Jake Appelbaum is an attention-whore who wished for the wrong thing and got it.
The type of fight he's fighting, which, indeed, was foretold by the cypherpunks years before he ever compiled a program, is one of vast asymmetry. He's the source of the quote "the government has a monopoly on violence, but violence can't solve math problems".
The problem is, when you function within an outlawed organization using your above-ground identity, you choose to have your own life destroyed, rendering you unable to be effective in doing the things you talk about being so important. We're talking, here, about a guy who gives sensationalist interviews to Rolling Stone about how he can hack into anything on the internet.
They don't need to break your crypto. They can just break you.
When fighting the surveillance state, you can be famous, xor you can be effective. Period.
I wrote about this some time ago:
https://eeqj.com/20110113/wikileaks/
Don't believe the hype.
Every single person paying attention knows Wikileaks would have been way more effective if it had been fronted by a signing key instead of Julian Assange's haircut. They might have even been able to continue functioning instead of being extrajudicially harassed into oblivion.
These people serve as examples of how _not_ to effect meaningful change.
PS: It also speaks volumes about the current state of the Chaos Computer Club and their conference that they chose such a meaningless sycophant as their keynote speaker.
The type of fight he's fighting, which, indeed, was foretold by the cypherpunks years before he ever compiled a program, is one of vast asymmetry. He's the source of the quote "the government has a monopoly on violence, but violence can't solve math problems".
The problem is, when you function within an outlawed organization using your above-ground identity, you choose to have your own life destroyed, rendering you unable to be effective in doing the things you talk about being so important. We're talking, here, about a guy who gives sensationalist interviews to Rolling Stone about how he can hack into anything on the internet.
They don't need to break your crypto. They can just break you.
When fighting the surveillance state, you can be famous, xor you can be effective. Period.
I wrote about this some time ago:
Don't believe the hype.Every single person paying attention knows Wikileaks would have been way more effective if it had been fronted by a signing key instead of Julian Assange's haircut. They might have even been able to continue functioning instead of being extrajudicially harassed into oblivion.
These people serve as examples of how _not_ to effect meaningful change.
PS: It also speaks volumes about the current state of the Chaos Computer Club and their conference that they chose such a meaningless sycophant as their keynote speaker.