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Last post Author Topic: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)  (Read 15075 times)

Vurbal

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Re: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)
« Reply #25 on: May 06, 2014, 10:42 PM »

Burn it down.

We have thousands of years of history that illustrate that governments always end badly. Always. Why continue with a system that we KNOW is inherently flawed and that does not work? It's insane to do so.

You are not allowed to kidnap, murder, or steal, unless you are "government"? Just how does that make sense? A special privileged class that is above the law?

Mass murder is bad, unless you're "government" and call mass murder "war"? Can anyone tell me just how mass murder is good?

The US started as the smallest, most limited form of government, but has mushroomed into an 8,000 tonne demonic gorilla.

It is not ending well...

Burn it down.

Not too terribly long ago I would have said that sounds awfully extreme... except I read history the same way you do, at least on this. What I think of as social evolution tells me seismic shifts in communications technology are the catalyst for tearing down the previous experiment in government and implementing something with a few hundred more years of experience hard coded in.

With the ever accelerating rate of technological innovation, it only stands to reason the cycle of rise, fall, and reinvention should accelerate similarly. The US rose faster, peaked brighter, and is falling harder and faster than any other most powerful country in the world, historically speaking. There was, however, a little more equilibrium, as there is almost every time around.

I'm at least half serious when I say the US Constitutions suffers from having been written backward. I actually mean that on a couple levels, the first being that the anti-Federalist viewpoint should be the base for the document, and the Federalist bits tacked on rather than the other way around. Also, it seems, and certainly reads, like the tools were defined independently of the job.

If you were to rewrite it the other way around, especially with a couple centuries plus of the experiment to see what controls were missing, you still have all the building blocks for the next evolution of the liberty (rather than privilege) based society.

I really should do that some day - rewrite the US Constitution starting with a list of Inherent Liberties (a super Bill of Rights), guidelines for the jurisdictional relationship between the federal and state governments, followed by definitions of the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches focused on building a minimal adversarial relationship in their design.

...in the new world order...

I do wonder what you are getting at there. I'll skip comments as they're more appropriate for the basement.

 :onfire: :onfire: :onfire:

Mostly joking that I'm at least close to taking a turn into Burn it Down! territory. Burning it down implies, to me, a contested battle against the current system and likely no system at all during some transition period. I want to pick a good part of the former United States to settle down in should national boundaries be redrawn as a result. :P Also, it seemed pretty funny in my head. As I've often noted, my head can be a scary place.  :o

One thing that made our Constitution resiliant enough to survive the latter half of the previous century was that by the 1960s it had allowed for enough growth that Thomas Jefferson's little bit of revolution from time to time happened without armed insurrection, although certainly not without bloodshed. It turns out we can manage an awful lot of revolution without burning everything to the ground. We could probably make the changes needed here too.

The question is whether it's worth the wait and damage along way. It probably isn't. Better to hit rock bottom as quickly as possible so we can start back up. Maybe it doesn't fail this time. Maybe we rebuild and it's next time or the time after. It will come eventually and, unless it's one of the rare exceptions, it will be better than what we've got now.
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nickodemos

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Re: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)
« Reply #26 on: May 11, 2014, 06:09 PM »
I know I am going off topic for what the thread turned into but going back to the OP.

This is doable. Has less to do with middle men and doing things anonymously. This is more along the lines of you wanting to prove who you are on the net. Say your a respected scientist posting or a writer. With this system you can prove who you are so that when you post people know for a fact that it is you and not some poser.

This has been long talked about in security forums and security podcast. On a personal level this is where the idea of SQRL (https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm) comes from at GRC.

Eventually something along this lines will come up since so often in the past we all have seen how people can get spoofed on many types of forums.

RFID has been proven as a bad idea. Problem is Govt hate change on something they implemented. Some security people have given worst case scenarios about how a terrorist could place a bomb in a trash can at a historical site. The device sends out RFID signal and when it gets five RFID's based out of a given country (USA) it blows. The govt knows this and now people are placing passports with RFID in them in blackout bags.

RFID's will die off but only once something else comes to replace it or the govt will do nothing.

Renegade

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Re: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)
« Reply #27 on: May 12, 2014, 05:01 PM »
Burn it down.

Not too terribly long ago I would have said that sounds awfully extreme... except I read history the same way you do, at least on this.

:)

Mostly joking that I'm at least close to taking a turn into Burn it Down! territory. Burning it down implies, to me, a contested battle against the current system and likely no system at all during some transition period.

I think a good question to ask here is if a transition to a decentralized system with an emphasis on increasing decentralization can supplant the current centralized systems that we currently have and know not to work. I think it's possible.

One thing that made our Constitution resiliant enough to survive the latter half of the previous century was that by the 1960s it had allowed for enough growth that Thomas Jefferson's little bit of revolution from time to time happened without armed insurrection, although certainly not without bloodshed. It turns out we can manage an awful lot of revolution without burning everything to the ground. We could probably make the changes needed here too.

The revolution this time around needs to be a revolution of consciousness where people realize that the systems that bind them are only in their heads, e.g. "authority".

This is actually pretty easy for any single person to understand through simple concepts like the ideas of "self ownership" and the "non-aggression principle".

Once someone understands that they own themselves and that nobody has a right to force them to do anything, then a lot of things follow very quickly and the spectre of "government authority" tumbles.

All this can be done without bloodshed. However, there will be some very battered and bruised egos, especially for the violent thugs and welfare whores who have vested interests in the enslavement of others.

The question is whether it's worth the wait and damage along way. It probably isn't.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean there. Currently we have an utterly demonic system where people cheer on vast mobs of others running around the world in campaigns of mass murder. Just how screwed up do things need to be for people to cheer on mass murder? Here in Western civilization people call mass murder "war", while in the Islamic civilization they call it "jihad" (they also tack on slavery for good measure, but whatever - evil is evil), but either way - mass murder is mass murder.

So I'm not so sure that it would get all that much worse. How much further into the downward spiral do we need to go?

Better to hit rock bottom as quickly as possible so we can start back up.

A nice few stock market crashes would probably be a good start, followed by currency collapses and the real estate bubbles popping.

Maybe it doesn't fail this time. Maybe we rebuild and it's next time or the time after. It will come eventually and, unless it's one of the rare exceptions, it will be better than what we've got now.

The more decentralized things become, the better. We KNOW that centralized systems are simply terrible in so many ways. They are prone to corruption and failure and all manner of problems. There really isn't any room for debate on this issue - decentralized systems outperform centralized systems. The only argument in favour of centralized systems is about "control", and we also know that doesn't end well either. The "glorious revolutions" of the 20th century ended in highly centralized systems that murdered people into the hundreds of millions.

The NIST identity system is another colossally bad idea in part because it's just another silly attempt at creating a system that we know will fail, and will fail with even worse consequences than we have now.

Cryptocurrencies offer an excellent starting point to re-examine identity verification and/or even shift that entire idea into a new paradigm where actual identities no longer matter. There is a massive amount of experimentation in that area, and we are seeing some pretty impressive developments. But... governments will never go for that because they are decentralized systems that strip government of its most prized possessions - power & control & perceived authority/legitimacy.
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Renegade

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Re: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)
« Reply #28 on: May 12, 2014, 05:31 PM »
This is doable. Has less to do with middle men and doing things anonymously. This is more along the lines of you wanting to prove who you are on the net. Say your a respected scientist posting or a writer. With this system you can prove who you are so that when you post people know for a fact that it is you and not some poser.

This has been long talked about in security forums and security podcast. On a personal level this is where the idea of SQRL (https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm) comes from at GRC.

That looks very interesting.

Users are identified only by a random “opaque token” and each unique combination of user and website creates a unique identity token. Thus, every user presents a unique identity to every website they visit. It is up to the user and the website to then (optionally) bind the user's unique SQRL identity to a real-world account on the website.

I imagine that it wouldn't be that hard to include a set of identifying data and then use a "web of trust" where that data was verified against data given to other sites. You could then build a "reputation", which is what "identification" boils down to anyways, i.e. You are relying on X, Y or Z to verify that A is who A says, e.g. You rely on a piece of plastic (drivers license) to verify that John is who he says he is, with that drivers license being issued/authenticated by a third party X - i.e. You rely on X's authentication of A's identity, which boils down to relying on X's reputation to build A's reputation.

For another example, you could authenticate yourself with an identity authenticator (e.g. government thugs), then that authenticator could authenticate you with another service provider (web site) with you providing the necessary key to decrypt an identity verification (i.e. locking your identity information).

RFID has been proven as a bad idea. Problem is Govt hate change on something they implemented. Some security people have given worst case scenarios about how a terrorist could place a bomb in a trash can at a historical site. The device sends out RFID signal and when it gets five RFID's based out of a given country (USA) it blows. The govt knows this and now people are placing passports with RFID in them in blackout bags.

RFID's will die off but only once something else comes to replace it or the govt will do nothing.

The sooner RFID dies the better.

For the benefit of those that don't know why RFID is colossally retarded:





I suppose the question is, "Would governments actually accept something that is secure?" My guess is "no" because that limits their control.

Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker