Let there be dark

, View Archived, privacy, security, surveillance
Unfortunately, the law hasn’t kept pace with technology, and this disconnect has created a significant public safety problem. We call it 'Going Dark'
- James Comey, former FBI director

The idea that governments are generally more anti-privacy and pro-surveillance is not a new one. Many governments hide behind the shadow of corporate surveillance to gather information on millions of people through subpoenas and coercion. The "Going Dark" problem is a real one for governments as it breaks the traditional model of relying on surveillance capitalism and allows free, unfettered access to send and receive information and funds at scale.

End-to-end encrypted communications and finance are the primary of some of the largest governmental alliances. This leads to a problem where your every move is tracked, recorded, and used to build predictions of what you'll do next. This isn't the future, it's our reality. You're living it right now.

While it's true that lawless digital environments can cause real world harm11Like the time a person I met online chased me with a knife, the benefits of strong cryptography and "Going Dark" outweigh the downsides more often than not.

The mainstream is the samestream
When I look at the mainstream platforms online, I see much of the same things repeated over and over. Cancel culture is rampant and having ideas outside of the accepted range of normality can get you into a lot of trouble22As someone who runs an encrypted communications platform and has regularly dealt with attacks of multiple varieties, I concur..

Build! Build! Build! #

If we wish to "Go Dark" we need to design software that