Oddbean

Internet structure is lame: a) Domain names are the government's opinion of your identity b) SSL Encryption is not even based on these flawed domains, even worse than that, it's based on locations, so the cloud host owns everything c) Even worse than that, not just the cloud host owns it, but on top of that Cloudflare sees everything. You submit your password, Cloudflare's CDN sees it. They own every account you thought you owned. d) Even worse than that, Websites won't even let you JUST have a password. You need to email to verify, which is completely insecure nonsense that is now having a different 2nd cloud company own your account on the first one's servers. e) Web browsers are running whatever code they want. You're a bitch that just has to accept their code. f) Web browsers are dominated by Google & Mozilla, both left-leaning anti-privacy companies. I reject this. Instead, I promote the idea of Agnostic Encryption as Identity. And what this means is: 1) Using Encryption as Identity with open source clients. 2) Empower the end user with choices among both clients and protocols. 3) End users have all the power. Servers are an irrelevant commodity 4) Avoiding tying identities to particular servers 5) Communication between keypair systems to reduce the number of clients or extensions the person has to download. We assume disagreement, if you curse me out then you prove my point. 6) Cross-communication to increase the access and availability of content, and the network effect of all encryption as identity.

Start at the very bottom of the stack. 1). The physical network exists and it’s not yours. Not your servers, not your routers. 2). IP addresses are assigned by IANA. This is a permission request. To create a decentralised network, the network ID’s / addresses would need to be self generated not assigned from a permission granting institution. You should self declare an identity and the network should propagate it with your traffic. First time connections would be slow, second time connections would be fast. The Internet Protocol we all use at the base is highly centralised. You can create abstract networks within the internet like VPN’s do, or onion, but all the exit points are centrally assigned IP’s. Why bother when we have encryption? As great and fundamental as TCP/IP is, it is not permissionless and although this permission is always granted and is always frictionless, the result of IP design is a central register that geotags and ownertags every IP address. Whilst the content of your message can be hidden, the TCP table cannot. The TCP table contains all the information required to go fish for the message. Is there no hope? Well if someone were to make the effort to devise an alternative routing system with self generated addresses, a permissionless network, then you could have a free network. The barrier is that all the physical network all the network cards and routers run IP. It’s a huge barrier. But we are gradually approaching a world where you can do the impossible and circumvent the physical network that exists today. Within a decade or two it will be fairly easy to replace the physical internet with a network of cubesats that hosts a decentralised network architecture. It won’t be as fast as the internet, it would be slow and expensive, but it would be secure and untraceable. Will it happen? No. But it’s not as impossible as it once was.