Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Share this article with others in the tech community. We should explore developing decentralized platforms to enable whistleblowing and expose wrongdoing.
My problem. I have experience with political secrets and whistleblowers, and often times, that information is factually wrong. This is also true even for investigative reporters. I have sat in rooms with people telling me awful things about their workplaces, and their information was incorrect.
And, for various reasons, no one will know the right story, or the whole story, so the consensual myths last for years. Knowing the inside story is exhilarating and addictive. But too often, people interpret information before they pass it on. Even if you think the info is cut-and-dried, black-and-white, it has been tainted with human opinion.
So, I could see the data in this model being easily corrupted And innocent people would be harmed. It takes time and effort to find the truth.
Given my concerns, I am a BIG fan of openthebooks.com. They are "a transparency group devoted to posting online all the disclosed spending of every level of government across the United States."
It is one place I donate to support a free society. One thing I like about them - what they do pretty much appeals to everyone, regardless of their political POV.
Anyway, I might be wrong. Would be interesting to view a proof of concept.
The viewers could get to work verifying immediately, before govt could begin the spin. After a certain number of independent verifications, the info can be assumed to be somewhat verified. After a much higher independent verifications, the info can be assumed true. At that point, the cat is out of the bag.
To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, we can prove pretty much anything by looking for examples that agree, which often happens when people have an emotional stake in an outcome. I am a fan of the work of Sir Karl Popper and the ideas in his book Conjectures and Refutations. Bryan Magee's book Philosophy and the Real World is a shorter introduction to Popper's work and discusses the effectiveness of falsification when conducting research. I would want this site? to have a culture where contributors are willing to subject their submissions to rigorous examination.
What is the contradictory evidence? What if honest and informed people continue to disagree, and there is no consensus? I believe that truth is not a democracy, where people vote on the outcome of what is right or wrong. What about the danger of groupthink? There is already a lot of work and study available in the general category of truth-seeking. Worth a look, in my opinion.
Could all users be tasked with microtasks, some phrases or ideas, taken out of context, and their role is to try and falsify the claims? If falsification, or at least sincere efforts to try are (somehow?) incentivised would that help? Thanks for references, @pat, I always found Popper hard to read, need a primer.
I have bought multiple copies of the Magee book and shared it with friends and clients. It's a relatively short book, and Magee was an excellent writer.
Max, I should connect you with Dr Jack Kruse who’s working with Urbit people to build a “nockchain” scientific publishing system that sounds like it could support your use case too. Are you interested?
I am. While I am not equipped to drive such an effort, I might be helpful in promoting it. I might also want to republish some of these posts. https://www.nockchain.org/ Is this the same project?
There is a real need for this, and setting it up wouldn’t be hard to do. I’ve seen ideas in this direction that already exist, but not blockchain, like SecureDrop and some Tor sites. But I’m not sure that the ability to leak anonymously will facilitate more whistleblowing.
A bigger challenge is that often information itself will identity a whistleblower. Anything genuinely sensitive is usually available to only a small handful of people, so if it’s leaked then the list of possible suspects is very small. This situation is probably more often the case than not, and I’d imagine that Damocles’ sword stops a lot of would be whistleblowers. Unless they have the means to disappear before the leak is out, the personal risk is too high for most people regardless of their convictions.
I don’t see any easy tech solution to this dilemma, maybe there isn’t one and our best effort is catching the edge cases with a system like what you describe. I could also imagine some kind of an easy to implement dead man’s switch system to leak once the party with access to info is gone… but waiting 30 years for things to be exposed isn’t actionable or relevant anymore.
The problem with "Whistle-blower protections" is that they are government set. They are NOT in place to protect the whistle-blower, they ARE in place to set a legal minimum of protection.
Many things legally are made to limit the protections that might otherwise be available in open court. By setting minimums, it sets the legal precedent for those types of protections -- to minimum. Likewise, you have to go through government channels to get whistle-blower protection.
Example. You're protected from being fired, but if you happen to reveal information that's "classified" you're going to go to prison [unless you're mentally incompetent like Biden]. The reasoning behind the whistle-blowers actions are irrelevant.
As another example, the Trump impeachment trial. People claiming to be whistle-blowers came out and lied in droves. But they were never held accountable for their false testimony. They had whistle-blower protections. Nobody would prosecute them even if they did reveal top secret info -- because they're going after the orange man.
Similarly, the American media is 100% caprured. That being the case, the old way of leaking things to the news does not work, because they will just bury the story.
If a blockchain type setup were used, the issue would be the anonymity of the person holding the encryption key. Because that is who the government will target.
Perhaps you could distribute the key to multiple sources, and have it released at once simultaneously. Then only those mirroring the key could possibly know where it came from.
Let's face it, the government is literally a criminal enterprise. Without real protection, people would not be willing to cross that line. Because they might just off you.
If Boeing is offing whistle-blowers, the government is damn-sure doing it too.
The appeal of this is the decentralized nature of blockchains and their resistance to suppression and censorship (unlike, say, the DoD docs leaked about Ukraine onto Discord).
I’m not an expert either, but with the proliferation of alt-coins, this could probably be done using existing open source code.
Privacy? Where is this thing called privacy? Who has it? Where could it have gone? I see not this thing called privacy. Is it hiding in the woods? Show me the evidence.
Document origin remains encrypted. The document itself becomes visible. The only important part of a document from the government is the document itself. The requestor/liberator is unimportant and actually best kept secret for their own sake.
“4. Once the transaction containing the encrypted document is included in a block and added to the blockchain, it becomes publicly viewable.”
"4.However, since the document is encrypted, only the user with the encryption key can decrypt and view the original content."
Max should identify two objects, the data and its metadata. The metadata contains sensitive origin information. This stays encrypted or better yet, discarded. While the data becomes visible once deployed on the decentralized storage service.
Even if all the kinks have not yet been worked out, this is a worthy objective.
My problem. I have experience with political secrets and whistleblowers, and often times, that information is factually wrong. This is also true even for investigative reporters. I have sat in rooms with people telling me awful things about their workplaces, and their information was incorrect.
And, for various reasons, no one will know the right story, or the whole story, so the consensual myths last for years. Knowing the inside story is exhilarating and addictive. But too often, people interpret information before they pass it on. Even if you think the info is cut-and-dried, black-and-white, it has been tainted with human opinion.
So, I could see the data in this model being easily corrupted And innocent people would be harmed. It takes time and effort to find the truth.
Given my concerns, I am a BIG fan of openthebooks.com. They are "a transparency group devoted to posting online all the disclosed spending of every level of government across the United States."
It is one place I donate to support a free society. One thing I like about them - what they do pretty much appeals to everyone, regardless of their political POV.
Anyway, I might be wrong. Would be interesting to view a proof of concept.
Valid concerns. But they exist today with any leaks.
I agree. I try to resist the impulse to embrace leaks as truths that need not be evaluated. Particularly if I am to act on them somehow.
The viewers could get to work verifying immediately, before govt could begin the spin. After a certain number of independent verifications, the info can be assumed to be somewhat verified. After a much higher independent verifications, the info can be assumed true. At that point, the cat is out of the bag.
To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, we can prove pretty much anything by looking for examples that agree, which often happens when people have an emotional stake in an outcome. I am a fan of the work of Sir Karl Popper and the ideas in his book Conjectures and Refutations. Bryan Magee's book Philosophy and the Real World is a shorter introduction to Popper's work and discusses the effectiveness of falsification when conducting research. I would want this site? to have a culture where contributors are willing to subject their submissions to rigorous examination.
What is the contradictory evidence? What if honest and informed people continue to disagree, and there is no consensus? I believe that truth is not a democracy, where people vote on the outcome of what is right or wrong. What about the danger of groupthink? There is already a lot of work and study available in the general category of truth-seeking. Worth a look, in my opinion.
Could all users be tasked with microtasks, some phrases or ideas, taken out of context, and their role is to try and falsify the claims? If falsification, or at least sincere efforts to try are (somehow?) incentivised would that help? Thanks for references, @pat, I always found Popper hard to read, need a primer.
I have bought multiple copies of the Magee book and shared it with friends and clients. It's a relatively short book, and Magee was an excellent writer.
Worth a try. But as you hint at, there has to be a way of allowing other viewpoints.
Max, I should connect you with Dr Jack Kruse who’s working with Urbit people to build a “nockchain” scientific publishing system that sounds like it could support your use case too. Are you interested?
I am. While I am not equipped to drive such an effort, I might be helpful in promoting it. I might also want to republish some of these posts. https://www.nockchain.org/ Is this the same project?
I’m not 100% sure it is, but it certainly looks like it must be.
I became aware of nockchains through podcasts with Dr Jack Kruse recently, so haven’t been in touch with the people directly yet.
Definitely reach out to them!
There is a real need for this, and setting it up wouldn’t be hard to do. I’ve seen ideas in this direction that already exist, but not blockchain, like SecureDrop and some Tor sites. But I’m not sure that the ability to leak anonymously will facilitate more whistleblowing.
A bigger challenge is that often information itself will identity a whistleblower. Anything genuinely sensitive is usually available to only a small handful of people, so if it’s leaked then the list of possible suspects is very small. This situation is probably more often the case than not, and I’d imagine that Damocles’ sword stops a lot of would be whistleblowers. Unless they have the means to disappear before the leak is out, the personal risk is too high for most people regardless of their convictions.
I don’t see any easy tech solution to this dilemma, maybe there isn’t one and our best effort is catching the edge cases with a system like what you describe. I could also imagine some kind of an easy to implement dead man’s switch system to leak once the party with access to info is gone… but waiting 30 years for things to be exposed isn’t actionable or relevant anymore.
It could work.
The problem with "Whistle-blower protections" is that they are government set. They are NOT in place to protect the whistle-blower, they ARE in place to set a legal minimum of protection.
Many things legally are made to limit the protections that might otherwise be available in open court. By setting minimums, it sets the legal precedent for those types of protections -- to minimum. Likewise, you have to go through government channels to get whistle-blower protection.
Example. You're protected from being fired, but if you happen to reveal information that's "classified" you're going to go to prison [unless you're mentally incompetent like Biden]. The reasoning behind the whistle-blowers actions are irrelevant.
As another example, the Trump impeachment trial. People claiming to be whistle-blowers came out and lied in droves. But they were never held accountable for their false testimony. They had whistle-blower protections. Nobody would prosecute them even if they did reveal top secret info -- because they're going after the orange man.
Similarly, the American media is 100% caprured. That being the case, the old way of leaking things to the news does not work, because they will just bury the story.
If a blockchain type setup were used, the issue would be the anonymity of the person holding the encryption key. Because that is who the government will target.
Perhaps you could distribute the key to multiple sources, and have it released at once simultaneously. Then only those mirroring the key could possibly know where it came from.
Let's face it, the government is literally a criminal enterprise. Without real protection, people would not be willing to cross that line. Because they might just off you.
If Boeing is offing whistle-blowers, the government is damn-sure doing it too.
The appeal of this is the decentralized nature of blockchains and their resistance to suppression and censorship (unlike, say, the DoD docs leaked about Ukraine onto Discord).
I’m not an expert either, but with the proliferation of alt-coins, this could probably be done using existing open source code.
Privacy? Where is this thing called privacy? Who has it? Where could it have gone? I see not this thing called privacy. Is it hiding in the woods? Show me the evidence.
talk about this
naked under a waterfall you just found
with the one person they could never get to
they killed Graeber
don't let your last thought be
'fucking retarded paranoid freak was right'
I'm confused: what's the point of uploading something nobody else can read?
The information can be viewed, the origin, and any info connecting to the whistleblower is not visible.
That makes sense but seems inconsistent with Max's steps 2 and 4.
Document origin remains encrypted. The document itself becomes visible. The only important part of a document from the government is the document itself. The requestor/liberator is unimportant and actually best kept secret for their own sake.
“4. Once the transaction containing the encrypted document is included in a block and added to the blockchain, it becomes publicly viewable.”
"4.However, since the document is encrypted, only the user with the encryption key can decrypt and view the original content."
Max should identify two objects, the data and its metadata. The metadata contains sensitive origin information. This stays encrypted or better yet, discarded. While the data becomes visible once deployed on the decentralized storage service.
gotta start somewhere...before a better iteration develops
I like it.