This has problems and isn't going anywhere for long:
- it makes GitHub a target
- it makes contributors into targets
First, Git (although DVCS) needs to be located in a non-extradition country where a SEAL team cannot just break in and steal dev servers. This sounds like it would require tor also.
Second, all contributors need perfect anonymity hygiene. Anyone that commits publicly is a liability. Use a new pseudonym just for this project, keep issues and discussion to information and technical matters strictly.
This is absurd. We have to stop trying to run from our own government, we've run out of places to go. I've been hearing arguments for years that we need to place anything that's even a theory of committing an illegal act on some micronation of Sealand or, like PirateBay, float drones in the sky.
It's going to get to the point where theres no where we're going to end up hosting Reddit, et al., on the Moon.
If you're intent is to create a facility, whose express purpose is to break the law, albeit laws you may not agree with, I think you're going to be on the run for a long time.
Obviously that's correct. But, my point being is that the law is wrong and we should attempt to challenge government instead of simply trying to evade it over and over.
If you have a plan that seems workable, there are hundreds of thousands of people willing to join you. If you don't, then jurisdictional arbitrage will continue to be the order of the day.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I can't come up with a clear and fully appropriate medium to actually challenge government overreach in a significant way.
It seems to me, viewing history as an example, it used to be possible to legitimately petition the government by means of demonstrations, protests, contacting legislators, etc. Now that's been completely replaced with lawsuits. Only by one party with significant means and resourcing sueing the other and waiting a long time to reach the Supreme Court do things get accomplished.
As this has to do with the drug war, however, I think things are slowly changing. If the Prohibition of alcohol can be any guide it will take a large enough public outcry along with voting people into office that share your point of view. All that takes time, money, and at least some way to sway the public (generally meaning control in some kind of large media company that the public believes/trusts).
The only way to get started is for people to get together and say they want to do it and start doing it. Apathy and complaining about it goes nowhere.
Don't confuse disagreement with apathy. Remember that post-Snowden Congress had the ability to put a stop to the NSA program and didn't, and the public outcry (outside of HN) was fairly muted. So it seems that you've got to win some hearts and minds first.
And winning the hearts and minds is not going to be easy. Consider the Tea Party (and importantly consider your own feelings toward the Tea Party) A bona-fide grass roots movement that the establishment has marginalized, ridiculed and baselessly accused of violence and racism and now stands charged with holding the nation hostage, by exercising legal and constitutional rights. I suspect you're movement would not fair any better.
>Remember that post-Snowden Congress had the ability to put a stop to the NSA program and didn't, and the public outcry (outside of HN) was fairly muted.
I don't see the public outcry as muted at all, but I suppose it depends on where you look. Remember, we're in a transition of traditional/oldschool media to new media.
I also don't expect the body politic to simply throw out their beloved spy apparatus after some public outcry. This isn't just a decision of Congress, but of a state funded military industrial complex that exists out of bounds of any kind of oversight with their own secret budgets -- something almost unheard of any prior state and without historical precedent. Trying to tear down the walls of that is going to be an extremely complicated and time consuming process, and I think its going to be a piecemeal affair.
> I suspect you're movement would not fair any better.
Obviously its very hard to establish a movement in the 21st century that can effectively alter the status quo. I look at Occupy as a better example -- and without getting into arguments regards one vs the other the Tea Party has continued where Occupy faltered and disintegrated. You may not be able to control what people say about you and its hard to keep a movement from splintering, but if you go by the basic tenants of creating a popular mass movement with leadership, specific political objectives, and enough funds, I think it's very possible to get things accomplished.
First, Git (although DVCS) needs to be located in a non-extradition country
non-extradition country to where? Non-extradiction country to the USA? That's very America-centric. Any place you can host it, will have local courts, local police and local judges. You can't find a country that, effectively, has no laws you have to obey.
Are you really so poorly mannered as to chime in and start throwing nasty names around? That genius you replied to takes one point to make a political statement, not contribute anything to the conversation and then slips into to the gutter. If it's not popular to stand up for yourself being assaulted, then I don't really care.
If you aren't, you're still completely wrong. Russia, America or any nationstate that is made aware of something can seize whatever it wants whenever it wants and wherever it wants. That's why any controversial app must be distributed, fault resilient for both development AND production. Centralized will never work, even with perfect security hygiene. It's a good thing that Git has a full copy, because a single dev server seizure would be annoying but not fatal.
Do you have any other flaws to point out that pertain to my original comment?
That genius you replied to takes one point to make a political statement, not contribute anything to the conversation and then slips into to the gutter.
I wonder if you could pool money to have spacex or some other company launch a satellite/set of servers into orbit as opposed to some country somewhere. That'd be pretty expensive for them to take (physically) out of service then!
Maybe, but probably not as expensive as you launching it in the first place as a percentage of money involved. I'd bet there are a few old birds up there that are still under control, but not serving any particular purpose. Steer it into a collision course, and bam, your server just became a cloud of garbage orbiting the Earth.
On the other hand, that would seriously piss off the rest of the international community, especially if the two satellites were high enough to clutter up existing satellite traffic.
I think it takes a lot more effort than that to thoroughly wipe a drive. Though my only expertise in this regard is having to use a degausser on magnetic tapes.
- it makes GitHub a target
- it makes contributors into targets
First, Git (although DVCS) needs to be located in a non-extradition country where a SEAL team cannot just break in and steal dev servers. This sounds like it would require tor also.
Second, all contributors need perfect anonymity hygiene. Anyone that commits publicly is a liability. Use a new pseudonym just for this project, keep issues and discussion to information and technical matters strictly.