Soatok DreamseekerSep 3, 2025

Cryptography is inherently political, as Rogaway argues in The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work.

The kinds of technical problems that one chooses to solve are often informed by one's own political views.

One cryptographer might work on encrypting consumer devices such that no one but the owner can decrypt them, thereby preventing unlawful access by overzealous governments. Bullets don't solve math problems.

Another might work on DRM for ensuring that copyrighted videos are only playable on hardware that has been certified to prevent unauthorized reproduction.

These problems have very different politics.

But consider: Using DRM-like technology to run software in the cloud such that not even the cloud provider can decrypt?

The work you do in this field is never in a politically neutral vacuum. Nearly every capability can be used in an inverted power dynamic.

Show threadSoatok Dreamseeker

If you aren't a techie or a geek, you might wonder, "Why should I even care about cryptography?"

And, y'know, you don't have to care about the details. Nobody's asking you to become a software engineer or fully master linear algebra by next Tuesday.

But cryptography can align with your activism goals.

Consider that Aaron Swartz, who got in a lot of legal trouble for downloading research papers off JSTOR at MIT, also worked on SecureDrop and Tor2Web.

SecureDrop lets whistleblowers anonymously leak documents to the press.

Tor2web allows anonymous publishers to reach the public Internet.

You don't need to know what a Frobenius trace is to use them.

Sep 3, 2025 at 2:17pmWeb
Show threadSoatok DreamseekerSep 3, 2025

The problems I'm working on are as follows:

This gives more power and control to the users.

Not governments.

Not corporations.

Not even popular nodes on the fediverse social graph.

No gods, no masters.

GitHub - fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification: Specification for a Fediverse Directory Server for Public Keys

Specification for a Fediverse Directory Server for Public Keys - fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification

GitHub
Show threadLinus GasserSep 3, 2025
@soatok Playing the Anarchist's rulebook, eh?
Show threadSoatok DreamseekerSep 3, 2025
@ligasser It's the most effective way to resist enshittification.
Show threadtekheddSep 3, 2025
@soatok What a coincidence, I *don't* know what a Frobenius trace is. ;D
Show threadtekheddSep 3, 2025
@soatok Oh, you said *Frobenius* algebra, which is just finite-dimensional unital associative algebra equipped with a nondegenerate bilinear form σ : A × A → k that satisfies σ(a·b, c) = σ(a, b·c). Duh.
Show threadtekheddSep 3, 2025
@soatok I love it when the explanation makes something sound much more complicated than it really is, but then it's actually something pretty complicated in the first place, so it sounds like something they made up for Star Trek to explain away magic.
Show threadRichard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️Sep 3, 2025

@soatok

This inspired me to look up this

Difference between Cryptography and Cryptology
Last Updated : 12 Jul, 2025

Cryptography is defined as the study of rules and regulations that protect data from unauthorized access and it is also the study of conversion of plain text to cipher text. On the other hand, Cryptology is the study of the conversion of plain text to ciphertext and vice versa. It is also called the study of encryption and decryption. One major difference between both is that Cryptology is the superset of Cryptography.

So now i am wondering what they call the study of burial crypts.

Show threadSoatok DreamseekerSep 3, 2025
@the5thColumnist Probably a sub-field of archaeology