RE: A Critical Assessment of Social Cybersecurity as a Technoscientific Enterprise

The fundamental nature of security remains unchanged since prehistory. People have always faced hazards they must either defend against or suffer, and the spectrum of hazards necessarily includes existential threats. People may scoff at the potential harm cyber threats can cause, but this neglects that malevolent actors can use any means of compromising security to commit every harm people can suffer, and definitely includes killing them. Something else that has never changed is that outsourcing security to others creates threats against which there is no security. The broad warp and weft of history is a tale of treachery and betrayal, from the betrayal of the Byzantine Empress by the Varangian Guard in 1071, to the imposition of famine a millennium later that starved tens of millions to death in the Great Leap Forward.

Because security must be personal, and leaving our security to others is abandoning security altogether, censorship and proprietary software necessarily reduce security. If we cannot audit code we depend on we cannot be secure from cyber threats. From Mt. Gox to the use of deposits on exchanges by Sun Yuchen to seize governance of Steem, the worst cyber security hazards are treachery and betrayal, as the worst security threats have always been.

Because I cannot secure my communications myself, I secure me from my communications being used as a weapon against me. For most of us, that is the best we can do, because we cannot audit the code running on our machines, cannot understand the hardware we are using, and cannot prevent our information from being gathered and used against us by our enemies, such as Goolag and Fakebook. Banks have seized my accounts and taken my money, corrupt courts have seized real property I held free and clear, and everyone I have ever loved has betrayed me to steal from me, including my own dear mother. I was working 11 hours a day 6 days a week logging, and could not actually go to the bank when it was open (before the internet was available), so I asked her to deposit my paychecks, from which she stole (~$40k adjusted for inflation) from our joint account. While the specific betrayals I have suffered are unique to me personally, the fact that trust can be betrayed is universal, and entrusting our security to anyone is creating potentially indefensible security risks history reveals has caused innumerable deaths and untold suffering.

While this reality is difficult to address in discussion regarding government, because the worst threat to government security is treachery and betrayal by government officials (and specifically those officials responsible for cyber security), I hope it informs your personal security measures.

Thanks!