Financial Cryptography

Just because the government has access to Google's servers doesn't mean Google gave them that access.

We're all big kids, if you read that the Chinese/Russian/whatever government had access to information straight from Facebook's servers most people wouldn't doubt it for a second and most people would assume they took it through hacking.

So how can you be surprised that NSA is listening to your Skype calls? Maybe they're using a backdoor made for them, maybe they're using a backdoor MS put in for synergy, maybe they threw a million gpus at it for a few years... And maybe they got permissions from MS, or maybe they social hacked it[1], maybe they take it before it gets to MS's servers. Some of those might be illegal and some not but anyone who's surprised or suddenly outraged has been living under a rock since forever.

[1] "It is generally done via secret arrangements not with the company, but with the employees. The company does not provide back-door access, but the people do. The trick is to place people with excellent tech skills and dual loyalties into strategic locations in the company. These 'assets' will then execute the work required in secret, and spare the company and most all of their workmates the embarrassment"

http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001431.html

I don't see any citation or evidence given for this so this persons claim could just be idle speculation but it's along the lines of what I'd assume. The NSA treats your privacy as a math…

This article discusses how high-level executives and many top engineers might have no idea what is happening:

https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001431.html

Excerpt: "How is this apparent contradiction possible? It is generally done via secret arrangements not with the company, but with the employees. The company does not provide back-door access, but the people do. The trick is to place people with excellent tech skills and dual loyalties into strategic locations in the company. These 'assets' will then execute the work required in secret, and spare the company and most all of their workmates the embarrassment. ..."

In a discussion of this article (on a cryptography list) I observed this incredulous response: "Hmm. So what does that mean a team of ex-military/intelligence security
people work there way up or get assistance with contacts and references,
replace all the key people in a companies inner security department and
start coding up backdoors, APIs and allowing VPN access to it? All without
telling anyone or getting noticed by ops people etc."

To which the other party retorted: "Been there. They are noticed, but you get orders from on high to shut up and not notice."

If that's all true, then it sounds like only a very few engineers and managers acting as moles will have specific knowledge of the program. A few non-mole engineers will sense that something's afoot, but they'll stay mum. Maybe that's as far as it goes.

From Ian Grigg's latest blog post:

> Such a chama was Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s apparent from what is now publicly known that the famous team worked in both excessive secrecy but very high trust. This handful of professionals from the Internet security field contributed jointly and separately to code, keys, design, vision, business, documentation, communications and opsec. As a common enterprise with a shared goal, enveloped in a dangerous environment, the Satoshi Nakamotii, various, faced more or less the same challenges that the members of any chama would face in Kibera: work in secret, protect the assets or be robbed and destroyed. Stay close to the vision, stay the long path, and in perhaps the ultimate irony, don’t allow personalities to be swayed by success.

> You don’t have to believe me that Satoshi Nakamoto was a chama — and the surviving members may also be bemused and disagreeable. I care little for their bemusement or your disbelief, as being bemused and disagreeable is just evidence of a twitter handle or a reddit post and most people out there are incapable of dealing with that simple scientific logic: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

For reference, the same author posted in May 2016:

"SATOSHI IS DEAD - LONG LIVE SATOSHI - TEAM LEADER COMES OUT"

http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001593.html

The first link above, "Momentum Accounting" is a very different use of the term "triple entry". Arguably, it has a better claim to the use of the term accounting because it is higher layer.

The second link is more or less the same thing as the posted paper, within the bounds of journalism. Which concept probably has a better claim to the term bookkeeping because it is lower layer.

Igor also describes the same thing, more or less, in a really good hacker's guide to Bitcoin:

http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001499.html

Where it gets interesting is whether Bitcoin can be considered triple-entry. I think with a fair stab, yes:

http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001325.html

But we will have to let the serious accountants and also historians have their say on this one.

On a related note Ian Griggs just posted an excellent blog post ( http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001554.html ) about the corruption inherent in allowing agencies to seize funds for their own use. It's written mostly in the context of anti-money-laundering regulations and focuses on the Silk Road investigators who ripped off hundreds of criminals and extorted the subjects of their investigation.

It points out that anytime a law enforcement agency is allowed to seize funds that flow to it's own budget, corruption inevitably follows.