rmrfstar

It's important to understand the historical context. Aaron was arrested in 2011, when a lot of other internet politics was happening. Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, LulzSec (remember Fuck FBI Friday?), Wikileaks, SOPA. "The block was hot" so to speak.

The attitude in DC was, "those people on the internet think they can do whatever they want, we'll show them." Well, they showed us and we lost a truly inspiring person.

> I hope that law firms far and wide encourage their associates and partners alike to update their knowledge with this

"But most of all, the legal profession has failed. Democratic governance depends upon responsible individuals throughout the entire system who understand and uphold the law, not who understand and exploit it. On average, lawyers have become so deeply corrupt that it is imperative for major changes in the profession to take place, far beyond the meek proposals already on the table. To start, the term “legal ethics,” upon which codes of conduct and licensure are nominally based, has become an oxymoron. Mossack Fonseca did not work in a vacuum—despite repeated fines and documented regulatory violations, it found allies and clients at major law firms in virtually every nation. If the industry’s shattered economics were not already evidence enough, there is now no denying that lawyers can no longer be permitted to regulate one another. It simply doesn’t work. Those able to pay the most can always find a lawyer to serve their ends, whether that lawyer is at Mossack Fonseca or another firm of which we remain unaware. What about the rest of society?

The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery. In this system—our system—the slaves are unaware both of their status and of their masters, who exist in a world apart where the intangible shackles are carefully hidden amongst reams of unreachable legalese. The horrific magnitude of detriment to the world should shock us all awake. But when it takes a whistleblower to sound the alarm, it is cause for even greater concern. It signals that democracy’s checks and balances have all failed, that the breakdown is systemic, and that severe instability could be just around the corner. So now is the time for real action, and that starts with asking questions." [1]

[1] https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/20160506-j...

Most Americans are actively hostile to privacy, not just ambivalent. If you tell them, "Alice doesn't carry a cellphone, because she thinks it shares her real time location with advertisers, hedge funds, private investigators, debt collectors, bounty hunters, and the government," most will conclude that (a) Alice is mentally ill, or (b) Alice is a degenerate criminal. Either way, Alice needs to be investigated. That means the state needs to interview her colleagues and neighbors, and subpoena her bank and medical records.

From the statement, "In addition to further harming already marginalized communities, these charges could be used to brand as terrorists people who protest against government injustices by engaging in civil disobedience or actions that result in property damage."

Clearly demonstrated this summer, when these people [1] were charged with crimes punishable by life imprisonment. One of their charges had a 45 year mandatory minimum sentence. What sense does it make to create more Draconian laws? According to a former AUSA, "It's batshit... and I'm a pretty law-and-order guy."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/nyregion/nyc-protests-law...

Please don't insinuate that I think people should be treated differently based on their religious affiliations.

I think that due process rights of despicable people should be protected precisely because I want them to be available to disfavored affinity groups like religious minorities, labor movements, and pacifists.

When you say "these terrorist attacks", do you have a concrete definition in mind? Or are you just expressing outrage and disgust?

Because right now, people accused of terrorism can be held in Guantanamo without habeas corpus. They are also subject to inclusion on government "kill lists"[1] with no opportunity for judicial review. The executive branch is claiming powers it has not had since the time of absolute monarchy. We should carefully consider any proposal to expand the meaning of the word "terrorism".

I'm outraged too, but I think these criminals should be afforded full due process rights. At both the investigatory stage and the trial stage.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/us-invokes...

I also understood this as an instance of the security state threatening Congress. The police were saying, "Don't even think about de-funding or reforming us." DC police spend $210k/employee. 80% of its 2500 employees are "sworn officers," whatever the heck that means.

> Your metadata just ends up getting semi-permanently logged on various machines, and there is nothing you can do about it at this time.

Sealed sender means that an eavesdropper who can introspect into RAM inside Signal's AWS infrastructure is no better off than a network eavesdropper who passively sniffs ingress/egress.

That doesn't mean they can't build a reasonably accurate metadata database covering most people--people who communicate from a limited number of mobile ips to a limited number of mobile ips.

Signal is way better than matrix, but let's not pretend it has totally solved the metadata problem.

These responses are over the top. The photo of the congressional office that is circulating shows a wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse, and an unlocked workstation. That tells a pretty damning story about the ambient level of security awareness in congressional offices. Congress has a very serious technology competence problem. Probably a better long term strategy to focus on that.

This is probably an indicator that outside counsel is saying "antitrust might be a real thing again, why don't you lower your profile a smidge." Nothing says "cartel" louder than a "joint venture" comprised of 3 companies with $2.5 trillion in market capitalization.

This assumption that countries need population growth is insane. Humans are not bacteria, we should not pursue endless population growth. What we need is serious investments in technology to make elder care easier.

How constrained is the Monero network in terms of transaction capacity? Could it support 100k people buying a book every day?

I want a coin I can use to buy burritos. If that coin also obfuscates the fact that I bought a burrito, all the better.

Obama isn't even the worst American on that list. Henry Kissinger has one.

There is a lot more to a communication system than the primitives it uses. Even holding primitives constant, there is a lot of room for variation (and bugs and side channels). Recall that one of the early identifiers of equation group was subtracting 0x61C88647 rather than adding 0x9E3779B9 during RC6 key setup [1 p. 28]. So I guess what I'm saying is nations don't just download AES bitstreams off the internet.

[1] https://media.kasperskycontenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/sit...

I think the excerpt more about the artificial regimentation and the arbitrary authority than the shape of the building.

An alternative explanation is that US policy makers like Larry Summers and Bob Rubin are just incompetent, delusional, and greedy.

"Sovereignty" is an important concept that dropped out of American discourse in the 1990s. No self-respecting country relies on foreign cryptography to protect its diplomatic communications.

Similarly, no self-respecting country in 2030 will rely entirely on foreign integrated circuits. FPGAs will play an important role for small countries, but large groups like EU can afford to go big.

While the title is about CIA, its actually a story about DOJ and FBI. [1] The rot runs pretty deep.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-cove...

What about this summer? The way DHS and local police specifically targeted journalists? That's way more harmful to "liberal democracy" than some foreign sock puppet dumping evidence of high-level corruption.

The primary threat to "liberal democracy" is CIA, DHS, MI5, and MI6. It is not SVR or MSS. This has been true since the Cold War. Who did more harm to "liberal democracy", J. Edgar Hoover (who tried to extort MLK into suicide), or KGB?

So Apple corruptly bribes Congress to give it legislative benefits, Congress corruptly accepts those bribes, and the blame lies solely with Congress? That's one way of looking at things.

You're either naive or dishonest. FAAMG actively lobby Congress to create and preserve "loopholes" which are actually intentional features of the tax code rather than unforeseen errors. Apple is also lobbying against a very popular anti-slavery bill. #ESG

>and may even be early indicators of brain disorders that have not yet manifested themselves in psychological disturbances

It's only a matter of time before someone as unscrupulous as ClearviewAI develops a phrenology tool for identifying psychological disturbances based on "crazy eyes", which will be used extensively by state security services to manufacture suspicion where none is warranted. False positives are a feature not a bug. See, e.g. drug sniffing dogs and [1].

This article will be cited in the marketing material. It will not matter one iota that the research does not actually support that kind of application.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

> The failure isn't on their end.

So Apple et al. are able to successfully monetize massive public investment in technology, book all their profit in tax havens using outlandish schemes like "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich", and we're supposed to pretend like that's a totally normal thing?

The thing with free-riding is it doesn't work if everyone does it. That's what we're starting to see.

It's a pretty simple concept. Net orderflow moves the price in the direction of the flow. Having foreknowledge of net flows implies knowledge of future price changes. Front-running is just trading on that knowledge.

Here are some ways it happens:

1. A broker-dealer has client orders in its possession and trades ahead of them (classic front running)

2. A hedge fund with 2 portfolios trading correlated signals, one faster than the other (the Medallion-RIEF hypothesis)

3. Anticipate retails flows using behavioral advertising data or network intercepts from a statistically meaningful population (the Robintrack model)

There are more, but they all share the same flavour. I wonder if Robinhood is sending retail orders to anyone running strategy 3.

There are rumors of recent-model iPhones receiving "carrier setting" updates not documented on the carrier's website (they should be), occasionally followed by instability (crash, refusal to boot, refusal to reboot on battery power alone).

> The amount of value you can obtain by trading something is by definition what it is worth.

That is one important definition, but it's just a statement of ideology.

Was Instagram only worth $1bn when they sold to Facebook in 2012. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that Instagram's options were sell for $1bn or face "Zuckerberg destroy mode"?

Yeah, but they benefited from a system that coerces people to trade their labor for less than it is worth.

Zuckerberg is worth >3x the annual income of all surgeons in the US. It is implausible that his net worth reflects his replacement cost. Even PG has said (to Zuckerberg) that if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.

The FBI is going to be mining NSA intercepts to catch people streaming Michael Radford's production of "1984" without a permit. The security state is a jobs program, and Congress delivers the bacon.

Will they have probable cause for a wiretap if I talk about watching a movie, but my credit card data (which they have) shows no evidence of purchasing that movie?

Now we see why they tried so hard to ruin at Aaron Swartz. Had he survived his encounter with the Justice Department, Aaron would probably be a member of Congress leading the charge against this monstrosity. They are shutting down the Open Technology Fund as well, an important early supporter of both signal and tor.