[liberationtech] openness and transparency Re: Deconstructing the security risks narrative of Haystack

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

Hello Brandon. Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I read your letter carefully and others should do so as well, but I am
not going to reply to it thoroughly as there is little I can add.

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Brandon Wiley <brandon at blanu.net> wrote:
>
> While I totally agree that secrecy should be discouraged, I'd just like to
> advocate the approach of offering an alternative, so that the message is
> "Secrecy fails, try openness!" instead of "If you try secrecy, you will
> never work in this industry again."

I'm not sure which of these messages leads to the best results for the
next generation of oppressed humans seeking to use tools to gain their
own freedom. Probably we can't really predict at this point which
strategy would be safest for them.

> I think
> that one good thing that's come out of this is some posts by various people
> clearly articulating community guidelines. That's good stuff, no matter how
> you look at it.

For example, I was just reading this excellent summary of the
conventional wisdom by Peter Eckersly of EFF:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/on-software-for-dissidents

Regards,

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn