149 lines
8.5 KiB
Markdown
149 lines
8.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: How to Save the World
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...
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I have almost completed an enormous design document for an uncensorable social network intended to contain a non evil scalable proof of stake currency, and I have a wallet that can generate secrets, but the wallet is missing no end of critical features – it is pre-pre alpha. When it is early pre alpha, I am going to publish it on Gitea, and call for assistance.
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Here is a link to one version of the [white paper](social_networking.html), focusing primarily on social media. (But though information wants to be free, programmers need to get paid.)
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Here is a link to [another version](white_paper.html) of the white paper, focusing primarily on money and getting rich by protecting capitalism from the state.
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# Speech and commerce
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As the internet goes, so goes the world. For freedom of speech to
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exist, there must be freedom of speech on the internet, and if there is
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freedom of speech on the internet, there is freedom of speech, for
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governments will find it very hard to stop it. If freedom of information,
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file sharing and open source code on the internet, then there is freedom
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of information, if there is freedom of association on the internet, then
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there is freedom of association – and, the big one, the one we have least,
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the one under most severe threat, if there is freedom of commerce on the
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internet …
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We can establish these freedoms by technological and business means
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instead of political means. These means turned out to be more difficult
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than expected in the heady days of the [cypherpunk](cypherpunk_program.html)
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movement.
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To secure all these, we need the right software, software that
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successfully applies the cryptographic tools that have been developed.
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Governments are getting worse, governments *always* get worse,
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yet what is outside the government’s power is getting stronger.
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It is the nature of governments to always get worse over time, resulting
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in them either collapsing or being bypassed by new forms of government.
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The cypherpunk program was that governments would be bypassed, as
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organization moved to the internet, hidden behind cryptography. The
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cypherpunk program died, yet lives – for China’s industrialization is
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being organized through the VPNs of firms whose servers are located in the
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cayman islands. These firms do transactions largely by trading each other’s
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IOUs in private conversations rather than through regular bank
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’t. Cypherpunks imagined that they would be living in tropical
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paradises running businesses nominally located in tax havens. It has not
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come true for them, but an increasing proportion of the world’s business
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does work that way.
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In the cypherpunk vision, people of moderate wealth would escape the
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power of government – unfortunately what is happening is merely
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billionaires escaping the power of government. To revive and accomplish
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the cypherpunk vision, we need to make these capabilities and methods more
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widely available – available not just to the super rich but to the better
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off middle class – not necessarily the ordinary middle class, but rather
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the sort of middle class person who has a passport in more than one
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country and does not need to show up at the office at 9AM every
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morning. From thence it will eventually trickle down to the regular
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middle class.
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At the same time as we see a billion people industrializing in an
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industrialization run from islands on the internet, we also see a variety
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of private use of force organizations also organized over the internet
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popping up – thus for example the extortion operation against oil
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companies in Nigeria was in part run over the internet from South Africa.
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Somali pirates were largely eradicated by private security firms whose
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home nation is far from clear.
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We are seeing entirely legal and government approved mercenaries, not
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quite legal and sort of government approved mercenaries, illegal but
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government tolerated militias and armed mosques, illegal distributors of
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recreational chemicals very successfully resisting government power, and
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assorted extortionists and terrorists. Yes, extortionists and terrorists
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are bad things, but that people are ever less inclined to rely on
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government provision of protection against them is a good thing.
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The power of states is increasing, in the sense that taxes and
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regulation is increasing, that government ownership is increasing, that
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large firms function by special privilege granted by the government to
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those firms to the detriment of those less privileged – but at the same
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time, that which is outside the power of the state is growing
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stronger. It is a pattern that recurs every few hundred years,
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leading to the renewal, or the collapse, of civilization.
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# Major concepts
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- PKI and SSL needs to be obsoleted and replaced. As Bruce
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Schneier said in Secrets and Lies: 〝SSL is just simply a (very
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slow) Diffie-Hellman key-exchange method. Digital certificates
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provide no actual security for electronic commerce; it’s a complete sham〞
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The underlying problem is that our mental name handling
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mechanism is intended for the relatively small social groups of the
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Neolithic. True names fail when we attempt to scale to the internet.
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The current name system is rooted in governmental and quasi
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governmental entities, who use this power to gently encourage
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nominally private institutions to censor the internet. Similarly, the
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encryption system of https allows the government to intercept any
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website with a man in the middle attack. To fix this, we need a
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name system rooted in the blockchain, with encryption rooted in
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Zooko’s triangle, as with crypto currency
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- [Zooko’s triangle](zookos_triangle.html), The solution is an ID system based on Zooko’s
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triangle, allowing everyone to have as many IDs as they want, but
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no one else can forge their IDs, ensuring that each identity has a
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corresponding public key, thus making end to end encryption easy.
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These identities may correspond to people you can instant message,
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or web sites, particularly secure web sites that require logon, such
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as banks, or indeed any service. Thus, they also correspond to
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bank accounts, that work like Swiss numbered bank account, in that your identity is a secret.
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- Protocol negotiation at the levels equivalent to TCP and UDP, and
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default encryption and authentication at those levels, as with ssh.
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- Ability to introduce new protocols and upgrade old protocols without central coordination, just as Zooko allows us to introduce
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new identities without central coordination. Central authority is failing, has become an obstacle, instead of the fast way to get things done.
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- File sharing with upload credits.
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- Single signon, buddy list user interface for web page logon.
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- Messaging system integrated with single signon – message
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authentication, all messages end to end encrypted. Zooko identity
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means yurls, which means a problem in getting people onto our buddy list.
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- Money transfer integrated with instant messaging.
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- Money transfer uses ripple.
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- Each money transfer creates a record of accompanying obligation,
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equivalent record on both sides of the transaction. You can put put
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money in a message, and for the recipient to get it out of the
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message, he has to sign a receipt that says this money is for such
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and such, and he took the money – a receipt that only the person who
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sent the money and the person who received the money can read, and
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any financial intermediaries cannot read, though they will need
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proof that the requested receipt exists, without them being able to
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read what the receipt is for. The records provide a basis for
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generating reputation of Zooko based identities.
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This web page is intended to keep track of the various technologies
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needed to implement liberty on the internet. There are lots of them, and
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they are all fairly complex and many of them subtle and very difficult to
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understand, so this web page will always be severely incomplete. Right now
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it is almost totally incomplete, I have just got started listing stuff:
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# Details
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This list severely incomplete, when finished will be at least a screen’s
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worth, probably several screens.
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- [how to build an operating system that is largely immune to viruses, Trojans and spyware](safe_operating_system.html)
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- [how to stop
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phishing and browser session hijacking, how to do browser security
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right.](how_browser_security_should_be_done.html)
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- [How to do VPNs right](how_to_do_VPNs.html)
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- [How to prevent malware](safe_operating_system.html)
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- [The cypherpunk program](cypherpunk_program.html)
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- [Replacing TCP and UDP](replacing_TCP.html)
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