When the conference you are giving an invited talk at seriously asks for the power-point version of the PDF-presentation that you handed in, seriously stating compatability reasons.

I’ve now hacked something together that would be workable, but ugly, but there are so many issues with this…

(I created that slides in markdown and use pandoc to build a LaTeX-beamer PDF, which enables me to use LaTeX-specific macros and creating the PPTX was now literally to import that PDF into libreoffice impress, fix the worst of the worst (like text being on top of each other) and exporting it as Powerpoint.

I REALLY, REALLY hope they give me the PDF-version…

What is your opinion on deniability in the context of instant messaging?

(Please boost this poll for more representative results!)

Deniability (or “plausible deniability”) means that no party in an interaction receives a transcript that can be used as cryptographic proof said interaction happened or what the content was. In order to achieve this, deniable protocols are designed in ways that allow the creation of fake transcripts that are indistinguishable from real ones.

Importantly (and maybe unintuitively) this does not mean that the interaction has to sacrifice authenticity (the certainty for the involved parties to know that they are talking to whom the think they are talking to and that the content of any messages arrives unaltered compared to what was sent)!

#Cryptography #Deniability #PlausibleDeniability #Privacy

Looking for conferences on #Cryptography and #Security. #AfricaCrypt is in #Cameroon this year, a country that imprisons peolpe for *suspicions* of being gay. In 2021 to trans women were sent to prison for “wearing women’s clothing in a restaurant”.

In other words, we are talking about a complete shit-hole country and a non-negligible part of the cryptographic community cannot safely visit the conference because of that.

A conference that proudly associates itself with the #IACR. I think we should have a serious discussion about whether it is appropriate to place conferences in places that will imprison people for who they are and whether the IACR should associate with conferences that ignore these concerns.

For all the problems that conferences in the west have with accessibility (and that you may rightfully criticize), you can usually at least be confident that the government there won’t subject you to torture for who you are.

#lgbt #lgbtrights #gay #trans