[liberationtech] Open letter to Phil Zimmermann & Jon Callas of Silent Circle, re: Silent Mail shutdown

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Ali-Reza Anghaie:
> OK. I still disagree - in these threat models they don't care about effort.

Who doesn't?

> They dissuade people by killing a few first. 

If someone starts harming say, Ubuntu developers, I think very few
Debian developers will worry. I think very few RHEL developers will
worry. Or if they all worry, I doubt very few will stop working and if
they do, someone else, someone anonymously, may continue their work - right?

I am not dissuaded by the Assad government harming Free and Open Source
developers in Syria, for example. Quite the opposite.

> The OPSEC model against
> hostile State or non-State models has very little to do with issues like
> we're increasing bringing to the forefront. The overlap becomes obscures
> behind FUD and more obvious problems like connectivity.

I'm not sure that I agree. I think that in the third party model -
States pose one very specific threat and non-state actors pose another.
Both would benefit from verification - though in the centralized third
party model, most verification is practically impossible.

> 
> However, all the power to getting it done "right" across the board and
> constantly improved.
> 

Ok, so we generally agree on the solution but perhaps not on the models?

> I'm just growing increasingly concerned with dog eat dog bite consumer
> circles.

I think Zooko wasn't trying to be a jerk and I'm glad he is starting
these kinds of discussions. It sure is hard to talk about these topics.
I guess it really took a global spying scandal to make it seem
reasonable for a lot of people!

> 
> Thank you for taking the time, - Ali

Sure - same to you. :)

All the best,
Jacob