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The future of digital currencies

By on February 10, 2016 in Bitcoin, Blockchain, Uncategorized

What is actually going to happen is, each virtual currency is going to continue doing its thing. If bitcoin’s current situation becomes a problem, people are going to start using something else. That something else will gain traction. It may even become more popular than bitcoin. Or, when that begins to happen, the bitcoin community is actually going to decide to evolve. This process is necessary for evolution. To think that we need only one virtual currency is short sighted. There are going to be many virtual currencies that have various properties that are suited to their environment better than another. Virtual currencies are going to become some of the human beings’ tools to transmit value between each other, in addition to ancient technologies such as bank transfers or Paypal.

Bitsapphire: The necessities of Evolution »

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And the war continues…

By on February 10, 2016 in Big Entertainment, File Sharing, Intellectual Property, TPB

The streaming technology freshly embedded into The Pirate Bay is under fire from the Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit BREIN. Torrents-Time is an “illegal application” according to BREIN’s lawyer but in a response the group behind the software warns the Hollywood-funded group to back off or face criminal proceedings for extortion.

TorrentFreak: Hollywood Wants to Shut Down Pirate Bay’s Streaming Technology »

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The Assange dilemma

By on February 7, 2016 in Assange, Human rights, Sweden, UK, UN, US, Wikileaks

I stand with Julian Assange. But I think his case took a turn for the worse this week.

First, to recapitulate: Julian Assange has not been charged with any crime in Sweden. This ridiculous situation is the result of a Swedish prosecutor refusing to interview him about alleged sexual misconduct, in a case that is very thin. Assange has reasons to fear that Sweden might surrender him to the US, where a Grand Jury is preparing his case. Sweden has handed over people to the CIA without prior judicial process on an earlier occasion. And the Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The situation for Julian Assange looks very much like that of a political dissident kept under house arrest.

Article 9 in The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

This declaration has been signed by Sweden as well as the United Kingdom. Now a UN panel under the Human Rights Commissioner has ruled that the way Assange is treated is in breach of this central principle. It is the same panel that e.g. took on the case of Aung San Suu Kyi. Usually, these rulings are held in high. But this time, the shoe seems to be on the other foot. Clearly the UK and Sweden only honor the UN panel when they are not the culprits.

Never the less, this has been lost on most people. It’s all too complicated and sublime.

The British and Swedish governments, on the other hand, only had to deliver simple one-liners. The UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond brands the UN panel’s ruling “ridiculous”. The Swedish government’s line is that this will not change anything.

Also, some media has deemed the UN approach as nonsensical. Remember, it’s simply not enough to be right — if this cannot be communicated in a way that makes an impact.

In practice, very little has changed. And the case against Assange will stay open until August 2020.

Somehow, I have a feeling that the UK, Sweden and the US feel rather content having Julian Assange in limbo at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. There his actions will be limited. And with an open investigation on alleged sex crimes, his reputation will stay tarnished. All of this having a negative impact on Wikileaks possibilities to expose wrongdoings and the dirty little secrets of the power elites.

That is exactly why the UN panel’s report is relevant.

/ HAX

Affidavit of Julian Paul Assange »

 

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The War on Cash

By on February 6, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Government, Economics, EU, Privacy, War on Cash

Holger Steltzner in Frankfurter Allgemeine...

Beim Feldzug gegen das Bargeld geht es um mehr als das Bezahlen. Ginge es nur darum, könnte man die Leute einfach selbst entscheiden lassen, wie sie künftig zahlen wollen. Es geht um das Ende von Privatheit und selbstbestimmter Entscheidung, um Lenkung von Verhalten und um den Zugriff auf das Vermögen. Der Bevormundung des Bürgers wäre in einer solchen Welt keine Grenze gesetzt, Geld wäre kein privates Eigentum mehr. Der Übergewichtige könnte mit seiner Karte auf einmal die Kalorienbombe nicht mehr zahlen, der Alkoholiker sich die Weinflasche nicht mehr besorgen, und am „Veggie Day“ dürfte man mit seinem Smartphone kein Fleisch mehr kaufen. Der Zugriff des Fiskus auf das Konto des Bürgers wäre selbstverständlich. Und in totalitären Staaten gäbe es kein Entrinnen vor Überwachung und Unterdrückung. (…)

Andere Motive sind für den Krieg gegen Cash wichtiger, aber über sie wird weniger geredet. Hier kommen die Notenbanken ins Spiel, auch die Europäische Zentralbank, deren Präsident Draghi schon laut darüber nachdenkt, wie er am besten die Abschaffung der 500-Euro-Note kommuniziert, die der EZB-Rat noch gar nicht beschlossen hat. Ohne Bargeld wären die Bürger den Negativzinsen der Zentralbanken ausgeliefert. Davon träumen auch viele Finanzminister und keynesianische Ökonomen.

Bargeld ist Freiheit » | Google Translate »

Update: Translation to Swedish in the comments, thanks to Christian Engström.

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A Bitcoin moment? Or not?

By on February 4, 2016 in Bitcoin, EU

The European Union is trying to decide what to make of Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

In general, the EU Commission has decided not to regulate. At least for the moment.

But at the same time, the EU is expanding its’ regulations against money laundering and terrorism funding.

And from that perspective, the recommendation seems to be that it should be required to register when exchanging digital currencies for traditional ones — or the other way around.

Naturally, this is inconvenient. And it might be yet another obstacle on the road to general acceptance of digital currencies.

But it might also be an opportunity to expand the Bitcoin ecosystem and to make it more or less autonomous — so that you will never have to change Bitcoins for fiat money.

But for that to happen, the Bitcoin society needs to get its’ act together. The present uncertainty about technical matters is a killer — that may thwart a coming Bitcoin Moment or kill it off altogether.

/ HAX

EU: Commission presents Action Plan to strengthen the fight against terrorist financing »

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EU: The War on Cash

By on February 3, 2016 in Big Brother, Democracy, EU, Hacktivism

Right now, the 4:th EU directive against money laundering is being implemented in the member states.

Among the stricter rules for handling cash, the directive outlaws payments in shops for more than 10,000 €. Some member states chose to go even further limiting the highest amount to 5,000 €.

Thus, making anonymous purchases of e.g. expensive IT-equipment impossible…

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An EU-US Privacy Shield?

By on February 2, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Business, Data Protection, EU, Facebook, NSA, Privacy, surveillance, US

Last October the EU-US “Safe Harbour” agreement was canceled by the European Court of Justice. This agreement was created to ensure that European personal data was to be treated with care when handled by US companies. But the ECJ found that the agreement did not meet the requirements of the Data Protection Directive, because of NSA access.

ArsTechnica then reported…

“The most significant repercussion of this ruling is that American companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, may not be allowed to send user data from Europe back to the US.”

Link: Europe’s highest court strikes down Safe Harbour data sharing between EU and US »

Today the media has reported that a new agreement has been reached: The EU-US Privacy Shield.

Such an agreement has been a top political priority for the EU as well as the US — as the respective administrations have not wanted data protection to get in the way of business as usual.

But is there a real agreement? Not really. All there is, is a “framework agreement”, basically saying that the EU and the US agree to agree at some point.

Today ArsTechnica writes…

“What that means in practice is that the Commission has negotiated some breathing space to strike a deal with the US.”

“The US has clarified that they do not carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizens,” EU Commissioner Andrus Ansip has declared. No further details on this, though…

Link: Last gasp Safe Harbour “political deal” struck between Europe and US »

Apparently the EU and the US have no such thing as an actual deal to show. But there is a lot of hot air coming out of Brussels and Washington.

Earlier today, before the news about an “framework agreement” from Brussels, ArsTechnica had an interview with Max Schrems, the Austrian law student who took this case to court to begin with.

“On the subject of any potential new agreement, he argues it would be no better, and that a sector-specific approach to EU-US data transfers would be preferable. “If this case goes back to the ECJ [European Court of Justice]—which it very likely will do, if there is a new safe harbour that does not meet the test of the court—then it will fail again, and nobody wants that,” he says.”

Link: Why Safe Harbor 2.0 will lose again »

Apart from the EU and the US having agreed to agree — everyone seems to be just as much in the dark as before. (There is also the hidden agenda of mass surveillance and intelligence cooperation that led to the end of “safe harbour” in the first place, to be taken into consideration.)

I suppose the new agreement, when it is finalized, will end up in the European Parliament for final approval. Then, if not before, we should know. And it is encouraging that the Parliament has been very vigilant concerning EU-US data protection issues in the past.

/ HAX

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Why the war on VPNs is one Netflix can’t win

By on January 31, 2016 in Cryptography, Privacy

Netflix’s solution to its problem is about to create a huge new one — for millions of people who aren’t trying to trick the service out of a Canadian show in the US. One year ago, UK-based GlobalWebIndex estimated that 54 million people use VPNs to watch Netflix every month (Netflix declined to comment to Variety on GWI’s numbers).

What Netflix is asking (er, forcing) its customers to do is, well, insane from a privacy and security perspective. That a company might insist you use 123456 as your password because it solves an internal problem for them sounds … ludicrous. Except that’s pretty much what Netflix is doing by disallowing widespread use of a security tool as critical as a VPN.

Engadget: Why the war on VPNs is one Netflix can’t win »

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Tools of oppression

By on January 27, 2016 in Big Brother, Civil liberties, Data Protection, Democracy, Human rights, surveillance

Today is January the 27:th, Holocaust Memorial Day. A day of remembrance. But also, a day to ask ourselves what we have learned from history.

One example is that records set up with the very best of intentions can be misused. From Wikipedia…

In the Netherlands, the Germans managed to exterminate a relatively large proportion of the Jews. The main reason they were found so easily was that before the war, the Dutch authorities had required citizens to register their religion so that church taxes could be distributed among the various religious organizations.

Unintended consequences, indeed. But this is exactly the kind of risks we must consider when handling personal data or rolling out mass surveillance. You never know why, how and by whom these tools will be used.

Can we trust that all future political leaders and bureaucrats will be decent people? Of course not. Can we be sure that we will live in a democracy 25, 50 or some 100 years from now? No, we can’t. Can we even take our national sovereignty for granted in the future? Sadly, no.

The only thing we can be certain of is that bad things will happen, sooner or later. So it is thoughtless to give the government tools that can be used to harm and oppress the people. And if we still do, we must make sure that we can disable them if there is a risk that they will be abused or fall into the wrong hands. Even when the change to the worse is gradual.

But that’s not what’s happening, is it? Evidently, today’s political leaders have learned nothing from history.

/ HAX

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