Quote from: kmfkewm on September 08, 2012, 10:07 amI strongly identify with Agorism, but one common theme I notice in many people who identify as such is that they let their ideological insistence on free markets and profit cloud their thinking. I actually notice this strongly when it comes to security software in particular. In many cases the best security and anonymity solutions are inherently free ...Now I have nothing against people being paid for their resources, but from a security point of view I cringe at the idea of adding an entire unnecessary financial payment topology to an anonymity network. Now you need to anonymize the network traffic and the payment for the network traffic. ...So Agorism is awesome and profiting from your work is awesome, but some things just do not mix well with profit unless you are extremely careful with how you go about it. You can donate cash to the Tor project and even to individual node operators in many cases. They do not make you pay to use their resources though. Truecrypt does not make you pay to use it, the source code is open and it is freely available for anyone to download and audit. At the same time they accept donations and make thousands of dollars. ...We should not put the financial interests of vendors here above the security of everyone else. Vendors who purchase this code are not going to go through it with a fine tooth comb because if they knew enough to do that then they would simply make the program themselves. We need to be practical when we think of situations like these, sure it is possible to run this code completely isolated and be one hundred percent safe. Are people going to actually do this? Probably not. It is almost a strawman to give arguments like this, because in reality the people who would purchase this are not going to isolate it they are not going to audit it etc. Even if the code is one hundred percent non-malicious it doesn't matter because if we don't point out that people should not buy restricted access software from Louis then we have no right to point out that people should not use restricted access software that is offered through SR (or anywhere else) at all. It has nothing to do with Louis as an individual or a vendor, it has to do with best security practices, and the best practice for security would be to not run scripts that 99% of people on the forum are never going to look at, especially when the 1% of people who will pay for them are certainly going to be the people who do not have the skills to audit them. I agree with all those sentiments. I think there's a whole lot of apragamatic thinking going on this thread, people banging on about their "rights" and etiquette. They appear to have forgotten the government says they have the right to go to prison if they find you! This kind of thinking would be a one way ticket to the slammer if this was an RL black market. I think the forum/e-commence interface has given them a false sense of normality. Quote from: kmfkewm on September 08, 2012, 10:07 amQuoteDeclaring LouisCyphre as "our resident LE Agent" is incredibly rash of you pine, and defamatory in the extreme; in the interest of fairness I would ask that the thread title be amended to reflect the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to back up this accusation.A fair enough point.When you say "absolutely no evidence" (referring here to Graham I believe), that's not exactly true now is it.What we have here is circumstantial evidence. Somebody acting in a suspicious way. I agree this is not hard evidence, I said it wasn't scientific myself even. But you cannot get hard evidence when everybody is anonymous, it's next to impossible! This is an unreasonable standard to set. I mean, what do people want? So, unless I can find some LE document showing Name X also alias LouisCyphre is on the payroll or the equivalent, then it's not fair to accuse anybody of being suspicious?! If I had hard evidence, there would be *no* need to come onto the forum whatsoever with this thread! We'd just delete all LouisCyphre's stuff and ban him. Is this not true? You surely accept this, right?Does that then mean that denouncing somebody on the forum is an illegitimate thing to do, forever and always? Because this is the implication of what I'm hearing here. If you need physical evidence and circumstantial evidence is non-admissible, then you have set yourself a really ludicrous standard for a black marketeer.As an analogy, it is like you have taken a trip with your friends, it is drug transportation kind of deal across a long distance and you are all feeling nervous. At a gas stop, when you come out after paying the fuel ticket, you see that one of your pals is reaching underneath the car, fiddling with something or other.You then try to examine underneath the car yourself, because you think this behavior is mighty suspicious. Maybe it is a LE tracking device and your so called friend is actually a CI. But your "friend" prevents you. Your friend says to you that you can't look under the car because you don't own the car. More suspicion. Now you really want to look under the car.You query this, more than somewhat incredulous. He says, further to this, that anybody who looks under his car must either buy/rent his car, and that only mechanics who are also drug smugglers can buy/rent the car. You tell him relatively few drug smugglers are also mechanics, maybe he could have a LE tracking device underneath the car and nobody would notice. Indeed, any drug smuggler who was also a mechanic would almost certainly have his own vehicle to transport drugs with! Your "friend" informs you that this is ok, because he is a mechanic he will describe exactly what you are seeing, step by step, if you buy/rent his car. But you are not sure this is legitimate. I mean, even if he explained everything about the underside of the vehicle, you can't be sure he doesn't know some sneaky hideaway place only experienced mechanics know about. Perhaps you've seen some sneaky ass shit for hiding stuff on "Border Watch", a LE propaganda show.As such, you call to your other friends who were previously busy molesting the cola and candy counters in the gas station's shop, point to your mechanic person and tell them to watch his guy, he is acting suspect, could be a LE agent for sure, putting tracking devices under cars is practically a LE trope.At this point your potential LE agent flips out and says all the drug smugglers who buy/rent his vehicle are going to drive the vehicle into a giant portable Faraday cage when they are using his car.This seems unlikely to you, and you are not persuaded. Sounds like something the Army might do, bit far out.You inform your other friends that they should only rent or buy cars to transport drugs in future from people who are unconnected to the trade e.g. a typical car dealership.Meanwhile, your potential CI is fuming and claims you're paranoid as fuck, some manner of crazy bitch to go accusing him of being a LE agent.Well... True dat. :DQuote from: kmfkewm on September 08, 2012, 10:07 amQuoteYou may assert that because he won't release the source code that he must be LE, or malicious in the extreme, but there is absolutely no logic in that at all. He's a creator of a digital item that he wishes to sell on an agorist marketplace, to anybody who wishes to buy it. He is allowed to do that, and has a right to do it without prejudice.Asserting that he has malicious intent before you've seen the code is outrageous. Whilst I can see where you're coming from and how you arrived at the conclusion that you did, if you feel there is something malicious in what LouisCyphre is offering you are free to purchase it and review the code yourself for peace of mind - just like anybody else.It is not particularly outrageous. If someone here suggests that we all stop using Tor and start using their for profit VPN, I will be the first to claim that the person is likely a law enforcement agent, Agorism and individual profit be damned.[/quote]Pragmatism. Saving your ass since we crawled out of the primordial soup. :)