Anonymous

The year is 2054, Albert walks to his favorite bench in the park, has a seat, ahh, relaxed. He takes out his cigar, one that he’d been saving for this special occasion for a while now, ever since he started his mission. He laughs at the thought of the term “mission”, and how the implied James Bond magnitude of the word contrasts sharply with his pudgy body, bald head, and beading forehead sweat; he’s the literal antithesis to anything most would consider mission-capable. Yet, today marks the end of a multi-month sometimes grueling adventure that changed his life forever…because he made a difference. Today his lonely unknown existence in the universe became meaningful, even if nobody else suspected a thing.

He lights his cigar, and you couldn’t pry the look of pride off his face if you tried.

—------------------

Back to the present, Janet is an Internet sexual crimes detective, part of a team of 200 in a first-world country. Her team is dedicated to the destruction of underground economies focused on the distribution and capitalization of sexually exploited underage victims, and bringing the perpetrators to justice. To this end, strong government backing, regulations, and resources are committed to empowering Janet and her team to be as effective as they can be.

But it’s increasingly a very difficult task they have, for as technology advances, technologically-sophisticated perps continue to stay one step ahead, just out of reach, and those nefarious economies flourish despite the best efforts of law enforcement. Even with the best surveillance technologies available, the proliferation of encryption and underground networks has made it near impossible to detect/track these illicit activities.

The reason why is simple, the ubiquitous tools everyone uses every single day (encryption, cloud storage, crypto), are the basic building blocks of any network, nefarious or not. When these primitive aspects are combined with anonymization technology like Tor, or end-to-end encrypted messaging, you have an impenetrable isolated network that cannot be directly detected or intercepted. And this has been possible for many years now.

From solely an Internet-surveillance perspective, these technological challenges are posing HUGE issues for our well-intended internet crimes officers like Janet and her team, and of course the natural human reaction to this is to assert control, by making these technologies illegal and holding the founders of these technologies liable for the criminal activity that leverages them.

This is, of course, absurd. So fucking absurd, that it amounts to a face-saving scapegoating witchhunt that:

• Creates even further collateral damage victims (innocent founders) to online crimes
• Stifles privacy innovation that humanity desperately needs
• Makes ZERO meaningful progress against online crimes

Pay attention to that last point: ZERO meaningful progress against online crimes. Let me justify that.

For many years, it has been possible to act completely anonymously on the Internet, including hosting illicit websites that can’t be taken down or located, Tor onion sites being the most obvious technology. (Tor ironically was a government project by the way)

Crypto combined with coin anonymizing technology such as Tornado Cash, makes it possible for perpetrators’ clientele to untraceably pay for these illicit services.

What I’m trying to say is:

THE CAT’S OUT OF THE BAG

Perpetrators now have every aspect of technology they need to freely anonymously and profitably operate any underground economy they choose, with impunity. From unbreakable encryption, to decentralized online storage such as IPFS, inscriptions on blockchains, and even privately encrypted files on public cloud file services (google drive), to unseizable domains, to anonymous crypto payments. It’s a veritable law enforcement nightmare, at least in contrast to how easy they used to have it.

For example, with modern basic widely-available encryption methods, it’s possible to encrypt illicit material in an uncrackable manner (even with the potential espoused by quantum computing), place this undetectable encrypted media on say google drive, share it with paying customers, and from the outside looking in, nobody would be the wiser. Even a simple-minded perpetrator could put this together.

More sophisticated perpetrators can host their own servers and create entire websites on Tor, with large databases of illicit material, all out of reach of law enforcement.

Head in the Sand

Now pay attention to that lingering thought going through your head right now, that thought being, “Galgitron, why the FUCK are you typing out the fucking instructions for any perpetrator to learn how to create their own illicit website! You are the problem!!”

This typical seemingly-rational reaction IS THE ACTUAL PROBLEM, and the same STUPID ignorant rationale that leads to arresting founders of social platforms! It’s not that these instructions can facilitate more crime, it’s the fucking STUPID belief that this information isn’t already out there, being actively employed at MASSIVE SCALE, completely out of reach of law enforcement! Get your fucking head out of your ass, take a look around, we’re WAYYY beyond keeping these technologies under wraps.

Outdated

But don’t tell law enforcement that. No, the law is empowered to the maximum to assert any overt regulations that allows for the direct surveillance of communications, all justified by this horror story of child sexual exploitation, or terrorism, or money laundering, etc.

Yet it’s all for nothing because like I said, anybody can encrypt anything, it won’t matter if law enforcement forces Google to give access to anyone’s drive contents because all files can be privately encrypted! There is nothing gained at all, yet they won’t take their heads out of the sand and realize the futility of this exhausting approach.

The reality is, anonymity is something we all want, not even just for the idea that we don’t want to be embarrassed/judged for our thoughts by random strangers listening in, but also based on a deep distrust in how governments could interpret our private conversations, now and into the FUTURE! Could you imagine something you wrote to someone else that’s legal today, becomes illegal in the future and you are retroactively punished?! Like perhaps saying that male athletes pretending to be women and stealing trophies from our finest female athletes need to be shot and pissed on? Maybe that’s illegal to say in 10 years, and I go to jail! (I’ll take my chances.)

What works, what doesn’t

There’s 3 levels of surveillance in which the historical approach to online crime fighting has utilized:

• Physical illicit server locating and commandeering. Law enforcement accesses the server hosting the illicit sites/material either physically or by hacking those servers over the Internet, but this merely encourages decentralized variants, like IPFS or Tor, that can’t be taken over/down.
• Intercepting communications. Law enforcement tries desperately to control the massive influx of peer-to-peer encrypted technologies, trying to force companies to create backdoors for these encryptions, but again, this just creates demand for decentralized variants.
• OS/client surveillance. Law enforcement has access to tools that are built into the OS (like Chrome, Windows, etc.) that allows them to detect keyboard patterns and other such content to help them flag users of interest.

Let me say this with absolute conviction: Points 1 and 2, are dead, forever. I repeat, the days of law enforcement being able to reliably detect/locate/commandeer/intercept/decrypt illicit servers and illicit communications are gone. The persistent pursuit of trying to maintain some form of ability to keep 1 and 2 viable by holding low-hanging-fruit exposed social-media companies and their employees hostage/liable for the actions of others, is blind ignorance and pure waste, if not a comparable degree of evil.

Oh for sure law enforcement will scream loud and clear that the opposite is true, showboating many examples of takedowns and pictures of all the children they’ve saved, but the part they leave out is that the perpetrators in these scenarios were very stupid technologically-illiterate morons. They also leave out that they have no way of knowing the full extent of illicit material that circulates today in these underground economies, because they have no means to detect them, and those perps are completely undeterred by takedown showboating.

In terms of overt surveillance, only point 3 (client-side infiltration) remains viable, and indeed VERY effective. You can assume your phone is always listening for specific phrases. You can assume everything you type into your computer is framed against frequently updated phrase bits to flag you if detected. In fact, point 3 is the golden hammer of internet crime surveillance, and no online encryption/crypto/anonymity technology can ever get in the way of this advantage. Only a custom operating system can block this law enforcement tool, and it’s very unlikely the consumers of illicit content will have the know-how to achieve this level of counter-surveillance. In other words, going after the customers of evil, and making their arrest VERY public, is the ultimate tactic to destroy these underground economies.

There is also one more very effective tactic being employed, honeypot sites (law enforcement sets up fake illicit sites that mimic actual sites to confuse and scare customers with threats of prosecution). This creates the ultimate psyops campaign to prevent the economies from gaining traction.

So despite the incredible efficacy of point 3 and honeypots, law enforcement keeps desperately clinging to the dream that there’s still a way to contain and leverage points 1 and 2, but again, 1 and 2 are gone forever. FOREVER! It makes ZERO sense to pretend that punishing innovators will have any fucking impact whatsoever on the current state of illicit underground economies, no more than it makes sense for a man to pretend he’s a woman in an athletic event (yes again, I fucking hate those thieves).

The reality is, law enforcement, with all their self-assured good intentions, hiding behind a massive virtue-signaling projection to the equally-as-technologically-naive masses, have become this hideous thrashing delimbed toothless monster, rendered nearly useless against the new reality of internet crimes. And their knee-jerking has astonishingly transitioned their focus from the perpetrators, TO THE INNOVATORS of NEUTRAL technologies that form the basis of humanity’s social evolution! It’s unconscionable, a heinous crime in and of itself, the ultimate mockery of justice, and merely highlights how ineffectual law enforcement’s antiquated approach to online crimes has become. If you ever ask yourself why Satoshi disappeared, reread this paragraph.

Law enforcement today would have us believe that without surveillance, without encryption backdoors, without complete and utter transparency, we are going to LOSE the battle against evil and thus we must always be exposed to the whims and random interpretations of battleworn PTSD-riddled Internet crime officers, no matter what our actual intentions; end of story; even at the cost of progress. They need to realize that it's not a question about whether we should allow anonymity or not, because true anonymity is coming regardless, and likewise true freedom of speech. The real question is whether it should be implemented first, conscientiously, by those motivated to make it as safe as practicably possible, or wait until nefarious forces inevitably produce their own unmitigated platform that only serves to magnify their reach. Getting in front of that nightmare should be the sole priority.

Yet, with all this law enforcement posturing about how EVIL our innovators are, locking them up, proclaiming the EVIL of anonymous identities, anonymous payments, anonymous cloud services, they completely if not intentionally fail to acknowledge the steep BENEFITS of anonymous identities, anonymous payments, and anonymous cloud services. The classic Dual-use Dilemma

For example, we all know the benefits of crypto. Nobody can take it away from you (self sovereignty, nobody knows how much you have (safety), no company has your identity that gets hacked and sold on the dark web (identity theft), etc. The trillions of dollars residing in crypto is proof that we want all these attributes, and have proven good for humankind, even despite some illicit infiltration of these paradigms. Name an existing globally-utilized paradigm that isn't likewise infiltrated, I fucking dare you.

Where law enforcement’s vigilante campaign against these technologies and innovators is perhaps the most lewd and counterproductive (which will only to be revealed after these unstoppable anonymizing technologies have evolved to full decentralization), is how these technologies can actually HELP to fight the online crimes!! Yes, anonymity is a weapon that can be used against crime! Law enforcement is fighting so fucking hard against the inevitable, that they are FAILING to EMBRACE what might actually be the best crime-fighting tool they will ever have…

CROWDSOURCING!!

I’m a complete asshole, I know, it’s a curse (gift), but deep down within me resides a little Iron Giant (great movie), looking for my moment to bring the hammer of Thor down on pure evil. It’s the same little Iron Giant as I’m sure each and every one of law enforcement’s army draws inspiration from every single day that they wake up and have to deal with the cancer of society. I’m sure this singular focus on crime fighting is how they myopically concluded that innovators (CZ, Durov, etc.) should be framed as crime facilitators, but let’s not draw the generalization that all law enforcement is fucking retarded like this. No, they just need tools that work but are failing to grasp what no longer works, and what WILL work in the future.

In my opinion, most of law enforcement is not trying to save-face, or flex their superiority, but rather are the heroes that form the bulwark against our primitive selves so that civilization can keep on a path of progress. These heroes have to face mortal danger at times, and because of this reason, they are different from those of us who are too afraid to directly fight evil. Don’t take a few bad apples as an excuse to categorically dismiss their incredible contribution to society. Most of them deserve our reverence, and if you disagree, you’re the shit on the other side of the bulwark.

This said, there’s not enough law enforcement to stop all the crime in the world, and so we endure endless setbacks and injustice from far too many criminals, a reality we know all too well with the exponentiating proliferation of crypto scams that can’t be contained. But what if…what….if… every single decent person in the world, all 14 billion of their eyeballs watching, and all of their little Iron Giants deep inside, had the means of contributing to fighting the scourge of child sex exploitation, fighting terrorism, fighting political corruption, fighting fake news, warning people about malicious websites, whistleblowers exposing fraud,…

..without fear of retribution.

—-----------

Fast forward to 2054 again..

5 months ago Albert was perusing his favorite chat group TravelJunkie (under his anonymous pseudonym Alligator), using the now widely available perfectly-anonymizing communications platforms that have evolved over the past couple decades. He noticed that another anonymous account (pseudonym friendofboys) posted something disturbing, bragging about their new young companion. It was vile, yet largely overlooked by the rest of the group members. But Albert saw it, and Albert’s Iron Giant stirred within.

Albert sent a direct message to friendofboys and started asking about his trip in a friendly non-confrontational manner. This started a weeks-long anonymous conversation between friendofboys and Alligator all about this incredible place friendofboys found in some backwards country where all kinds of pedo activity went on and was beyond the reach of law enforcement and had been operating for the past 2 years in complete secrecy with a very high-level clientele, citing some examples. He even mentioned multiple countries where this organization operated, costs and payment methods, though, the only way to get in was through very good connections to the cartels behind the pedo rings, which is why it has survived for so long.

Every day, having established a degree of trust from friendofboys, Albert would ply him for more information, sometimes unfortunately having to endure the anguish of receiving links to encrypted explicit pictures of friendofboys’ criminal activities that were posted on the cartel’s underground websites, and every day Albert anonymously forwarded these conversations and pictures to each of the mentioned countries’ central Internet crimes units. Each of these central crime units demanded Albert reveal himself to them, but Albert knew better. Trusting multiple agencies to keep his name secret when their first priority is to get convictions, would only lead to him being necessarily doxxed, possibly even misunderstood and arrested by the overzealous Janets of law enforcement, and his life would be over as the cartels would have him killed, or he’d be in jail forever.

Each of the countries’ central crime units collaborated, and using AI to examine the pictures, they were able to piece together enough information to exactly determine all locations, and in one synchronized swoop wiped out hundreds of perpetrators, liberating thousands of sexually exploited children globally.

And all this happened because one random guy took notice of a single largely-ignored careless braggart’s message buried in a galaxy of messages. It was SOLELY because Albert was confident that this incredible anonymizing platform would GUARANTEE he could remain anonymous and safe that..

He acted.

As would you.

As would anybody and everybody in the entire fucking world.

Fearlessly, and without hesitation.

Think about the power of that.

—----------------------

Albert took a puff of his cigar. It was particularly delicious, heavily laced with the flavor of piety. An officer patrolling his beat walks by, casting a casual glance at Albert, noticing his cheery mood, and says, “haha having a good day are we sir?”.

Albert says in reply, “the best sir, the best”

Not all heroes wear capes.

---

Comments welcome on Twitter

Prior Article

Next Article