#privacy
58 items · 58 articles
Articles
Two Roads to a Network Without Permission: Reticulum and FIPS
Reticulum and FIPS both build permissionless encrypted meshes, but they differ radically in routing, crypto primitives, and their relationship to IP.
The Key Inside the Ciphertext: A Full Introduction to PIPEs v2
PIPEs v2 turns spend conditions into key-recovery conditions, letting Bitcoin enforce proof-gated authorization through ordinary Schnorr signatures and extraordinary off-chain cryptography.
Computing on Secrets
Services no longer need to see data to compute on it. Cryptographic and hardware primitives make that contract a deployed reality.
Every Crowd Hides You Differently
From Bitcoin CoinJoin to zero-knowledge proofs, every serious approach to financial privacy bets on a different crowd to disappear into.
Inside Marmot: Six Specs That Make Private Group Messaging Work
Six protocol specs define how the Marmot Protocol delivers fully encrypted group messaging on Nostr without centralized servers or metadata leaks.
Sign What You Cannot See: A Field Guide to Blind Signatures
Four decades of blind signatures show that one algebraic trick, letting someone sign what they cannot see, protects ecash and CoinJoin.
Verify Anyone on Any Channel
A simple challenge-response app can verify Nostr identities across any anonymous channel by querying the follow graph users already built.
When They Come for the Protocols
Governments cannot kill open protocols, so they imprison the humans who write them, spending $275 billion per year to catch nothing.
The Mobile Podcast Setup That Actually Works
Testing earbuds, wired mics, and USB-C wireless systems revealed the Yealink BH71 as the best mobile podcast solution for GrapheneOS.
Build for the Mole
Infiltration is inevitable; detection is unreliable. The real defense against state informants is building organizations where their presence cannot accomplish its purpose.
A Vibe Coding Setup in Your Pocket
GrapheneOS now runs a hardware-isolated Debian VM on your phone, and OpenCode provides open-source AI coding against any provider you choose.
The Algebra of Trust
Anonymous commerce requires solving the trust problem, and the solution may be to treat trust itself as a quantifiable, tradeable commodity.
The Cheapest Defense
Privacy blinds the adversary's OODA loop at observation. When defense costs pennies and attack costs millions, surveillance becomes unprofitable.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 20: Implementation Strategy
Start with honest assessment. Build progressively from basics to advanced. Find community. Privacy is not a destination but ongoing practice. Progress matters.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 19: Operational Security
Operational security prevents adversaries from gathering compromising information. Threat modeling guides defense. Human factors are the weakest link. Perfect OPSEC is impossible.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 18: Lessons from History
DigiCash, e-gold, and Silk Road failed through centralization and poor OPSEC. Bitcoin succeeded through decentralization, open source, and properly aligned economic incentives.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 16: Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Zero-knowledge proofs enable verification without disclosure. SNARKs, STARKs, and Bulletproofs make different tradeoffs. Deployed in Zcash and rollups; broader adoption developing.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 15: Bitcoin: Resistance Money
Bitcoin solves double-spending without trusted third parties. Sound money enforced by code. Base layer privacy requires additional tools like Lightning and coinjoin.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 14: Anonymous Communication Networks
The internet leaks metadata. VPNs help locally. Tor distributes trust through relays. Mixnets defeat global adversaries. Choose tools matching your threat model.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 13: Cryptographic Foundations
Cryptography provides mathematical privacy foundations: encryption, hashing, and digital signatures enable trustless verification. Implementation bugs and human error remain the weakest links.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 12: The Crypto Wars
The Crypto Wars pit states against privacy technology. Mathematics ignores legislation. Developers face prosecution. The fundamental conflict is permanent and intensifying.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 11: Corporate Surveillance and Data Extraction
Corporate surveillance extracts behavioral data for prediction products. State and corporate surveillance are deeply entangled. Markets are responding to growing privacy demand.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 10: Financial Surveillance and State Control
Financial surveillance enables state control through observation. CBDCs complete the architecture. Privacy breaks the OODA loop at observation, making theft unprofitable.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 9: Monetary Theory and Sound Money
Sound money emerges spontaneously from markets, not decrees. Bitcoin implements digital soundness with fixed supply and censorship resistance; privacy requires additional tools.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 8: Capital Theory and Entrepreneurship
Privacy infrastructure is capital requiring present sacrifice for future capability. Entrepreneurial discovery drives innovation. Markets coordinate heterogeneous privacy tools most effectively.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 7: Exchange Theory and Privacy
Privacy enhances exchange by protecting deliberation and enabling negotiation. Surveillance distorts prices and chills transactions. Better privacy means better functioning markets.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 6: Information, Scarcity, and Property
Information is non-scarce and cannot be property. Privacy is protected through self-ownership, physical property rights, and voluntary contracts, not intellectual property.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 5: The Axiom of Resistance
The Axiom of Resistance assumes systems can resist control. Mathematics, empirical evidence, and similar systems support this well-grounded but non-self-evident assumption.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 4: The Argumentation Axiom and Self-Ownership
Argumentation ethics demonstrates self-ownership through performative contradiction. Denying it while arguing presupposes it. Privacy rights follow directly from self-ownership.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 3: The Action Axiom: Privacy as Structural Feature
The Action Axiom proves privacy is structural to human action. Deliberation is internal; preferences are subjective; information asymmetry is inherent.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 2: Two Traditions, One Conclusion
Austrian economics and cypherpunk practice converge independently on privacy's importance. Theory explains why; code demonstrates how. This book synthesizes both traditions.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Chapter 1: The Nature of Privacy
Privacy is selective disclosure, not hiding. Breaking adversary observation through the OODA loop is strategic defense. Cheap privacy defeats expensive surveillance.
The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Preface
Austrian economists theorize but cannot build. Cypherpunks build but lack theory. This book synthesizes both to make the state irrelevant.
Trust Without Ceremonies: How Nostr Fixed the Web of Trust
PGP's web of trust failed because it demanded explicit rituals. Nostr succeeds by extracting trust from ordinary social behavior.
Seven Resolutions
Freedom requires commitment, not sentiment. Seven resolutions define the ethical foundation for those who would build a voluntary society instead of complaining.
Builders, Not Talkers
Decades of libertarian theory and cypherpunk tools have produced almost nothing because ideas without builders are worthless. Act or leave us alone.
Own Your Outbox: Running Haven as Your Personal Nostr Relay
Your relay, your rules. Haven bundles four relay functions into one binary, easily deployable on a cheap VPS in an afternoon.
The Trust Shift: Secure Enclaves for Private Nostr Relays
TEE relays shift trust from operators to chip manufacturers. For most threats, that trade is worth making, with eyes open.
The Gap Between PIR and Nostr: Open Problems in Private Relay Queries
Can PIR hide Nostr queries from relays? Compound filters and subscriptions don't map to existing schemes. Here are the open problems.
The Last Leak: How MIP-05 Closes the Push Notification Surveillance Hole
Push notifications let governments track your messaging habits. MIP-05 encrypts device tokens with ephemeral keys, ensuring notification servers learn absolutely nothing.
Know Your Enemy, Name Your Defenses
Good security engineering means naming your enemies. Marmot's threat model specifies exactly which adversaries it defeats and how it defeats them.
Your Phone Without Permission Slips: The GrapheneOS Nostr Stack
GrapheneOS plus Zapstore, Amber, Citrine, Amethyst, and White Noise creates the first phone free from corporate control over your digital life.
Your Phone Is Not Your Property (Until You Install GrapheneOS)
Your smartphone surveils you by design. GrapheneOS transforms a Pixel into private hardware you actually control. Here's why it matters and how to do it.
The Reasonably Paranoid's Guide to Qubes OS: Why Isolation Beats Every Patch
Qubes OS assumes all software has bugs and isolates every application in separate virtual machines, containing breaches instead of preventing them.
When Can We Meet? Cross-Server Busy Sync for Nextcloud
Nextcloud can't sync busy times across separate instances. This bash script uses CalDAV to share availability between multiple Nextcloud servers without exposing event details.
The Cypher Wars: Choose Your Weapon Wisely
Use ChaCha20-Poly1305 everywhere without hardware AES. Use AES-256-GCM with AES-NI. Never reuse nonces. Prefer AEAD always.
The Art of Waiting: Random Delays for Private Payments
Two scripts that randomize timing between Wasabi coinjoin rounds, making your payment patterns indistinguishable from organic human behavior.
Proving You Belong Without Saying Who You Are
Zero-knowledge proofs let Nostr users prove they're trusted without revealing their identity, enabling anonymous rate-limiting and reputation-gated relay access.
Counting Grains of Sand in an Infinite Universe: Why CoinJoin Privacy Doesn't Need Perfect Math
Coinjoin entropy becomes computationally impossible to calculate exactly for large transactions, but lower-bound estimates provide rigorous cryptographic guarantees through information theory.
Vanishing Secrets: Auto-Wipe Your Clipboard on Qubes OS
One command in your Qubes template installs `xsel` and creates an autostart service that wipes your clipboard 30 seconds after you copy anything. Works on Debian, Fedora, and Whonix minimal templates.
Disappear Into the Crowd: Wasabi's Hidden Payment Superpower
Three bash scripts to queue, cancel, and run Wasabi coinjoin payments from terminal - with smart denomination suggestions for maximum privacy.
Garland: Exploring the Architecture
We're exploring an architecture for Garland: Cryptomator for encryption, Blossom for blob storage, Nostr for state. Your nsec becomes your Cryptomator password. We think this works - but we'd love your feedback before we commit.
Sifting Through the Archive: Private Set Membership for Blossom
Binary Fuse filters let Blossom clients privately check which files exist on a server - download a compact filter once, query locally with zero server load, and use delta lists for real-time accuracy.
Curated Feeds: A Simpler Alternative to DVM Feeds
Replace DVM request/response overhead with simple replaceable events. Publishers maintain feed lists, clients just subscribe. No round trips, no privacy leakage
Private Relay Connections: Zero-Knowledge Solutions for Nostr
Nostr relays see everything - who connects, what they fetch, how often they post. Zero-knowledge cryptography can fix all three problems: Semaphore-based authentication hides which whitelisted user is connecting, private information retrieval hides which notes you're fetching, and Privacy Pass enables rate limiting without identity linkage.
The Gossip Vulnerability: Why NIP-17's "Deniable" Messages Aren't
NIP-17 promises deniable messaging with its three-layer design: an unsigned "rumor," a signed "seal," and an ephemeral "gift wrap." However, this setup has a hidden vulnerability. The signed seal allows recipients to prove that a message was sent by the claimed author, even without revealing the content. This creates a perfect scenario for gossip attacks, where the mere proof of communication can damage reputations. As we explore NIP-17, we find that the rumor, despite being unsigned, is not as deniable as it seems, making it a potential risk for exposure.
Bitcoin Address Lookup: A Question of Privacy
Bitcoin wallets face a fundamental tradeoff: how to discover your transactions without revealing your addresses. Full nodes (2009) provide perfect privacy by downloading everything but require ~700 GB storage. Electrum (2011) achieves instant sync by transmitting your addresses directly to servers, exposing your complete transaction history. Block filters (2017-2019) restore privacy through client-side filtering - you download compact filters, check them locally, and only request matching blocks, revealing just block-level interest. Utreexo (2019) compresses the UTXO set from 11 GB to 480 bytes using cryptographic accumulators while maintaining full-node privacy, but requires 20% more bandwidth. Each approach trades privacy, storage, bandwidth, and convenience differently.
Summary of: The Praxeology of Privacy ~ Economic Logic in Cypherpunk Implementation
A book explaining why Privacy = Economic necessity proven through Austrian logic. Three axioms (Action + Argumentation + Resistance) demonstrate that surveillance destroys market calculation like socialist planning, while cryptography restores conditions for voluntary coordination. Complete bridge between Austrian economics and cypherpunk technology.