[liberationtech] [GNU/consensus] Why support "Reset the Net" ? I don't get it

[carlo von lynX]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2014 at 04:06:25AM -0700, coderman wrote:
> in terms of first steps, the https push is the most approachable.
> passive, blanket surveillance resistance maybe a band-aid, yet still
> useful.

but without intervening into browser certification politics it's
just a huge advertizement campaign for the certification industry.
i presume that wasn't intentional, but still.. that's what it boils
down to.

the change of attitude needs to happen in the browsers and in the W3C,
not in the gazillions of websites that should all invest serious
amounts of money. browsers should ship with a public-key routing
technology like tor's .onion, i2p's .i2p or gnunet's .gnu.

i have about a hundred websites. i can't get certificates for each of
them. but what i will do soon is relaunch them as website.XXXXX.onion
since all it takes is apt-get install tor and a torrc.

> > If it was that simple we could have done such a
> > campaign the same day the revelations came out.
> 
> how long did youbroketheinternet.org take? ;)

it launched a month and a half later, but that's because it isn't a
simple campaign like resetthenet. YBTI is about developing the
necessary technology to enable usable end-to-end encryption and
social graph (aka metadata) protection (and a few things more).
so it is a site that aims for a *real* solution.

> i also think all of the technologies you listed above are insufficient
> for a truly decentralized, robust, privacy enhancing infrastructure.

you mean you agree with me? of course HTTPS etc are all broken and
inadequate. or what are you referring to?

> and finally, i think we should all be working on these types of
> efforts, and others, per our interests even if they have flaws.

no, it is wasted energy. 99% of engineers insisting on working on
horse carriages after 1% told the world they invented a car and
need help improving it. to make a comparison, and to reply to
jonathan: of course I know gnunet is much more than just a TLS
and HTTPS replacement, but since people tend to think of TLS
being such a huge thing, it's good to put that in perspective that
gnunet can be a better TLS by design, as a side effect of all the
things it is.

in a couple of years 99% of engineers will find out they have
invested sooo muuuch tiime in a technology which slowly but
steadily turns obsolete - at least i hope it goes that way
because if we stick to the broken internet we are going to rid
ourselves of what is left of democracy.