Lavabit will always happen when servers are involved

Posted on February 3, 2014 by David Irvine — 1 Comment

One thing we can depend on as humans, power corrupts! Whether the Roman Empire, the British Empire or the ‘isms’ such as Communism, Capitalism etc. greed always leads to power struggles and then these are won, that society actually dies. It is simple to work out why, this piece is not about that. This piece is about a simple and logical mechanism that will protect our digital society from the ravages of the power-hungry governments and corporations that have gone or are going out of control.

Why do we keep doing these things and not changing our approach?

Insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein,

Will secure servers help (we have great encryption)

No, simple, as humans are involved, greed and corruption will happen.

Will web of trust or friend networks fix this?

No, simple, as humans are involved, greed and corruption will happen.

Ok then will a top-secret closed source highly encrypted private network work?

No, simple, as humans are involved, greed and corruption will happen.

What about the recent things like Tor etc. do they help

No, simple, as humans are involved, greed and corruption will happen. (human involvement at servers)

What will then ?

That’s easy to say but hard as hell to create. The answer is a fully maths based network that provides encryption, obfuscation and protection of data and communications. It has to be a self maintaining system and have a somewhat symbiotic relationship with humans. It should allow humans to access its services but importantly the network should never store human readable data. Bitcoin gives us a preview of what may help, decentralisation of core services protected by logic and maths. We should not all jump on bitcoin but look closer at what it teaches us. Logic and security are obvious. Servers and centralisation are unnatural and will always fail.

This should be obvious to humankind by now!

Tagged with: privacy security freedom
Posted in Privacy

What happens when an autonomous data network meets an autonomous trade mechanism?

Posted on February 2, 2014 by David Irvine — 3 Comments

A breakthrough in decentralised trade. Bitcoin is changing the financial landscape and is very likely to do so at a speed we will not understand. Humans find exponential growth difficult, or perhaps impossible, to comprehend.

In the West or developed world we still talk regulation, stability and many more nefarious issues and unrelated complexities that bitcoin will thankfully never recognise. Bitcoin does all this using cryptographically secure algorithms. These algorithms make sure that transactions are guaranteed and irrefutable. In this respect bitcoin does it’s job and does it exceptionally well.

On the other hand MaidSafe is a fully decentralised autonomous data network. As with Bitcoin, MaidSafe uses cryptography to secure data and data based transactions, including communications.

Where is the synergy what does it all mean?

Both of these networks provide very valuable services. Bitcoin has already seen many projects sprouting from its tremendous start. I think these projects are terrific, but some are dangerous. I say dangerous as these projects attempt to use bitcoin’s transaction log technology as a panacea for all decentralisation. This in my opinion is very dangerous and incorrect.

The transaction log is data, peoples wallets are data, bitcoin is not a data network. It’s a network to facilitate trade. This includes money based transactions, contracts and other financial instruments, hopefully not to many or to complex, we all know where that leads.

The bitcoin network is fuelled by transactions and manages these transactions, this network has transactions at its core and the network is programmed to manage these transactions. I think of it as the network is designed to facilitate transactions and requires transactions to survive.

The MaidSafe network is a data network and manages data. It is fuelled by data and requires data to survive. It is designed to facilitate the secure manipulation of data, not the transfer of money. MaidSafe could be extended to do this, but why, bitcoin is already here. There should never be a need to re-invent a wheel and this is a classic example.

It should be obvious to the reader now, these systems are indeed unique, different and at the same time full of synergy. Wolves are not deer but in a world full of decentralised autonomous systems they are part of a larger system and live together. We call this system nature and bitcoin and MaidSafe form a part of this amazing conglomeration of complex and advanced system.

How exactly can they live together?

Entry into the bitcoin network requires, proof of work (i..e. mining) or transfer of fiat currency into bitcoin via an on-line exchange or direct cash transfer, in person or through ATM’s etc.

MaidSafe uses a different model for successful participation. This is the provision of physical resources. These resources are disk space, cpu and bandwidth. This is done in a way that means MaidSafe uses what users are not using (free space etc.).

Not everyone will mine bitcoin, so they buy them. Not everyone will be have on-line available disk space so they may wish to buy some. This is a terrific starting point, if people sell their unused space via bitcoin, it means information leakage is minimised, this is a good thing in a secure and privacy enhancing network.

Staying with that thought for a moment, why should bitcoin only reduce the data leakage, why not completely eliminate data leakage?

As I said earlier, bitcoin has data, the blockchain and wallets. The bitcoin network is not a data network, it does not distribute and secure data! MaidSafe does though!

Securing wallets is “bread and butter” for MaidSafe and simple enough to understand. The blockchain on the other hand is another matter. Here are some initial brainstorming ideas:

Store the transaction log as a file on the network
Store each transaction separately
Store each bitcoin as a unique address
Store each mBTC as a unique address
store wallet addresses and allocate BTC to these

There is a multitude of ways to distribute the blockchain and some would offer complete privacy of transaction, whilst maintaining the integrity of the bitcoin themselves. This is a discussion for the bitcoin core developers and there are some projects looking at even more ways to achieve this. I mention it for completeness, it’s not a requirement in any way for these technologies to work together.

Conclusion

Now it gets really interesting. In the bitcoin community there are already decentralised companies and communities being considered, these are called DACs. Imagine for a second, if these communities could share data and communicate with a level of assured privacy, just as bitcoin assures transactions.

Imagine WikiLeaks and organisations similar to that being able to host their services and also receive donations securely and safely.

More importantly than this, we could be facing a time where innovators and entrepreneurs across the globe can start a business and compete on a level playing field. This means no infrastructure costs either in terms of payment ability or data infrastructure costs. A single person company in the middle of Africa could complete with any Silicon Valley start-up in almost any field. Incumbent operators who ignored this technology pairing could find themselves with serious competition at lightening speed.

The globalisation that has been discussed for many years may eventually be coming to fruition and bring with it a levelling of the whole worlds economies. I think that would be an amazing effect of these networks and their future iterations.

By amortising innovation across the globe we will not only empower many more people, but we will increase the speed of innovation in all areas. The days of a countries children dying of simple medication and lack of water whilst others worry about how many televisions per room they have, will come to a swift end. As we remove these injustices we will all live in a more peaceful, secure and progressive world. I for one look forward to that a lot.

Tagged with: Bitcoin, MaidSafe
Posted in bitcoin, MaidSafe

MaidSafe a network that shares more with a currency than data

Posted on January 25, 2014 by David Irvine — 5 Comments

I am constantly asked what MaidSafe is and I struggle to explain it and others struggle more to understand, if they can be bothered to listen. Understandably many people will not watch a 12 minute video or read hundreds of pages of technical information to ‘get it’.

Many people pigeon-hole this technology in the age-old tradition of trying to quickly understand it, so we get comparisons to Freenet, Tahoe, Skype, Tor, Wuala …. the list is endless, basically anything with data or distributed in the title is presented as ‘the same’. I see now readers will sense a frustration here.

I get frustrated, not because I think people are stupid, but because I think I am stupid. As Richard Feynman agreed, if you cannot explain something in short simple way, then it means you do not understand it enough yourself. I believe this is the case here.

I have been excited about bitcoin for a long time now and this excitement is not limited to what it can do for us all, that’s another story altogether. The excitement is more to do with what it is. Bitcoin is a distributed, decentralised system and that decentralisation is the key to its success.

The bitcoin community is educating itself and others at pace now. This exchange of ideas, comments suggestions and debates are all expanding peoples minds in bitcoin. All of these issues show the sheer strength of bitcoin (the network) and what it can achieve. Bitcoin’s future is immense and will continue to be further understood by later portions of society. This is great news.

If bitcoin is to be explained to a person using only the technical aspects then it would fail. Cryptography is not well enough known to be used as a way of educating people what bitcoin is. Alternatively explaining bitcoin by saying, it’s just money or currency will also fail, bitcoin is not that and it’s like comparing a tyre with a car.

What has helped is the early adopters feverish optimism and innovation. This has created bitcoin services, products, markets and opportunities. Now people all understand this. So bitcoin flourishes and grows, great!

Nowadays, people would not consider bitcoin being another version of dollars, Rmb, pounds, tulips or linden dollars etc. We all know it’s something completely different as it is a network run by maths, logic and has no possibility for human intervention. This is now starting to be understood as a good thing.

MaidSafe pre-dates bitcoin by at least three years, but has the exact same approach, but for data and communications infrastructure. This is why MaidSafe cannot be explained easily, this link has never existed previously and now with bitcoin’s popularity growing we can begin to make this comparison and distinction. So MaidSafe is not a ‘me too’ technology and in fact takes decentralisation slightly further as it has no blockchain component. This is just a small difference though, as far as people are concerned

MaidSafe is bitcoin for data

and that’s the easiest explanation I can think of.

Tagged with: Bitcoin, MaidSafe
Posted in bitcoin, MaidSafe

The time of oppressed people is over, now is the time for humanity!

Posted on January 22, 2014 by David Irvine — 1 Comment

This video, gives a very brief overview of a real solution to man’s transition from greed, theft and control into a world of humanity.

Looking for developers and testers for the coming rollout of the biggest change since the Internet started!

https://github.com/maidsafe/MaidSafe/wiki
http://www.maidsafe.net/

Tagged with: privacy security freedom
Posted in Privacy

Duty and Obligation

Posted on January 22, 2014 by David Irvine — Leave a comment

I was reading my usual Sunday morning SlashDot news (I think it used to be much better) and came across a story about privacy type issues and Lavabit. This particular answer caught my eye and stirred my thoughts. The important point was :

“You have a duty to be honourable and ethical. You have an obligation to do what is legal. They are not the same things.” Jane Q Public

This is not an indictment of some abdication of law, in fact it’s the opposite, laws are good, but when the law is stretched, whether to hide money from the tax man, or to allow security officers to overstep the line of morality, then this is where the law breaks down and obliges us all to ignore our duty.

I think Jane got this 100% correct. We in MaidSafe are often quizzed about similar matters regarding our vision Privacy, Security and Freedom.

Jane has said this much better than I ever had and distinguished the difference between obligation and duty nicely. Although we break no laws and physically or otherwise, cannot hand over any information to anyone regarding our users, it’s still levied at us that we will be helping bad people do bad things. Very few people see that 99.9999% or whatever ratio of people are not bad and education improves this all the time. In my personal opinion greed is every bit as much a problem as terrorism and probably has killed many more people than terror could, notably greed is not illegal.

So back the the crux of the matter, MaidSafe has a Duty to provide Privacy, Security and Freedom, to everyone in the world. It may be legally obliged to do this in a manner that’s conducive of a law abiding company and it does.

It’s also worth noting that people have a duty to others although may be obliged by law to do the opposite, in this case the duty should win, otherwise really terrible consequences will happen. We all have a duty for instance to rush across the busy road to help an elderly person who has fallen, or stop a child wandering onto that road, this overcomes our legalobligation to not jaywalk. The Jaywalker is not a bad guy in this case, but if he was jailed for jaywalking would any of us help him?

In the same vein, if Maidsafe were obliged to weaken our security for any reason then ourduty to the world would kick in as it should. I commend Lavabit for carrying out their duty. Sometimes we push the envelope as nations and I believe this is a case where the NSA and others have pushed too far, we should all be obliged to help at times, but when it becomes something in opposition to our duty then the obligation should be resisted.

History does teach us and there are many atrocities that have happened when this is ignored and I will not list them, but we all see where people behaved terribly as a nation against others, because they were obliged to and did so above their duty to humanity.

So MaidSafe has a clear Vision and this vision is also our duty, this will be carried out and I think comments like Jane’s help us remember just how important duty is.

Posted in Privacy

Bitcoin price in dollars will soon be irrelevant (it should be now)

Posted on January 21, 2014 by David Irvine — 2 Comments

I am very keen on Bitcoin, I was not in the beginning as I thought it had shortfalls. I was right about that, it does, I was dead wrong about these being an issue though. The bitcoin community is growing fast, the need for systems like this are beyond question now.

I constantly hear, ‘how much is it worth now?’ and read about speculation and buy/sell advice, it’s at the same time exhilarating and annoying. Bitcoin is a trading mechanism that allows people to transfer a service or goods across the world, without borders. At this moment you can live in bitcoin and increasingly so every day. You can send money to family, somebody in need or simply to buy something you need or want. It accomplishes those tasks quickly, cheaply and without fear.

We are entering a new world now, not one that requires regulation to bend it back into the shape of the old world (the one with the collapsed financial system). This new world is the world the Internet has led us towards. One of the Internet’s greatest gifts so far has increased transparency and highlighting inconsistencies in our culture and governance methods.

This won’t stop, just as people became educated after the Gutenberg press, so they have as the Internet grows. There is no stopping education, it becomes part of our psyche and cannot be unlearned. I see bitcoin in this vein, the cat is out the bag now, there is no going back.

When I say bitcoin, I don’t mean cyber currencies, I actually mean bitcoin (the protocol). I still believe there are deficiencies with privacy, scalability and security, but I am more convinced than ever these issues will be solved. They are more than certainly solvable. It may be a bit like the 20-year-old broom, it may get several new shafts and some new heads, but it will still be bitcoin.

So back to the premiss of this short piece, the price of bitcoin in dollars, or pounds or euros etc. why does it not matter? The answer is clear when we take a step back and think, does the price of a euro matter to an American getting up going to the shops and receiving a paycheck ? no it does not. It may affect inflation etc. in his country but that’s another story, people living in a currency do not really care what other currencies cost as it does not affect their daily life (directly and immediately).

As bitcoin grows and more people enter the cost of entry seems higher, this is not the case, the point is just enter at any cost that happens to be the cost of getting away from fiat currencies. Get into bitcoin and maths based currency, if you give to a charitable venture in bitcoin it will not get turned into an AK47 and put in the hands of a child soldier. It won’t furnish the house of a money moving banker and it will not even pay the salary of some charity chief executive. It will in fact leave your wallet and deposit immediately into the venture of your choice, whether that is buying a shovel for a farmer, food for a child, medicine for a village etc. You for the first time can see your gesture being received, get thanked personally and sleep well knowing you never funded any of the listed ‘charity sink holes’ mentioned. Some other things you can do immediately:

Start a business, create coloured coins, get backers and your off, immediate, irrevocable and solid.
Sign a contract and allocate a satoshi to it on the blockchain, now we have mathematical notaries.
Pay your staff in bitcoin either directly or via https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-payroll-api
Buy stuff all over the world http://coinmap.org/
Buy and sell on many markets on-line.

This will not reverse and the key is to immerse in the community, it’s not simple today, but it will be simper tomorrow! The early adopters (and it’s very early now) will have a little pain, but the rewards of early entry may be substantial indeed. You may become a little more wealthy, but more importantly you will be living in the next version of society, society 2.0. In society 2.0 you will not care how many dollars buys a bitcoin or piece of a bitcoin, it simply wont matter.

Bitcoin helps us with money, but what about an even more valuable (or arguable as important) asset we have as humans, data and knowledge? This is for another post but for now check out MaidSafe 🙂 Society 2.0 cannot have thoughts and dreams stolen and spied upon, it’s as illogical as manipulated fiat currencies.

Edit, I have posted the update to this now.

Tagged with: Bitcoin
Posted in bitcoin

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