July 2022 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

David is now dead - thank fuck
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

David Graeber towards the end of his life. Graeber – a figurehead of Occupy Wall Street and, prior to that, a participant in the alter-globalisation movement – apparently saw no contradiction between his professed (neo-)anarchism and his efforts to join the British Labour Party in support of Jeremy Corbyn . . . " https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchists-and-neo-anarchists One of Corbyn's election planks was 10k more police and Corbyn's pick for Treasury was a fan of Lenin and Trotsky. JFC .

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CHAUM as mental cripple
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

'Chaum is also building into PrivaTegrity another feature that's sure to be far more controversial: a carefully controlled backdoor > that allows anyone doing something "generally recognized as evil" to have their anonymity and privacy stripped altogether.' [...] Those of us who have been in the field for a while will (hazily) remember that back in the 80's, Chaum invented the first practical cryptocurrency. However, he patented his 'blind signature' algorithms, which were the heart of the system, and he and the DigiCash corporation (which was created to exploit the patents) were extremely restrictive in their licensing. Reportedly, this was because Chaum was concerned that Bad People might use it for money laundering.The system saw very little use. Much more detail can be found in the cypherpunks mailing list archives. ....which is a long way of saying that for Chaum to cripple his system with a back door seems consistent with his earlier reported behavior. Peter Trei https://marc.info/?l=cryptography&m=145223202406590&w=1

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HAL, do you read me?
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

A lot of our discussion is influenced by the ideas of David Chaum. He pioneered technology which could protect individual privacy while allowing very flexible sorts of credentials and guarantees. He has also played a big role in the various proposals for digital cash. But I think that Chaum has gone off in the wrong direction in the last few years. . . " https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=85281390301195&w=1

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Chaum in Time: untraceable cash "root of all evil"
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

'Paper money is, I hate to say it, the root of all evil', says DigiCash Founde Chaum, who argues that the traceability of electronic cash will mean the end of some tiypes of crime. 'What kidnapper would take a ransom payment by check? Once you build the infrastructure for electroni cash, the incremental cost of replacing paper cash is small. And the social benefits could be amazing." Who was it that said "A liberal statist with a privacy fetish?" https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=95279369520812&w=1

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The year is 2036
by Douglas Lucas 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Today historians look back on what got humanity through the 2020s. "It was a bunch of angry ravings on the cypherpunk email list," Dr Thoughtful Brain told Exasperated Quarterly. "Randos insulting other randos clinched liberation." World nonleaders of anarchism plan to establish an international holiday celebrating the hard work of cypherpunks blotting out insightful knowledge with useless rants. Asked for details on cypherpunk ideology, Dr Brain said the focus was on building fandoms for computery celebrities selected for amplification by corporate media. "The list went for years without a single line of code posted," he said. During the conversation, an environmentalist shoved his way in and demanded this writer report on declining oxygen resulting from plankton extermination. Cypherpunks responded with the subject line: "Fuck oxygen, whatever that is. Computers don't use it. Off topic."

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This would appear to be orthogonal to anarchism
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Honestly Dave - this conversation can no longer serve any useful purpose. https://www.snb.ch/en/mmr/papers/id/working_paper_2021_03 " . . . How to issue a central bank digital currency David Chaum, Christian Grothoff and Thomas Moser Issue 2021-03 . . ."

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Some great ideas here
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

But the market is treating them worse than " Satoshi Vision ' https://xx.network/archive/praxxis-emerges-from-stealth/ " . . . Using Elixxir, financial transactions denominated in Praxxis coins can be executed efficiently without leaking metadata. Alternatively, Praxxis can provide identified check-like wallet transactions. The full technical details of the Praxxis approach will be included in a forthcoming whitepaper currently being prepared for release later this year. . . . " That was 2019 btw.

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David Chaum's spectacular wallow in bullshit
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

No way to talk about Prof Gun-Sirer " . . . It’s a nice cocktail-party line for academics to say they want to change the world. They’re not trying to save anything. In the blockchain space, we’re sort of clear on what the incentives are. It isn’t so clear in academia. . . " A poor workman blames his tools " . . . In those days, we were working on these distributed and decentralized systems. We converted our beautiful conference room into a “decentralized cash” lab, and worked on into the evenings. It was a passion – but you know, in those days computers weren’t really up to it. . . " ( Chaum ) Jesus Fucking Christ - make it stop!

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CHAUM's ugly ignorance and arrogance again
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Another howler . . . " . . . before Snowden, I never made a personal decision whether the government was really spying on everything or not. I just left it as unknown because it was just unclear, but still focused on countermeasures. Anyway, I can say objectively that none of these academics – it's mainly academics and some industry people who attend these events – the real people who know about cryptography are very concerned about this. . . ." Before Snowden it was becoming clearer every year a huge amount of state-surveillance was going on. You had " Homeland Defense - a Modest Proposal ' in C-net as far back as 2002. Then delayed revelations in the NYT - deliberately delayed by the NYT. 2005. So its negligent ( or criminally negligent! ) to say this mass spying was 'unclear.' TSTBAALAA again! The ' real ' people in his audience were almost certainly as aware as any normie might have been and probably concerned enough in a way not familiar to a borderline imbecile ( idiot-savant type ) or psychopath like Chaum. The Amash-Conyers bill was almost passed by such laymen. ' Real ' members of Congress. Look if Chaum has any 'real' friends they might want to stage an intervention now because the way he's going he's certifiable already. Really.

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David Chaum's turned into a Vinay Gupta type Blowhole
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Chaum shared that he was confronted point-blank by federal agents because of his work with encryption. https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/06/08/i-jumped-in-with-all-4-legendary… And remember, we really tangled with these guys in the 90’s. Public key cryptography was regarded a weapon of war back then. The American government was really friggin’ pissed off at us, and did as much damage as they could within the law. Constant harassment, legal pressure, people lost their jobs… the whole thing was constantly on the verge of everybody ending up in jail as far as we could tell. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-is-teaching-realism-to-libertar…

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