack down on SAFE Network then they’ll probably crackdown on the Farmers and the people they suspect are using it. It would be unprecedented in the United States where freedom of speech is considered somewhat sacred but it’s not controversial in other places. Additionally governments have global capabilities and behave extra-judicially when they deem it necessary.
And now to discuss how I think it can be solved. I think SAFE Network needs a governance structure, with leadership from the early days. Smart contracts ought to make this possible so that SAFE Network can have responsible parents selected by the crowd.
Bitcoin is showing that without governance you can have problems develop. SAFE Network needs representatives who can go and talk to different governments, these representatives have to be voted into that position somehow, and they should interface with governments around the world.
I think it’s not really going to be an acceptable situation to governments if SAFE Network is operated entirely by anonymous hackers on the Internet.
So it’s one job to actually create SAFE Network and another job to sell SAFE Network both to the mainstream and to governments around the world. I don’t know if there is a plan to do that or how that will happen but I do know it’s unavoidable. An ungoverned unfiltered SAFE Network which makes no attempt at all to form alliances might be acceptable for the crypto community but then there are many other far bigger communities who have to be appealed to.
In the plans I know SAFE Network will have the capability of democracy features. Maybe now is a good time to begin discussing how those features could be put to positive use? What sort of issues could SAFE Network vote on and if SAFE Network does get banned by a country which is a superpower what happens next? It doesn’t have to be the United States which cracks down but it can be any powerful country, such as China for example or Russia.
If it happens then they’ll simply jail anyone who even is caught with SAFE Network. The same way law enforcement can crack down on drugs, or file sharing, or child pornography, I don’t see why they couldn’t crack down the same way on SAFE Network itself, using the same powers. The worst thing is the media could actually side with the side that wants to crack down on it, we just don’t know.
We will find out in the first year that SAFE Network is live how it will be treated. In fact the first case of someone doing something inappropriate with SAFE Network will reveal a lot about how the governments of the world will react and if they decide to go all out then it will be known early on in my opinion. The true value of SAFE Network will not be understood in the first few years in my opinion unless there are some apps which appeal to the masses which includes a lot of people who side with government and law enforcement.
Exactly. You’ll know if SAFE Network is going to be a success or not if industry and government are quick to adopt it. If it’s rejected immediately or if the reaction is to attack it then you’ll know it’s not going to have an easy time catching on.
Unlike most people I don’t think the masses will immediately take to SAFE Network if they ever do. I think SAFE Network has to be “sold” to the masses. I think the most difficult part will be convincing most people to accept anonymous currency. The majority of people of planet earth don’t actually seem to want anonymous currency, especially with news stories like the Ashley Madison hackers extorting.
SAFE Network can be attacked in many ways. First of all you have the fact that hackers can use it for extortion. If it becomes the anonymous currency of choice for hackers that alone could cause a media storm. Just look at the Ashley Madison hack and make it exponentially worse with SAFE Network capabilities. People want privacy but I don’t think most people want anonymous currency.
Why don’t most people want that? Because it’s like giving every teenager a loaded gun without any training. Sure you could make the case that it is their right to own a gun, but then if there is a rise in gun violence it fuels the side trying to ban guns not just from teenagers but for adults. It’s the fact that SAFE Network could actually be demonized in a way which makes it easier for people who never liked privacy to completely convince people that privacy is evil.
The FBI is already talking about banning encryption. Abuse of encryption only fuels their side.
Then its by definition not the SAFE network, but another.
This is fine if you wish to go down that path, but its not the SAFE network, it will be a differetn NETWORK you fork off.
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One vector of attack are various ideas for de-anonymization and the undermining of asset ownership for supposedly benevolent goals, such as the ability to eliminate certain uses of the platform or protect alleged domain ownership rights from the real world.
(Now I’m not saying the link below is about that - I’m saying there are several comments in that topic that call for de-anonymization and various other measures that would centralize control and erode anti-censorship features of the platform).
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Shhhh…don´t use the words “governance” or “leadership”, it may trigger a shitstorm 
I personally think your suggestions wouldn´t really help the network. Representatives are single points of faillures, much easier to attack AND they are irrelevant to the network. I also expect attacks, even though I don´t think that “ugly content” will be the cause, but economical interests. People didn´t care about Napster until it became a viral phenomenon seriously affecting music business. However, Napster was easy to attack, SAFE won´t be.
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Have you seen this? US20100064354A1 - Maidsafe.net - Google Patents
I’ll look at that thread.
You have too much faith in source code.
An app isn’t going to make it’s users anonymous. It takes a lot more than SAFE Network to be truly anonymous and this is known in information security circles. SAFE Network in my opinion will not achieve mainstream adoption because it’s not marketing itself to mainstream people.
Who are the people most likely to be involved with SAFE Network? If you can figure that out so can governments around the world. The Farmers are the single point of attack mainly but governments may also go after the users.
The weakness I see is the fact that if SAFE Network doesn’t have self governance built in, for political or some other puerile reasons, then it will just be bypassed in favor of networks which offer similar capabilities with lower risks. For example Ethereum can do privacy too but will also be capable of self governance from the start which means it doesn’t have to go through the dark ages to reach the enlightenment.
In my opinion governance should be one of the first features of a DAO/DAC. Anonymity in my opinion is very controversial and it’s more of an arms race. For the most part I don’t see very much demand for anonymity.
I see a lot of demand for privacy which is not the same as anonymity. Pseudo-anonymity offers privacy with reputation, while true anonymity doesn’t offer any positive benefits that you can’t also get from pseudo-anonymity but it comes with risks.
The governments and mainstream do not want true anonymity. They are willing to accept decentralization, disruption of industry, etc, but they will not accept anonymous currency. This means anonymous currency is a feature most of the potential users don’t want. This means you’ve got ot try to convince them to want it but it’s not going to be very easy to do that when the people who will want it early on are likely to abuse it.
The end result could be that SAFE Network is used by governments, law enforcement, the mass media, as the boogeyman. The next time there is an Ashley Madison type hack then the culprits will hide behind the anonymity of the SAFE Network and might ask for Safecoins because it’s untraceable. If enough of these scenarios play out then eventually a majority of people will decline to be associated with SAFE Network at all, in any way, because any association with it might be seen as supporting the bad stuff.
Thus far I don’t see any winning strategy, so I would say a lot of the early adopters of SAFE Network are idealists with wishful thinking. SAFE Network is not going to take over the world. It might be a better version of Tor, with anonymous currency, and private file storage. Those features could be built over other networks using a blockchain + DHT type architecture. SAFE Network will have to compete with Ethereum.
In my opinion SAFE Network is for sure going to provoke attack. There will likely be some people who are just waiting to abuse the powers it gives them, and their abuse will likely be all over the media for months, trigger congressional investigations and possibly new laws. I think we should be realistic rather than delusional about how SAFE Network will likely be accepted.
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Oh, I´m not saying that there won´t be any attack, I only said that attacking will be more complicated than with Napster. I also expect a negative backlash if SAFE catches attention (which will be hard by itself). I also argued for decentralized control of content, but I am not in favour in representative governance, that´s all.
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The devs as well.
- I understand by court order (EU busybodies) the devs would have no choice but to remove seeding data for the network and bring it down. Am I wrong?
- Look what happened to a privacy/anti-censorship dev in China:
https://forum.autonomi.community/t/youre-invited-to-take-a-break/4997
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I actually think the attack will be a lot easier than with Napster. With Napster the government was losing the morality debate. They tried to say that file sharing equated to stealing but no one really thought of it that way so it was going against the cultural trends of the time.
SAFE Network would be different .SAFE Network is on the side of going against the cultural trends of it’s time, because anonymity is not the current trend. At the same time if morality is discussed then SAFE Network isn’t guaranteed to have supporters like Napster was. It’s going to actually be quite difficult to defend SAFE Network early on without looking like a privacy extremist, if law enforcement for example is on the other side talking about how children are being kidnapped and sold. It’s nothing like Napster in my opinion when it comes to PR or cultural adoption.
SAFE Network in my opinion is going to produce culture shock.
Wow I did not know about this. Actually the Truecrypt project also vanished under mysterious circumstances.
You’re absolutely right. The developers do have to worry but that is my point. It means every user of SAFE Network has to trust the developers and protect them. Ultimately though there is no way around the trust situation because someone has to be trusted and anyone trusted is who governments will mess with.
At least with voting you can select the people you want to interact with governments. You can appoint people or fire people from those positions. In the case of Bitcoin there is no democracy, so you have people who are in positions which they might be in permanently no matter what the community thinks and that is worse because it’s less flexible.
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