Why Metadata Will Kill Your Privacy (Unless We Fight Back) - Max Hampshire, Lead DevRel Nym

Hi. Uh, I'm Max. Uh, currently lead the Devril project and NIM uh, the MixNet project and most of my work is focusing on developer experience and working on our SDKs. So trying to make privacy as um, accessible as possible for application and library developers. So, uh, Max, for those who don't know you, can you share a bit of your background like how did you end up like doing what you're doing now?

Like a bit of your personal story mix like maybe from an activism and professional layer.

Absolutely. So, um, so yeah, I my academic background is actually in uh philosophy. So I basically got into kind of like crypto and kind of like um you know I suppose technology to I suppose you could call it like yeah like this kind of like liberatory or like emancipatory technology kind of like movement in general. Um I got into that when I was actually like studying uh in the Netherlands. So I was there and you know the Netherlands especially kind of through the the kind of music and cultural scene of Amsterdam still has quite there's still kind of like the remnants of like the previously very strong um kind of like free spaces and like squatting scene basically.

And so I was kind of culturally kind of like you know sp spending time in in spaces like that going to gigs you know I had kind of like friends who were like involved in this scene whilst studying a lot of political philosophy and then at the same time kind of heard about bitcoin and tried to I suppose then yeah like saw that there was like oh okay this is really interesting you have like a like this idea of like a non maybe like a non-state or a more like autonomous conception of like money and value and especially when you know spaces like this they um can struggle because you know maybe like banks don't like them or their PayPal account gets shut down or and especially in the context of cash becoming far less of the way that people are actually like moving value around right um which has kind of happened all over happening all over the world like especially in like certain parts of Western Europe like the Netherlands like it's increasingly becoming like very very cashless and they were kind of like leading the way in that So that was I suppose my entry point from this mixture of like yeah you know political philosophy um at the time reading a lot of like fuko and kind of like postmarxist philosophy and stuff and and this like very concrete example and really then kind of got into crypto almost a lot through the art scene actually. So a lot through the like early crypto art scene. So I was part of a project called Terrazero for quite a long time. Um which was basically a project that was this uh when we published the paper we published the kind of this this kind of white paper like playing with the white paper form as well. Right.

This was the time 2016 like you just have white papers kind of like coming out left and right these kind of like utopian visions that people were building in in in in white papers. And we we kind of published this white paper of um essentially like a forest that was able to own itself and manage itself, right, using um a kind of structure that like now you would call a doubt, right? So it was um somewhat of a provocation basically of like okay well like how can you actually push the idea of having this kind of like autonomous smart contract managed system kind of to to the nth degree but also then trying to use it in a way that was um how do you actually allow a space to almost like protect itself from people right so it was written in the context of this kind of like three generation cycle that's particularly prevalent in in uh in Germany. The other two guys, Paul Sidler and Paul Colling um who started the project before I joined it and then it was the three of us working on it for quite a few years. Um they're both um based in Berlin and it was like really this you know there's this cycle that exists of people inherit land, there's forest on it, they don't really know what to do with it and inevitably it gets logged or and kind of turned into like a monoculture, right?

which is um like just econ like ecologically disastrous basically. So how do you kind of allow how could you using kind of cryptocurrency and smart contracts like allow a forest to essentially like own and manage itself in a way that actually makes sense from that perspective and also like kind of taking it out of the taking it out of the loop from having people kind of own and manage it but not taking it out of the the financial loop itself, right? which is um I suppose just yeah looking at the reality and the fact that almost everything is kind of with like embedded within this kind of like uh system of value right and you can't you couldn't just kind of take it out and leave it because that's also not how it would work. Um so yeah kind of like really my background is also in like noise music

and the kind of cultural side of stuff and then uh yes a couple of years ago I started working for NIM and really yeah it uh working on network level privacy stuff seemed at the time and still is like very urgent. you know, this feels like the moment that it can be done and you know, obviously like the hackathon you're doing now and like a lot of people share that like sentiment, but it does, you know, is it does very much feel like okay, this is the this is the point that this stuff needs to get made otherwise maybe it maybe it won't. Um, and yeah, I've been doing that for almost I think almost four years at this point, leading the Devril team and increasingly recently like focusing on actually developing both developing integrations but like also you know trying to work on our SDKs and make make something as I suppose almost like esoteric as a mixet as approachable and usable for developers possible, right? Um I think you see this in a lot of you see this kind of all like across the entire I suppose like almost like the you know the OSI stack of privacy like depending on like what people are working on and that's still very much the the the kind of pain point for developers to actually adopt this into their own tools right it's like how different from the existing stuff is that and that's really because kind of in the same way that like with Terraza you're not trying to like pull this piece of land outside of the kind of like value flows that currently exist uh because that doesn't really work. You also I think need to be focusing on stuff like developer experience because you know it's not because people are uninterested or they see something complicated and they go oh I don't want to do that.

It's because of the reality I think of like how people are building, right? Which usually if you're building like a weekend project,

you don't necessarily have time to like, okay, cool. I'm going to spend three weeks kind of like kind of rejigging how I think of network traffic moving around um because you just simply don't really have time, right? So yeah, that's kind of one of my my my main focus at NIM at the moment is trying to um allow for the use of the mixet to be kind of as seamless as possible basically.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean to thank you. Um, so I wanted before I wanted to discuss it more, but like you mentioned that and I like the word about the urgency of privacy, the exact word and I think it's very punct they would say in German.

So um why do you think it's urgent? I mean I I totally agree with that have like point on that but just for people who maybe don't get it

like

the importance of privacy and why it's important like now

because for many people you're like okay it's that's a human right that my privacy

but they don't feel urgency.

Yeah. I think there's um I mean there's urgency coming from a bunch of places right like the you know I think if we kind of if we if we kind of look like culturally especially within like the European context um like after the Snowden revelations uh after like kind of Wikileaks had like its you know real like moment um there was a lot I suppose what I'm trying to say is like there's urgency coming from a bunch of different directions right but they're all kind of like they're all meeting in the middle at the moment in this uh you know kind of perma crisis kind of way that we're also seeing in like around the world in in general right but I think generally you know the world is becoming a lot less stable we are generally seeing you know there's all the stuff that like a lot of people can probably speak more eloquently than me about in terms of like kind of the rise of uh increasingly like knee-jerk or populist politics and and all of this kind of stuff as a response to the kind of perma crisis that we're seeing from the environment and everything else. But like there was the urgency originally in terms of like okay we know that you know the side of revelation showed that like governments are both able to do this and willing to do this and doing it in a way where they put a smiley face on a slide to show you know encryption t like taken away and added here right like the brazeness of literally having a smiley face on a slide which is uh just mental Um and I think the urgency is also coming from the fact that like you know if you think about like what was what was possible computationally in terms of surveillance like even a decade ago now it's just so much more possible to both actually surveil you know capture enormous swaves of the internet and actually surveil it. Not only that, it's also now increasingly like a you know the the domain of private companies that are doing this as well. So you know like how however much of the world like runs on Amazon web services you have within technology itself and the kind of infrastructures that we're using you've also seen this kind of like there is a is mass so massively centralized at this point that there's like single pots that are very of actors who both have the means and the justification in in their own kind of logic which ultimately is the logic of money right to to actually enact this kind of surveillance as well.

And then the third, you know, addition to this cluster is AI as well, right? Like this kind of the the cult like the kind of the way that people are accepting AI and treating it as like a friend in their pocket or even sometimes, you know, these like like a god almost, right? and just pouring so many aspects of their lives into it um shows that people are kind of I think very like willing to actually to actually engage with it but and the logic of AI is just completely data hungry right it's this kind of endless pit that if you just add more data to it we can you know supposedly like pull finer and finer finer like granularity out of like whatever this you massive haystack um is that you've captured um some people are also worried about quantum computing. I think there's like um there is an there's an element there that you I think it's good to you know protect against um because we are in this situation where like it is feasible for people to you know save it now and decrypt it later and you never know what's going to happen in 10 years and all of this kind of stuff but I think the real urgency at the moment is coming from yeah this kind of this uh this this kind of real meeting in the middle of a couple of vectors some of which are government surveillance that then basically got farmed out to private companies and then now is justified through the market of AI basically and like the kind of data hungryness of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh I totally agree and I would like to speak a bit more maybe about AI because it's a really really big thing now and so many people are using that. So maybe have like your own like tips and tricks

because it's really hard not to use it sometimes, right? And it's it can be quite useful. But then like how do you do that so that you are not doxing yourself much like are there any tips and tricks or restrictions or like tools or I don't know extra measures you can take so that you can use it but still yeah be safe.

I mean it's kind of like any tool. I think like the I suppose the um maybe like yeah the the kind of the structural approach to essentially like compartmentalizing parts of your online life right like also is it's exactly the same as like how you run stuff on your computer like how you run stuff on your phone in particular like phones are also like a very underdis discussed like um element of privacy I think or like the kind of the conversation surrounding privacy um just because that you know that's that's kind of an almost yeah oligopolistic kind of market. But I think there's yeah it's it's a I think it's kind of a question of like how much how much partitioning of what you do and how you do it online is something that you're kind of like willing to accept and it doesn't disrupt your life too much, right? is like finding that balance between, you know, there's obviously like the the kind of the the old cipher punk idea of like, you know, you like still have a flip phone and can only be, you know, communicated with via, you know, like a dead drop and all this stuff, but like it's simply like impractical, right? Like the real question is like, yeah, exactly.

It's like how do you like actually live your life to the extent that you are like living a very very full life whilst protecting yourself in the ways that you can. Um with regards to like AI tools then it's like yeah I you know if you can then you know there's there's stuff like Olama like you can now run deepsee locally and just chat with that you're obviously not sending telemetry anywhere like OAM does make it like really easy to do that which is really nice otherwise you know there's just practical stuff like maybe don't ask maybe don't ask something that will essentially consistently affirm yourself and give you like a probabilistic kind median response. Uh don't don't maybe don't ask it personal questions about your life, you know, like it's it's if you want to use it for, you know, I don't know, there's there's only so much that maybe you dox yourself by vibe coding tools rather than kind of allowing it into other aspects of your life. And I think that kind of applies for all of your tools, you know, like um yeah, like I run graphine OS on my phone for instance, but you still like have to have WhatsApp because I otherwise can't like easily communicate with my family, you know, and like it's like, okay, yeah, I still have it on my phone, but like it's partitioned and that's like an acceptable thing that I'm like willing to to have at the moment, right? Um, but also I don't think there is I don't think there's kind of definitely not at the moment and I'm not sure whether it like ever can be like an ever like an evergreen stack, you know, almost.

I don't think there's this this particular point that you get to where you're like I'm now I'm now protected. I'm now private. You know, like your life changes, what you need changes and what you're doing changes as well. you know, if you are like moving into a position where you're, I don't know, engaging in more activism and stuff, then you obviously have to like modify kind of like what you're doing. And also, unfortunately, also like be aware of the cat and mouse game that consistently is going on, you know, like the kind of the ability for deanmization is an arms race that runs handinhand with the ability to like evade surveillance and censorship.

So yeah, I think it's um unfortunately unfortunately the answer is you kind of always have to be like slightly on top of what's going on. Uh there's no there's no like silver bullet I don't think.

Yeah. Yes. 100%. It's always about the right balance and about your needs because we get so many questions on like what tool to use, what is private, what is secure but then it's so personal, right?

Yeah. I mean Assange has like one sort of stack like if you're getting your crypto seller it's totally different and you don't need this like over complicate your life so you don't have to be maxi you don't have to be all like down

under the radar sometimes you just need some basic things to have and then yeah you're running graphan but what's up

that's life that's like waited so

exactly like looking at the yeah the personal stack of someone who is also known is just in general like how you you know kind of claw back and retain some privacy in whatever you're doing is like yeah I don't know there's a there's a kind of a I think the way that we think about the way that we think about surveillance also in terms of the the justifications for the people who are surveilling is also something to like really really um pay attention to, you know, like we've kind of we've seen this over time where the even with Nim like the way that we talk about NIM is kind of your or rather like the way the surveillance has been happening, right, has moved from it's moved from governments doing it to now private companies doing it so that they can sell data sets, right? And they will obviously then like and you know data brokerage is like as an industry is enormous

and the pool of actors and what they're trying to capture and why they're trying to capture it has has only grown. But then you also have to think of Yeah, exactly. Like are you are you kind of already singled out as a person? Are you or like maybe you Yeah, exactly. Like I if you're engaging in like direct like direct activism and all this kind of stuff then like yeah you need to have like a far more stringent stack obviously but in terms of just dayto-day like engaging with tools that like evade surveillance you know you're also are you able to throw a bit of sand into the cogs of like the larger machines that are able to do it.

And it's it's not just kind of about evading direct surveillance. It's also like, you know, if you get a large enough mass of people using anonymity technologies, like looking at the kind of the slow the slow kind of or like maybe like more like yeah, widespread power that that's able to kind of like push back against these kind of forces, right? Um yeah. U by the way, let's talk a bit about NI because maybe some people just don't know. I mean

you heard maybe

how can the just explain a bit like on the top layer like what's name and a bit more in details like what application and network layers like how how does this work?

Yeah just like a brief introduction.

Yeah. No absolutely. Okay. So yeah so NIM as a project we um we are essentially focused on network level privacy. So and by that um you know think of like to and IP and uh all of these kind of stuff.

NIM itself is you know we call it a noise generating mixnet and what we kind of mean by that there are two kind of ways to be you know or like I don't know I suppose like surveillance can kind of happen on like multiple levels right it can happen almost on the the application level and you could think about that in terms of okay can you know can WhatsApp telegram signal like what could they if their infrastructure was so inclined or subverted, what would they be able to do? Would they be able to read my messages for instance, right? And you can think of that as like the data of what you're sending around like the contents of your messages. But um surveillance at this point has become so fine-tuned that you can actually re you can build up very complex and detailed models of people based really on like metadata. So data about data in the context of sending a message, right?

Um, I'm sending you a message. Even if whoever is is, you know, is kind of like surveilling the network at this point can't necessarily read the contents of the message that I'm sending it to you. Then you can still, if you're kind of just sending it over the internet in a kind of an unprotected way, you can still see the IP address, therefore the location of where I am, um, where you are, the time that we're sending it. You know, you can infer a lot of that from the time. Like if we uh one of the examples that uh Claudia Diaz who's is a chief scientist on the on the team, she has this great example of like well if you're only sending someone messages um you know very late at night slash early in the morning on the weekend what can you infer about the relationship of those two people you know like that's a like I think like a really like easy to kind of access example um but also even on the level of like from just looking at packets of data move through the internet you can make reasonably good assumptions about um what kind of data is in there, you know, and okay, like right, okay, you're always sending emails to this particular IP address at a particular time.

Like that's that's kind of interesting stuff. So, it's like this and we're like really looking at like protecting um your metadata from being surveiled. Uh the way that we do that is you basically have um all of your traffic is encrypted like multiply encrypted. So kind of in the same way as to it goes through five hops. All of your data is also broken up into into these sphinx packets right which is the encryption format that we use.

Um those are all rooted like individually through the network. So like one of the main differences with to with tour you like you create a circuit of of three servers um and then you kind of stream all of your traffic through it uh instead I would like break up my message you know let's say we break it up into 10 packets they're all sent through different routes through uh through the mixnet infrastructure which is this kind of decentralized network run by various other operators you know we don't run any of it ourselves and so from that perspective it's like okay cool all the packets are exactly the same size and they're all encrypted in exactly the same format. You've already removed the ability to look at the traffic and kind of start gaining a fingerprint of like what kind of traffic is going through it, right? And then another thing you have to do to protect it from surveillance is you also have to protect against uh timing based attacks. So you you know if you look at kind of you can see all of this traffic maybe like moving in and out of a network.

If you can see packets going in and then packets coming out um it doesn't matter if you can't see what's happening inside the network. If you can just watch the edges then you can start to gain uh you can start to infer like okay cool. So it probably like the stuff that kind of went in there then probably came out there then they're talking to them you know. So what you need to be able to protect against is this is this kind of timing based analysis. And the way that you do that is uh kind of twofold.

One, whenever you're connected, you're sending what we call cover traffic in there, which is basically just empty empty sphinx packets, right? So you're sending these like loops of cover traffic through the network. And you're always doing that. So your your client is always sending it at like a a consistent rate, right? This kind of heartbeat of traffic.

So all traffic is moving through coming from your client like at this set temper and whenever you do have data to actually be sent through the network to a you know another person then you just slot those packets in really. So then and as it moves through the network it's called a mixer and mixing is what happens right. So every time a a node will like take a packet, a mix node will take a packet, you know, you can think of it like a you can think of it like a deck of cards being shuffled. So you basically I'm a mix node. I'm getting packets from everywhere.

I'll hold them for like a variable amount of time. So you add this element of randomness. You kind of add this kind of entropy into the system and then I will send them out in a different order that I get them. So then now you have okay, everything's the same size. Everything looks the same.

you can't tell what's covered traffic and what's not. The rate is constant and you have this timebased mixing, right? So then if you're trying to observe this, even if you're kind of laser focused on, okay, I'm going to watch all the traffic moving in and out of this one mix node, there's no way really of identifying which packets as soon as they go into it, you can't tell which packet is the one that maybe we're trying to track because it, you know, might have been held longer. It's not it's not first in first out basically. Um there's two kind of ways to use the mixet at the moment.

So we have you know the mixnet the noise generating mixnet is uh like a that's a decentralized network that's there that's and that's meant to be kind of you know you can think of it as a um you know privacy as a public good right but obviously we want people to be building on top of this and using it and so we've built the first product that's kind of using the network which is Nimvpn um which has two modes it has the um the slightly slower mode

like one remark before we go to VPN which is kind of cool. Just want to remark for the viewers because you explained perfectly like how you mix networks but I also like how you have it on um on your presentations on your website with a really nice uh animation that gets going and then

yeah and like if you got confused by but some point like like how does it work just go to the NI website you will see that it's very brilliant animation and it's super self-explanatory. Yeah, thank you.

Um,

yeah.

So, just VPN.

Yeah. So, this is

pretty cool that you have this both network and application layer and NIM.

Yeah. So, this is Yeah. The the so the NVPN product is um there's kind of two ways of using it. You can either use the full mixet mode, right, where you're kind of fragmenting your data into all of these packets. They're sent through the the the network.

Um, however, and this is where, you know, kind of like the reality of protecting against surveillance kind of hits people's needs, right? Um, you know, a lot of the time the mixet is or mixets in general, right, are like they're suitable for kind of these asynchronous actions that that we do do a lot of, right, for for stuff like chats, for stuff like sending crypto transactions, something like this where the extra second or two of latency isn't really either it's either it's not a problem or it's just something that you're like willing to accept, right? Um, in a lot of cases, I think with, you know, asynchronous stuff like chats, you don't ever really notice. So there's no, you know, you're never really in a chat where like every single second is, you know, fundamental to the experience. Um, but for a lot of stuff, web browsing, you know, calls, especially like streaming video, stuff like this, then like it's it's it's a bit too slow.

Um, so there's another the the kind of the speedier mode, right, that the VPN has is basically like a two is a two hop instead of a five hop. And so it's like a tunnel in a tunnel. And basically that's still using some of the nodes in the network, but it's ignoring the mix nodes. So you're just kind of using what we call gateways. So like your kind of entry and exit to the to the mixet.

And basically what that is is is it's a wire guard tunnel inside another wire guard tunnel. So you're still able to kind of disintermediate sender and receiver, right? So you're still you still have a lot of the protections. You're not kind of like leaking your IP. neither side of this uh neither neither gateway has like a full idea of um what you're doing, right?

But um it's it's not got like the full protections of the mixet. And I think one of the things that I think is like useful to think about in terms of privacy stuff when we're when we're kind of like talking more broadly about this, right? There's kind of there's privacy in the immediate sense which is like I don't want anyone to know that I'm sending you a message but then and especially with regards to this kind of like surveillance based on like kind of massive data sets being kind of crunched using machine learning and the this kind of these you know these inferences and these uh kind of relationship between nodes in the data set being like built up. That's based on the fact that different actions are linkable, right? So like unlinkability, the idea of being able to even if you can see, okay, cool, there's like a 100 crypto transactions that are kind of coming through and going to this RPC endpoint.

The idea of unlinkability is to never is to not be able to say, okay, cool. we can basically infer that like 50 people have used it twice or you know there's 10 people who really like using this RPC endpoint. The idea is to break the ability to link any two actions over time, right? So that's the kind of the more kind of extended like temporal move, right? And breaking the ability to like infer relationships based on a series of actions rather than just protect a single one.

Um, and I think that's maybe a an idea that's not discussed as broadly or like not as much within our um the kind of like conversations about privacy more more generally.

Yeah. And um yeah, thank you for explaining me what you do. It's a great job that you do basically and you huge thank you for that. uh you're like a really important player I think in the whole privacy system. Um uh but I want to jump a bit to more like a cultural layer in privacy.

uh because uh I mean you have your artistic background like music and activism of things and um I think that it's super nice and super cool to have more people from like I don't know artistic community or

music community or activist community which are often kind of like aside just because it's very technical everything around privacy because we have

a lot of crazy tech.

Yeah. And it's really a part I don't understand the key and I suddenly saying it like really easy because like I I will never be able to do that. I understand like on the level like how people with PhD and math understand that I would never do that. Yeah. Of course I understand like basically

yeah but

but I will never understand it like that deep. So uh yeah, my point is like uh I I I'm happy always to see people with some sort of like artistic background or some artistic expressions because I think like privacy and what we are kind of advocating for. It's like more about the culture, right?

It's more it's less about like building tech, but also like the way you behave like your your like kind of life choices every day like what apps do you use? like what habits do you have?

Yeah.

And that's uh I think that's about it. So maybe there is something practical you can recommend for someone who is who wants to be more private. That's just like in the beginning of this way like some simple tools or practices or habits or resources just to like how to act you know as well.

Yeah. I think um I would say the main way is probably you know don't uh don't think that you have to like immediately make your entire stack private like at the same time otherwise you failed right. Um, a lot of, you know, a lot of this stuff is is very complicated and the kind of like daily practices if you're trying to stay like completely anonymous like are very difficult, impossible for most people and otherwise like pretty undesirable for the majority of people, right? I think there's, you know, there's always kind of there's there's kind of like the there's the I think there's the advocacy side of this conversation which is like, oh, you know, like try and get your family to like use signal instead of WhatsApp or something like this, which is like it's a valuable point, but like maybe sometimes you just can't do it. Um, but really it's kind of how much do you how much do you kind of split split apart different asps of how you interact online?

um in a way that is like workable for you, you know, like maybe don't just always be like perma logged into Google and use Google for everything. You know, you can use email addresses for logging in even though it's a million times easier to go, oh yeah, cool. I'll just log in with Google or even just be logged in with Google in your browser. you know, increasingly like there's a lot of tools where you know, if you're using Firefox, switch to like try out Libra Wolf or you know, even like plugins for different um user agents for different stuff. You know, you can say, okay, well, like I'll have like a user agent for work or maybe I'll use a particular browser for like all of my work stuff.

Maybe I'll use a one for like all my personal stuff. Um, applications like Proton Mail have increasingly they have this, you know, these like, oh, you can make like oneshot email addresses which are, you know, you need to sign up for Amazon, but you don't want to like log in with your main email address on Amazon all the time and like have this kind of linkability between like, oh, okay, cool. So they have an Amazon account, they have this, they have that. Like right there's like and kind of exploring some of these things which are kind of like browser plugins or tools or alternate versions of existing applications as well. Um, and I don't know.

I think like try and have fun with it as well, you know, like it is

it is it is ultimately like um

we need more fun,

you know, and like a lot of the a lot of the vibe of a lot of privacy stuff is is very um you can't scare people into into using privacy stuff. Like in terms of if we're speaking about trying to get, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people kind of like use using the kind of tools we're talking about, right? You can't have privacy as being this idea of like you're kind of scared and you're or like you're, you know, you're scared of the light. You're kind of hiding in the dark. You're kind of separating yourself away.

This kind, you know, the idea of the lone hacker, right? Like which I don't think was ever necessarily true even, but like this Yeah. the cultural idea of it. Um, really it needs to like you you need to kind of think of it as like this as the ability to create like a generative space, right, for people to be free in um even in the sense of like I don't know you're kind of like clubs are a very good example of this, right? clubs that put stickers over phone cameras so people can not be self-correcting or like aware of themselves in a way where you're possibly always like in public or there's the capacity for you to always be in public and you know maybe be in the background of a video or like whatever, right?

And I think like thinking about it in that way where maybe a club does that so people can feel as free and be as like as genuine an expression of themselves as they want or they as they can. Um is a really good way to think about this. You know, like what are you what kind of spaces are you either like reenabling or are you enabling in the creation of these spaces that are you know that allow people to relax ultimately like and relax into a space and like fully inhabit a space and be free within it and yeah like privacy stuff can always can also be fun you know uh just because yeah like having I don't know I I think there's so I really like disappearing messages on Signal.

Mhm.

And I partially really like them. Like obviously yes the privacy aspect of it fantastic but it almost feels like it's quite weird to have to be having you know you could have like really personal conversations over something like Signal but then for that to be that to just exist like kind of in perpetuity on two people's phones is is actually quite strange. You know what I mean? Like it's it's it's and sometimes that's fantastic having this like record of conversations and stuff but actually like just looking at something like disappearing messages it almost feels like a more organic like it feels more like talking where unless you are literally recording an interview like this or something then like you will remember a conversation that you had but you won't like literally have the evidence of it all of the time and it almost feels more like chatting

in the fact that you don't have this like perma archive of everything that never ever written, you know, and little things like that I think are are quite fun ways to get into it. Like if you're like, you know, if you're like nerdily inclined, like yeah, playing with like PGP emails is like is, you know, is is quite fun. Um,

but also it's kind of fun partially because it's kind of difficult and a bit janky, you know. Um, yeah. Sorry, that was a very like rambling kind of response to that. fine but we are just having a free flow right it's not about like answering directly it's more about sharing

yeah so it's super valuable in

yeah and I think I think it's al yeah having this being able to get people into the privacy space as well in through the culture of like trying to create a culture that's open and you know accepting to more people that maybe like look at it and go, "Oh, I'm not very techy, so I I can't really like contribute to this is a massive thing." And I mean like that's something that like you guys with web 33 privacy now are doing like very well and like kind of you know really bringing to the space. Um because yeah like if you you know if you only build stuff for techy people then you will only get techy people using it. Whereas really like what you need to think about and especially in the context of like um the kind of you know the the real kind of like backpedaling the governments seem to be doing on stuff like LGBTQA rights and you know kind of like gender rights more generally. um the ability for the right to protest as well, like what counts as organizing.

All of this kind of stuff is really really being like re-encroued upon in places that maybe over the last couple of years there's been there've been winds and it's less about it's less about kind of defending from a particular thing and more about like okay like what kind of a what kind of conversations and spaces and experiences for people and therefore conversations and like plans can come out of okay well we kind of are able to have this very free political conversation in the context text of like even I don't know like a you know like a like a group at school or like a you know like a a queer space or something and it's like okay well we know that like the conversation that's being had here is is or like is also maybe happening online signal chat stuff like this is is free from surveillance so we can be more free I think especially given like the pace that everything is just happening at at the moment you know this kind of and the abil the fact that we do because of you know Twitter blue sky Instagram Tik Tok like all of this kind of stuff there is this permanent stream of, you know, kind of information. And there's almost like cattle proddding you through the kind of, you know, the the several simultaneous crises that are happening at any one point or, you know, the infringement um of of of civil rights across the world that you kind of even just need these spaces within which you can you can actually relax and then like start taking the long view on things, you know, and planning properly, I think. And yeah, that's really the kind of like generative space free from the potential of surveillance and this kind of self policing that I think this kind of stuff enables and we need to really like focus on bringing about. Yeah.

What do you think? Is there any chance for like us to like spread our bubble a bit and like make people more self-aware and aware about like what's going on and like how they actually um can themselves and restrict themselves with their like you know boundaries. So is there a chance like to move it forward?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think like I think culture in all its forms has like has always kind of been doing this right like through from like you know art and literature to like especially the spaces of clubbing like music spaces. You know one of my like initial interests in noise music was partially because I um I'm not like properly trained as a musician. like I was always kind of like semi-elftaught and um was unable to do a lot of stuff and you know there's a way where you can feel frustrated by that but then you kind of find this world of oh okay you can kind of like really break out of like whatever you know supposed norms that you thought of as a musician being there and like find other ways to express yourself like in this case sonically right and that was immensely yeah that was immensely freeing And I think really it's like that's culture is culture is the necessary vehicle for that right and I think it's yeah the even though it's unfortunately it's also like adds an entire other level of complexity to everything right but you know um giving people those allowing people to like have those those like moments of oh wow you know that was really cool another thing is possible is the thing that that's the vehicle, you know.

Um,

yeah, and I yeah, I haven't really been like focused on art so much in the last couple of years. I've been focused on Nim, but like that's always very very much there. And I think if you you know look at the look at the intermingling between the kind of like um you know activist scenes um activist scenes the kind of art scenes and maybe like you know the kind of like people that came out like the alter globalization movement stuff like this or um I don't know even you know you you you look at an anarchist zen and you can tell that this thing was like made by a person and it was like made because someone gives a about it and it was made with love and you you you like you immediately understand that on a human level and I think it's also kind of like imbuing what you're trying to do with that is um which is a very like amorphous thing but it's also kind of beautifully amorphous as well because everyone can approach it in their own way you know and it's kind of I think you but at the same time also like kind of meeting people where they're at and starting to guide people rather than, you know, being like, "Oh, you know, use an iPhone and you're on Instagram, so like you're obviously not, you're not part of the like the scene, you know, like that's um that's pointless and doesn't actually lead to anything. It's yeah it's like I think in a certain way you can also like almost think of like a lot of the like the mentality of surveillance right is the mentality of surveillance is the ability to like which is kind of you know you could also link it to kind of like fascistic impulses as well right of it's the partitioning and categorization of people and behavior into like neat little boxes and decomplexifying everything to be able to fit it into those little boxes. And really like I don't know what we almost need to do is like re you know you need to recomplexify and blur the boundaries of stuff.

Um the positive aspect of that like is like that's a generative thing that humans kind of always do and like people can find a lot of meaning in doing that. But then at the same time you also make it like harder for the categorizers to categorize. You know something that like more broadly I suppose as like a space that like the crypto space um maybe doesn't do enough is which is which is also endemic in in the technology like kind of like industry more generally right is the idea of like always inventing something new. Um whereas actually you know we can look at you can look at like the his a lot of like political history as well right like learning about how people in different contexts what like acts of resistance they were able to take and also through art right like look at the situationists or people like this that was kind of this um yeah this ability to kind of like to both make culture political but then use culture politically as well. And there's so there's so much there, you know, like there is a vast amount of learning about how people have previously engaged both in like acts of resistance but also acts of solidarity.

um I think is also really important and there's a lot that can be drawn from that like even you know you I don't know I mean looking at maybe like the model of like democratic confederalism that like um the you know that people in Rajava are kind of you know have built and are maintaining in the face of massive amounts of imperial power. um the fact that the Zapatistas and are you know still very much operating and maintaining like um an enormous like part of Mexico um the movements in Myanmar which are like drawing from that. These are all movements that like are learning about and drawing from each other. And I think there's almost a tendency as well internally within like privacy tech maybe or just kind of like tech in general for not reading into that as much as possible because I think ultimately like if you if you kind of see privacy as the end point in the same way that like kind of decentralization maxis, right? like um um like J yeah it's Jamie Lewis has this um fantastic point which is like what you should be decentralizing is power

right like you always have to think about what we're doing like within the context of power I think and like what you're trying to do with that seeing privacy tech as just like the end goal in itself I don't find particularly interesting but I don't think it gives us anything it doesn't like generate anything it's more Okay, we need to build these tools, but like what are you going to use the tools for? What do the tools like enable you to do? What like new areas of autonomy from something from governments like cultural autonomy like what you know what are you actually trying to do with that and why? And I think also then being able to have that as like a guiding north star is also a that's a thing that like energetically drives you, right? like that's like a really like vitalizing thing as well.

And it's yeah, it's very easy, especially when you think about this all the time, you know, like uh obviously thinking about like how easy it is to surveil networks and build up like behavioral models of people all the time sometimes bums me out, you know, or like sometimes I'm thinking about this, I'm like I still I still am using WhatsApp though, like this feels this feels dirty, you know? But like you can also use it as a way to like um to revitalize yourself and what you're doing and the people around you, right? And kind of like work out ways that we can collectively lift each other up in the face of all of the like quite frankly insane that's going on at the moment that doesn't show any real sign of like alleviating or not just ramping up another level, you know? like it's a it's a pretty it's a pretty dark up time at the point at the at the moment and I think because of that we yeah like you have to think about what you're doing tactically and like are you just building something in isolation or are you building something that's actually going to do something to help actual people um I think is the I mean that's like the main driver of like why I do what I do and I think it is you know the same the same can be said for like a lot of people in this space right it's like the amount of not just stuff that I've learned but like people experiences and worldviews that I've met in this space is also just like is staggering and really quite beautiful you know so yeah

yeah so the one big things that unites us all I think is like some sort of disappointment and like what's going on globally and that we are trying actively to do some because it's nice to have agency right times and especially When uh things that happening are so big, they are so huge. They are often guided by such a big and powerful entities.

It's very easy to kind of see it and okay, I I can do any of it, right?

But

still there are so many people in the space who are doing stuff and doing stuff and it feels that slowly it's kind of moving. So I wanted you to reflect a bit on like future mentioned we are like 30 years privacy got bigger the internet is private it's secure it's the way we want to be it is like a internet future how it would look like like how life might look like you know this happy beautiful times we are in the paradise

private

I'm I I would hope that you know um I would hope that everything is so lush and complex that almost like you you you almost that you kind of you can't predict it, right? Because there's just so much there like and I don't know. I'm I'm I'm kind of that although that does kind of slightly seem like a copout of an answer, the justification I basically have for that, right? Which is also me uh like wanting to rep a podcast that I really really rate, that's also a real like um kind of a thing that can also give you hope, right? when you're like, "Oh my god, I'm feeling really down."

And you know, because exactly like the the the small groups working against these like especially like structural kind of, you know, these these the structures of whatever of capitalism of authoritarian and all of this, right? Like this isn't a new this isn't a new problem, right? And there's a you know people especially in like uh anarchist and leftist politics have been operating and you know like engaged with these kind of structural forces for just you know the the entire length of contemporary history right um so there's a there's an absolutely fantastic podcast called cool people who do cool stuff uh which is um done by Margaret at Killjoy and it's kind of one of the things that I really love about that but then and ostensibly it's a history podcast right that is focusing on cool people who did cool stuff but like the real thing that I'm trying to bring out of that for this like this conversation is the idea that like you you also can't necessarily always predict what like what seem like really small actions what they actually do and the ripple effects of that like you know what are the actual effects of like I don't know food not bombs or something like this right that you know that's kind of like touched a lot of people's lives in an incredibly profound way um in a way that you just simply like can't generally also know but you also know that you're like doing something positive and I think yeah we should also be ble to like focus on the acts that we're able to do in the face of these structural forces because you don't necessarily know the ripple effects of all of this kind of stuff. Um, with regards to like yeah what the what the privacy future looks like. Um, ideally the AI industry uh no longer exists because it has become economically unviable to build stuff based off like dragnetting the entire internet for everyone's personal data.

um you know there's realistically I think also like yeah you're you're kind of this um this recomplexifying of life I think is the main thing you know the the kind of the the encroachment on kind of the encroachment on for instance like you know trans rights, queer rights like LGBTQIA rights is like really that's, you know, that's kind of that's endemic of this thing that we talked about before, right? This like this increased categorization of like, okay, people are people are like this or like this or like this and that's it. And anything outside of that is like wildly dangerous. Um, so yeah, hopefully this the the the you know, the kind of like post privacy has one world is um lush, vibrant, and incredibly complex and on on kind of like all kind of like social levels. And I think from that hopefully also far more like cooperivist as well.

I think one of the things that would also be really good to like kind of like bring into the space is the idea of like not just building tools for other people but also building tools in collective ways. Um, obviously a lot of people building in the space are doing it using the company form and having money from VCs and all of this kind of stuff which is partially by necessity, right? You have to like um you have to you know people need to pay rent and eat and you know um have families and all of this kind of stuff. Uh but hopefully we could also move like far more towards like cooperative structures of building stuff away from this kind of like kind of company mentality. Um that would also be something that I would yeah hope to see in this like new new world.

Yeah. Okay. So let's hope it's going to happen. So

yeah can see

well we have to we have to build it right. We have to build it. We have to build uh we have to build cooperative structures

that are also built in like a meaningful way, right? And there's been like a a bit of chatter at the moment like I think like you know Metallic said this at uh ETH Dublin um where he was like you know the the Dow model that we assumed and that everyone talked about for you know for so long seems like it's broken. seems like the initial the initial assumptions that we basically made about that would seem seem to be seem to be incorrect, right? And maybe we need to kind of start it again, you know, like I think there are

tools for autonomy shouldn't be just for indiv if if if the tools for autonomy are only really used and built for individual autonomy, then you we've kind of lost, right? Or we've like kind of lost sight of I think what we're trying to do. It's like you need to be able to allow tool like create tools that allow people to be have more agency, but also then like for for groups, not just for themselves, you know, um individual liberation kind of isn't really a thing

because it does because nothing exists in a silo. even though we're like so used to thinking of ourselves as as as this, you know, the atomized individual or like the economic individual or something like this, like it just it's it's a conception of the world that I think is like ultimately very damaging. Um and yeah, re-engaging in like the ability to think of ourselves collectively as well and what you want to do and who you want to do that with and why is um yeah uh I think the one of the stepping stones to hopefully like

building this new world and Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. This is beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think we're done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice kill.

Good. Yeah. Well, yeah. Thanks.

That was like wow conversation.

Oh yeah. No, it's Yeah. Um yeah, like it's um yeah, I think it's it's actually quite interesting like everyone seems like they're going like really mask off at the moment. And yeah, I think we have to it's just like what are you doing and why are you building this and are you like doing something that is actively helping people or not? It seems to be the sentiment that is uh floating around and it's a sentiment that like I'm finding very energizing

which which I think might have come up.

Yeah. Um yeah, the times are quite harsh and yeah it's really important that we here and we try to kind of move to some even hope eventually to help someone and something.

Yeah. Fingers fingers crossed. Yeah.