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by acqq 3487 days ago
I like:

"It’s like, websites are amazing BUT DON’T CLICK ON THAT LINK, and your phone can run all of these amazing apps BUT MANY OF YOUR APPS ARE EVIL, and if you order a Russian bride on Craigslist YOU MAY GET A CONFUSED FILIPINO MAN WHO DOES NOT LIKE BEING SHIPPED IN A BOX. It’s not clear what else there is to do with computers besides click on things, run applications, and fill spiritual voids using destitute mail-ordered foreigners. If the security people are correct, then the only provably safe activity is to stare at a horseshoe whose integrity has been verified by a quorum of Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman."

For his claim "YOU’RE STILL GONNA BE MOSSAD’ED UPON" I still don't know how to interpret the fact that Snowden seems to be relatively fine. Maybe that he had the idea about the blind spots of the system in which he worked.

His opinion on PGP "web of trust":

"“Chains of Attestation” is a great name for a heavy metal band, but it is less practical in the real, non- Ozzy-Ozbourne-based world, since I don’t just need a chain of attestation between me and some unknown, filthy stranger— I also need a chain of attestation for each link in that chain. This recursive attestation eventually leads to fractals and H.P. Lovecraft-style madness."

It is an opsec problem that all the connections are then cryptographically provable.

1 comments

> For his claim "YOU’RE STILL GONNA BE MOSSAD’ED UPON" I still don't know how to interpret the fact that Snowden seems to be relatively fine. Maybe that he had the idea about the blind spots of the system in which he worked.

What reason would any agency have to un-live Snowden? Any damage he has done was already done in HK and before; he has nothing more to reveal. It would only turn public opinion against the agencies.

True that it would hurt public opinion even further of the agencies if they were to take him out - but I thought he only revealed a portion of what he grabbed.
My understanding is that he handed everything off to the journalists.
Yes, for precisely the reason that he did not want to be the arbiter of what is released. That's probably why he's still alive. It was a good decision