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Update on Bitcoin, Max Planck Institute

[1]COMMENT: This post fol­lows up sev­er­al over­lap­ping paths of inquiry explored in recent For The Record pro­grams. In FTR #760 [2], we high­light­ed appar­ent BND, Under­ground Reich ele­ments involved with the bit­coin online cur­ren­cy. In FTR #‘s 758 [3], 759 [4], we looked at the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, pro-monar­chist phils­o­phy of Hans-Her­mann Hoppe [5], a devo­tee of the Lud­wig von Mis­es [6] school of eco­nom­ic and social the­o­ry and a stu­dent of Juer­gen Haber­mas. Haber­mas was exam­ned at length in FTR #757 [7].

One of the most vis­i­ble sup­port­ers of bit­coin is a “tech­no-lib­er­tar­i­an” named Cody R. Wil­son [8], whom we exam­ined in FTR #760 [2]. Wil­son, not sur­pris­ing­ly, is a devo­tee of Hans Her­mann-Hoppe and an active oppo­nent of democ­ra­cy.

Bit­coin users have used the Tor net­work for many of their activ­i­ties. Now, a researcher with the Max Planck Insti­tute [9] is look­ing to devel­op an inter­net net­work [10]that wil be imper­vi­ous to pen­e­tra­tion. (Haber­mas was direc­tor of the Max Planck Insti­tute [11] for 12 years.) One won­ders if that is intend­ed to facil­i­tate secure move­ment of ter­ror­ist and/or covert oper­a­tions monies for Under­ground Reich ele­ments.

“All Mar­kets Become Black” by Daniel Fel­len­stein and Cody R. Wil­son; Blink; 12/27/2012. [12]

EXCERPT: . . . . Accord­ing to your pro­file on defense dist. you’re “a stu­dent of Bas­ti­at, Hoppe, and Antho­ny de Jasay”. Could you go over your philo­soph­i­cal basics before we dive into the project? How much of a state would you accept in your life?. . .

. . . . I am but a con­duit for ide­ol­o­gy. Mod­ern neolib­er­al democ­ra­cy is a crum­bling idol. The God has failed, to invoke Hoppe. . . .

“Anonymi­ty Net­work Tor Needs a Tune-Up to Pro­tect Users from Sur­veil­lance” by Toni Simonite; MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review; 10/25/2013. [10]

EXCERPT: . . . . This month’s reports, based on doc­u­ments leaked by Edward Snow­den, didn’t say whether the NSA was doing so. But a 2012 pre­sen­ta­tion [13] marked as based on mate­r­i­al from 2007, released by the Guardian, and a 2006 NSA research report [14] on Tor, released by the Wash­ing­ton Postdid men­tion such tech­niques.

Stevens Le Blond [15], a researcher at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Soft­ware Sys­tems in Kaiser­slautern, Ger­many, guess­es that by now the NSA and equiv­a­lent agen­cies like­ly could use traf­fic cor­re­la­tion should they want to. “Since 2006, the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty has done much work on traf­fic analy­sis and has devel­oped attacks that are much more sophis­ti­cat­ed than the ones described in this report.” Le Blond calls the poten­tial for attacks like those detailed by John­son “a big issue.”

Le Blond is work­ing on the design of an alter­na­tive anonymi­ty net­work called Aqua [16], designed to pro­tect against traf­fic cor­re­la­tion. Traf­fic enter­ing and exit­ing an Aqua net­work is made to be indis­tin­guish­able through a mix­ture of care­ful tim­ing, and blend­ing in some fake traf­fic. How­ev­er, Aqua’s design is yet to be imple­ment­ed in usable soft­ware and can so far only pro­tect file shar­ing rather than all types of Inter­net usage. . . . .