Catalan separatists have tooled up with decentralized app for civil disobedience
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It doesn’t seem as decentralized as advertised. The authorities just have to coerce some of the admins and they have a very nice view of what is going on in the movement in real-time.
From whom?
Not really uncensorable after all.
And not even open sourced.
If the government takes over the admins many people will be in trouble.
That being said maybe this app is just well-marketed groupware.
It's not related to Scuttlebutt at all.
There's not much information about how the application works. What we know is:
- The app seems to use a RetroShare network behind-the-scenes [1].
- RetroShare is a decentralized, serverless, peer-to-peer, meshed, distributed network. When you join you generate a pgp key for yourself and then add "friends" by grabbing their public keys.
- The app needs to be activated through a QR generated from another person's app who's already in.
- The app monitors your location and only shows you close-by actions.
What I would like to confirm:
- Whether the QR is the same for everyone, the same for every person sharing it, or generated on a by-share basis
- Whether RetroShare is actually used or not.
Assumptions I make:
- There's a non-trivial organization behind this
- The organizers do not want to be discovered, and want to have as much "plausible deniability" as possible (they are risking jail time)
Given all the above, here's how I would build this application:
- Create 3 (or 5) "root" keys. The very top people in the org get those.
- When you join the network (by scanning someone's QR), you join the RetroShare network, but also get the root keys id's.
- The app is now ready to handle some message types from the root keys:
1. STOP. Accepted when signed by any of the active root keys. The app stops sending messages.
2. ADD_ZONE. Accepted when signed by a majority of the root keys. Adds a new zone (a geographical bounding box) along with the public key of the zone's commander (someone who can organize stuff in that area).
3. REMOVE_ZONE. Accepted when signed by at least two root keys. Removes a zone because it either has no activity or has been compromised.
- During normal operation, the app tracks the currently active zones and the corresponding zone-masters. It monitors your location, and if you are within a zone it sends "in-zone" notifications to the zone-master.
- The zone-master collects such notifications and sends direct messages to people in their zone when an action is to take place.
As I see it, this would be the simplest setup to accomplish the organizations' goals without much possibility for compromise. As soon as a zone is compromized it can be nuked, and the whole thing can be nuked quickly if some root is compromised too.
You could then start refining this basic idea with extra functionalities. For instance:
- Add/remove root keys to avoid having to nuke everything if a root gets compromised.
- Get the app to send "in-zone" messages to random zones from time to time and then filter received actions according to actual location. This would prevent the organizers (or someone who gets to observe the traffic) from inferring the users' real location.
Citation needed. The main historical request by pro-independence people has always been for a vote to be held on the matter. Spain has always replied that there will never be such vote.
The majority of people do not want to lose their EU and spanish status, and they never wanted it.
According to the latest such election (2019 spanish general elections), we had [1]:
1.626.001 votes for parties clearly supporting independence (ERC + JxCat + Front Republicà)
1.784.129 votes for parties clearly opposing independence (PSOE + Cs + PP)
678.451 votes for parties that claim other issues are more important (UP + PACMA)
The total numbers for/against independence are not clear and could swing either way. We would need either much more skewed results (to extrapolate from them) or an actual vote on the issue to support the claim that was made here.
Note that I haven't made the opposite claim (more than 50% of people want independence). I just said that in the current situation the way to know would be to hold a vote, and that Spain has always opposed this option.
[1] https://www.abc.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/resultado...
But this is a trap, a fake discussion, because the independentist people in Catalonia don't own the place.
The spanish constitution grants rights to all citizens in Spain to share the whole territory, use the public spaces and infrastructures in their benefit, enjoy nature and stablish, work and live peacefully in any point of the nation that they would desire and choose, without being bullied by the local sheriff or politician.
The minority is not just louder but more numerous.
No, Catalans didn't did a referendum, Catalan Government did on illegal referendum
And more aggressive
Last night the separatists burned cars and bikes, really happy to have started finally their exciting new war in the real world. They crave for blood and having marthyrs to show to the word since years ago. They even have a name for it: WARcelona. Daddy's little psycho and mommy's little soldier.
Some days ago President Torra asked for rebellion against the same government that he swore loyalty. If is not surrealist enough, later he send the autonomic police against the same children. An adolescent lose an eye. A french tourist suffered a heart attack and died after being forced to walk 4 Km to reach the airport. A father must toke their baby and run away from his home in the middle of the nigth because the idiots were burning tires at the street and the smoke goes to the first floor of the next house. They were about to axfixiate the family living above without ever noticing it, or caring for anything. Do you know what was the answer that they gave to this father?: "take it easy, man"
Generally I tend to support the idea of folks being in control of their own destiny, but I can see why a larger government would not want to allow it. The smaller local government only needs to worry about what is best for itself, while the larger government must think about the nation as a whole.
Looking at California, or New York. If the two decided to separate from the United States, what would be the economic impact to the remaining states in the nation? I’m no economist, but it doesn’t seem good. I imagine this is also true for regions or areas that have strong natural advantages as well. Such as ports which offer military and trade benefits.
I can see both sides. I can feel for folks that want to separate, but also can see why they would not be allowed.
In that case, we are talking about a first world state that is also an oppressive regime (jails political opponents, has paramilitary grops, engages in state terrorism against its own people, etc.)
What happens, then? Do you demote spain as third world (I would totally agreee with that) so you that you can still support the people who want to escape?
Are you talking about Spain? Because if you're, youre' compeltely wrong
My God, people can really believe
It becomes a clear case of expecting others to support you when you are down but then keeping profits for yourself when things turn around.
We can ask ourselves, what the competing principles here are, as the "right to political self-determination" is not the only principle. One competing principle is stems from the fact that secession requires reorganization of the economic relations between the larger country and the seceding region. As such, there is an economic cost to the country, that must be balanced with the benefit to the world from the region seceding. If the economic cost is high compared to benefit (as is likely for towns), then the country can reasonably deny the secession request.
Of course, if the country is highly oppressive to the region, then the marginal good to the world of a region seceding can be effectively infinite, and then we should always support the secession request.
Citation needed.
Scotland's movement can't be called a separatist movement (independence is a better term, but still not great). Scotland is a distinct country within the United Kingdom. It would be more of a withdrawal movement (similar to the UK withdrawing from the EU).
A major political issue in Scotland at the moment (especially in Edinburgh) is Brexit. The majority of Scottish residents voted to remain in the EU, which reignited a movement to leave the UK. I would call this a "real present day issue" and not just "historical grievance and ego".
Is that why there was an independence referendum the year before the Brexit vote?
The comment I replied to claimed that most modern separatist/independence movements are caused by historical grievance and ego and not present day issues.
I made two points:
1. Scotland leaving the UK is not comparable to Catalonia leaving Spain. Scotland is a country within the UK. What I mean by country here is that the UK considers Scotland a distinct country. I made the comparison to the UK being a member of the EU because it's a closer example. Spain does not consider Catalonia a country (my opinion doesn't change that fact).
2. Scotland has a "present day issue" relating to the Brexit vote (not to claim there's no historical grievance and ego at play, but it can't be chalked up as just that).
Interesting that the existence of these movements seems strongly tied to the historical granting of autonomy to the regions involved.
I.e, if some degree of autonomy was once granted (take the Basques), I imagine it solidified and now serves to justify the sense of uniqueness. Whereas if it isn't tolerated (i.e, the U.S), separatist movements are nonexistent despite similar cultural differences existing within a country.
Also, the movements demanding autonomy predate the autonomy in almost every case (where they subsequently demand independence).
Other times, perhaps the reason for the autonomy demand is not national difference like in the Spanish cases, but simply distance - therefore, it doesn't become a movement for independence. Not only is the autonomy sufficient, but perhaps a backstep is taken: For instance, in mid-19th century Australia the Port Phillip District of NSW demanded autonomy and received a parliament that could do almost anything domestically. Fifty years later, they began reuniting in a federation and there's been not even a hint of independence from Victoria since.
Ultimately I think the reason for separation demands in Europe is because Europe is now the federation level of government, and the regions (Flemish, Catalans, Scots) want a seat at the table. So they're not really demanding independence but separation. This is a normal consequence of forming a federation.
The answer to both of these questions is the same: established political and business interests.
If you believe in the political right of people to be self-governing, then I see no reason why you wouldn’t support any and all independence movements which sufficiently represent the populace. Of course, in order to minimize rash decisions, some restrictions might be necessary (e.g. only vote on the issue once a decade, when 85% of the population agrees, etc.)
Having said that, I can see other arguments which essentially say that forcing unification is ultimately beneficial for individual citizens, as larger states tend to have more power then smaller ones (i.e. unified Prussia was invaded far less than the loose confederation of German states.) But this seems a bit unlikely in the modern West; an independent Quebec or Scotland isn’t going to get invaded by its neighbors.
In first world European cases, though, I think it's much less about independence and far more about being a top level subdivision of a country. Catalan, Flanders, Scotland etc want to become member-states in the EU with a seat at that table. They're after a seat at the table that decides the rules that govern them, and want to be able to defend their own interests. This is, after all, the point of a federation, so it's a natural thing to want: If it weren't a valid desire, the heads of government of the member states would not have a role in the EU. It's fairly common for territories to be cut up and distinct parts removed once they join a federation, especially when they're at least as large and diverse as Europe (take a squizz at India's states).
Catalan language was never banned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language#Spain:_18th_t...
It was about the Lincoln winning without any representation from the south.