The State of the Dark Market… (1/10) Building an economy that’s as close to philosophically correct as possible

Introduction (2/10) Disclaimer: I don’t think there is a reliable means to hide from the NSA unless you are willing to invest a sizable portion of your time and income. I am not an expert on any of these topics. Until recently I used clear text logins with administrator accounts to do FTP transfers, despite Windows warning on every log in screen. This talk might suck. As a mitigating tactic I only have 10 slides, all numbered so that if I do suck, at least you know how much longer I will suck!

Part 1: Amateur Hide and SEEK (3/10) We probably can’t hide. We can make it flipping expensive for them. The NSA are not supernatural, they are basically just well funded hacker outfits. Extremely well funded hacker outfits. AFK is getting much lighter and will eventually be 99% lit up whether you like it or not. The net is getting darker and will eventually be 99% dark whether the NSA likes it or not.

The eye of sauron (4/10) So how much do the 5 Eyes see? They know who all your friends are Don’t blame Zuckerberg, they knew before Facebook All photos anyone uploads to almost any online service Uploads now automatic Facial recognition means you and your friends need to not be on Facebook They have programs to record all phone calls and transcribe them All your life’s phone calls cost R 5 to store… forever. Is the NSA the Stasi? More like survivalist loon neighbour (no offense to present company) Very inefficient

Poking the eye of sauron (5/10) How to get rid of the surveillance state? Don’t fear them. YOLO. End all conversations with “as the prophet wills it”. Lower the cost of surveillance so that anyone can buy an NSA for a few hundred rands. Awareness, sitting in the corner with your eyes closed doesn’t mean the monster isn’t looking. Generate noise… pure speculation. …defund them.

Tools (6/10) Freedom of speech / Privacy of Information TOR – Network Traffic Tails – TOR on an isolated Operating System GPG – Encrypt your e-mails Property Rights Bitcoin Dark Wallet Ethereum OpenBazaar Self Defence Liberator C&C machines

Market Pushback (7/10) Where there’s a will, there’s a way Where there’s a high enough demand, eventually there is a supply The following tools all distribute control back to the owners and severely limit anyone’s ability to see, censor or steal from others

Dark Wallet (8/10) Demand: Privacy Turns out that which protects you against hoodlums protects you from the NSA Darkens the blockchain Makes traffic analysis harder Creates a new address every time you pay someone Can mix funds with other random participant Dark wallet is the implementation of Bitcoins’ promise of anonymity

OpenBazaar (9/10 …suffering almost over) The saga of the Silk Road Vendor Ratings Dispute resolution Ross Ulbright’s arrest - FreeRoss.org Silk Road 2.0 – Honour among drug dealers There are now more operating markets and they seems to be at least the same size and probably bigger. OpenBazaar Decentralized Proof of burn reputation startup Arbitration Anonymity

DAO’s (10/10) Distributed Autonomous Organizations Overstock.com Examples Distributed Securities Stock Exchange Distributed Uber Management is code – Code can’t be jailed Google claimed “Don’t be evil”. DAO’s can’t be evil. Overstock.com Ethereum Bitcoin is not generic Ethereum will be a generic DAO environment Ethereum has practical utility vs Bitcoin