I disagree a lot with David Golumbia.

I really disagreed with Golumbia's points in the reading for this week. In the parts of the article that discuss topics that I have some previous knowledge about, it seems like he did not research his points well. For example, he said the term “script kiddie” is about young hackers, but it's actually about people who don't know how to program but can run “scripts” and call it hacking. This was a solid example of something he said that wasn't well researched, but there were other iffy statements. We'll probably get into that actual reading during class, but I decided to read more blogs written by Golumbia to see if maybe I just misunderstood his point.

I went to his blog, www.uncomputing.org, and read two articles. The first, “Opt-Out Citizenship: End-to-End Encryption and Constitutional Governance” (http://www.uncomputing.org/?p=272)”, was his critique on universal encryption. His overall thesis was that people do not have the right to privacy, as that's one of the sacrifices made to have a functioning justice department. He was against universal encryption, as it would do things like allow child pornography or other illegal services online. I heavily disagree with this for several reasons. My most practical argument is you can't just add a backdoor that only the government can use. It's like leaving your keys outside so the police can investigate your house in case you're doing drugs or something. Somebody who's not the police can break into your house.

Also, cybercrimes are things that have to do with data. Communication could always be done in relative secret. Before the internet, it's not like there were microphones everywhere recording everything. Criminals will find ways to secretly communicate. The only thing stopping encryption would do is cause innocent people to get hacked more.

Before I move on to the other article I want to say that it feels like Golumbia is writing articles for people who already agree with him. He alienates someone like me by referring to “cypherpunks” hacking everything, and talks about how “we” know stuff already without actually backing up his statements.

Anyway, his last article (http://www.uncomputing.org/?p=1575) calls for “cyber disarmament”. Since things like encryption and advances in other branches of cybersecurity are naturally offensive and defensive, there should be some sort of overall effort for everybody to commit to not hacking each other and have sort of a nuclear disarmament of technologies. This so dumb. Like, it actually makes me question if Golumbia knows what he's talking about.

Technology is not nuclear weapons. Anybody can hack anything with the right knowledge. They don't need a government budget. Nobody can stop people from hacking things. Advances in cybersecurity usually aren't pre-emptive. They happen because something gets broken.

Also, I think Golumbia is under the impression that cryptography is just waiting to be broken by someone with a huge budget, but rhere are formal proofs about why cryptography is hard to break. Golumbia talks about the encryption “arms race”:

“..no matter how carefully and thoroughly you develop your own encryption scheme, the very act of doing that does not merely suggest but ensures—particularly if your new technology gets adopted—that your opponents will use every means available to defeat it, including the (often, very paradoxically if viewed from the right angle, “open source”) information you’ve provided about how your technology works.”

 It doesn't make sense that this means trying to encrypt stuff is bad since it will create an "arms race". Golumbia's alternative is disarmament. That's crazy.