{"id":3991,"date":"2016-11-11T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=3991"},"modified":"2016-12-13T01:50:03","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T05:50:03","slug":"designing-life-for-episodic-tyranny-1-secure-toolchains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2016\/11\/11\/designing-life-for-episodic-tyranny-1-secure-toolchains\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing life for episodic tyranny | 1: Secure toolchains"},"content":{"rendered":"

See also Part 2: social networks<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Motivation<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Classify your local environment according to how much freedom you have to create and share tools, access those of others, and communicate across secure networks. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
    \n
  • In a\u00a0“Tier 1” environment you have access to all popular\u00a0security technology, and can build whatever infrastructure you want, entirely within your control. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  • In a\u00a0“Tier 2” environment, central network nodes and critical infrastructure all have backdoors and logging, and noone is allowed to distribute\u00a0strong cryptography that some central group is unable to break. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  • In a “Tier 3” environment, using secure tools and\u00a0all but trivial cryptography is\u00a0illegal\u00a0\u2013 you shouldn’t have anything to hide. \u00a0Even talking about such tools may put you on a blacklist. \u00a0A central group that enforces the law may also access, modify, or reassign your work and possessions at will.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    Say you live in a Tier 1 jurisdiction,\u00a0which controls land, banks, and physical infrastructure. \u00a0Periodically, it shifts for a time\u00a0to a Tier 3 regime, which may make abrupt changes at any depth in society to suit the fashion of the moment.<\/span><\/div>\n
    \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
    While in the latter regime, you can’t always trust the law or social norms to preserve <\/span><\/div>\n
      \n
    • Your right to\u00a0communicate with others<\/li>\n
    • Your right to use\u00a0your own tools\u00a0and resources<\/span><\/li>\n
    • The visibility (to you and those around you) of\u00a0how your rights and tools are changing, if these are taken away <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Most infrastructure in such an\u00a0environment becomes untrustworthy.\u00a0 Imagine losing trust in AT&T, Google, Symantec, Cisco.\u00a0 (Even if you trust the people who remain running the system, they might no longer be in full control, or may not be able to inform you if your access was altered, filtered, compromised.) \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

      What can you do while in a Tier 1 regime to moderate the periods where you have fewer rights?<\/strong><\/p>\n

      These are some quick thoughts on the topic, from a recent discussion. \u00a0Improvements and other ideas are most welcome.<\/div>\n

      Technical design decisions<\/b> to improve resilience:<\/p>\n

      1. \u00a0multi-homing, letting users choose their jurisdiction.\u00a0 for instance, let you choose from a number of wholly independent services running almost the same stack, each within a different jurisdiction.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 1a.\u00a0 Be able to choose who hosts your data, tools, funds.\u00a0 E.g., fix current US-EU policy – give users choice of where data resides and under which laws.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 1b. \u00a0Measure: how long it takes to shift key storage \/ control elements betweeb jurisdictions, copying rather than mirroring any required pieces. \u00a0Make it possible to shift on the timescale of expected transition between Tiers.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      2. Give users advance warning that the threat to their data\/account is rising; make it possible to quickly change what is stored [not just what is shared with other users].
      \n2a. Learn explicitly from how banking does this (cf.\u00a0concerns among many users about funds being frozen, for less-than-fascist conflicts).<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      3. work with telcos to add built-in IP and egress-fuzzing<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 \u00a03a. \u00a0consider what china does: blocking per IP, by each egress point.\u00a0 harder but possible in the US.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      4. multi-source hardware, and any other needed ‘raw materials’ at each level of abstraction<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 4a.\u00a0 Both multiple sources w\/in a jurisdiction (for the first stages when only some producers have lost control of their own production), and in different jurisdictions.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      5. have systems that can’t be subverted too quickly: relying on the temporary nature of the fascist trend.\u00a0 (if it lasts long enough, everything mentioned here can be undone; design to make that take a reasonable amount of time and a lot of humanpower)<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 5a. \u00a0add meshes – like the electrical grid, that have local robusness. When central management disappears or ‘shuts things off’, local communities can build a smaller-scale replica that uses the physical infrastructure [even if they have to go in and replace control nodes, like generators, by hand].\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 5b. \u00a0make change happen on the lifescale of hardware that has to be replaced.\u00a0 e.g. a bulk of investment in dumb pipes that have to be replaced or removed by hand.\u00a0 Systems with high upfront infrastructure costs that are easy to maintain but relatively hard to replace.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      6. design alternate solutions for each level of the stack that have minimal central requirements.\u00a0 E.g. fuel-powered USB chargers, gas generators, solar panels, desktop fabs and factories.\u00a0 Make it easy to produce inferior, but usable, components if the high-economy-of-scale sources dry up.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      7. keep strong contacts with someone in the existing [government], even when there’s nothing that you need to lobby for. that makes transitions smoother, and you less likely to be surprised by change.\u00a0 Cf. Idea 3: invest heavily into those social relations.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      8. distribute end-user tools that let individuals adapt under hostile conditions.\u00a0 Examples:<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 8a.\u00a0 Ship antennas or power sources flexible enough to be modded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 8b.\u00a0 Allow broadcast updates to the latest version, but allow users to freeze the version at one they support.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 8c.\u00a0 Support unblockable rollbacks to earlier revisions: something like a hardware button that rollsback to one of a few previous versions, if you realize you’ve installed malware or controlware.\u00a0 you can still push updates as agressively as you like, as long as the provider can hint that a new snapshot is useful as risks of overtaking increases.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 8d. \u00a0provide some sort of checksum to see if firmware has changed [even with above may be possible for new software to change that option; but users should at least know]<\/span><\/div>\n

      Related ideas<\/b><\/p>\n

      1. consider reasonable steps to degrade control:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 1a. \u00a0starting with increased infra for those who align with government views.\u00a0 (or decreased for those breaking new \/ stringent laws)<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 1b. \u00a0compare how voting is restricted, liquidity is restricted.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      2. consider: is it better to be asset-heavy or asset-light?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 2a. \u00a0usefulness of land and resources to use, vs. having things that can\u2019t be claimed \/ revoked. networks rather than assets – land, tools?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0 2b. \u00a0compare liquidity of favors to that of funds or items.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      3. compare current work with regulations\/regulators.\u00a0 in politics, relationships w\/in a commission made it valuable to have a rotating door.\u00a0 Invest in those relations, considering also 2) above – invest before assets are frozen to offset risk.<\/span><\/div>\n
      \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
      4. compare how US corps plan for inter-state shifts within the country.\u00a0 Including being flexible enough to move to a new state for favorable regs, or shift ops\/people among different centers.<\/span><\/div>\n
      <\/div>\n
      5. Currently there’s network-tracking of IP addresses in malls, &c.\u00a0 There are tools now that have a ‘War mode’ that randomizes your MAC or other address all the time.\u00a0 Injecting noise into bluetooth and other tracking is straightforward.<\/span><\/div>\n
      <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      See also Part 2: social networks Motivation Classify your local environment according to how much freedom you have to create and share tools, access those of others, and communicate across secure networks. \u00a0 In a\u00a0“Tier 1” environment you have access to all popular\u00a0security technology, and can build whatever infrastructure you want, entirely within your control. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[78827,1657,210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aasw","category-blogroll","category-chain-gang"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-12n","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3991"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4004,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991\/revisions\/4004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}