Have you considered the possibility that maybe he's simply advocating for a customer service representative who can reset your password in the sql database after verifying your identity, instead of going back on everything he's ever said and repudiating his life's work as a well respected security professional, and that perhaps Bruce Schneier is not just an unethical hack like the crypto bros he's criticizing?
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Edit:
politician> Without the man coming on HN and explaining his apparently incongruous position, though, who can say?
Bruce Schneier explains why he's not coming on HN and explaining his apparently incongruous position to you:
Bruce> Honestly, I can't care very much about random conversations that misrepresent me. Life is too short.
Don> Am I right to presume you don't directly or indirectly advocate for backdoors, and your position on cryptocurrencies is not incongruous with that? ;)
Bruce> Of course not. I don't even understand how "blockchain is useless" has anything to do with backdoors.
Don> If so, could I share that fact, and have you written any articles about your position on backdoors that I could link to please?
Just read your latest edit: Thank you for reaching out and getting a definitive answer. For the record, I don't object to the argument that "blockchain is useless" - I don't think it's useless, but I can understand why many people do believe that. What was off-putting about his tweet was the notion that its an unsafe system that arises from unrecoverable private keys, or, in other words, systems whose security depends on the privacy of private keys are unsafe.
I am allowed to be disappointed in his advocacy of a position that undermines his life’s work. That his major accomplishments are cryptographic in nature is precisely why I called him out specifically, and not some random hack.
Don, sometimes people can find themselves advocating for policies that accidentally undermine their long held positions in other areas.
Without the man coming on HN and explaining his apparently incongruous position, though, who can say?
It’s only your weird interpretation of what he’s saying that undermines this though.
He’s saying systems where you could lose your life savings to a forgotten password are unsafe. This is clearly true. He hasn’t proposed a specific solution but I think it’s far more likely he believes in “use other systems” than inserting a back door into the system he’s identified as fatally flawed.
1) Bruce says systems that result in catastrophic loss from loss of a password are unsafe.
2) Reading at face value, Bruce's idea of a safe system is one where your passwords are recoverable.
3) Bruce knows that wallets are secured by asymmetric cryptography, not "passwords". Therefore, he must be simplifying for a general audience.
4) Reconciling the previous two points results in an argument for mandatory private key escrow.
It does not make sense that Bruce would advocate for mandatory key escrow, and yet, that is the logical endpoint of the argument he made in his tweet for supporting this letter.
Because it’s extremely consistent he’s arguing the system in question is fatally flawed and that he opposes it entirely. He doesn’t need to be advocating for some back door in crypto when “don’t use crypto” is a better simpler explanation of his position. I think his signing a letter that may argue for a ban of crypto is fairly consistent with this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Edit:
politician> Without the man coming on HN and explaining his apparently incongruous position, though, who can say?
Bruce Schneier explains why he's not coming on HN and explaining his apparently incongruous position to you:
Bruce> Honestly, I can't care very much about random conversations that misrepresent me. Life is too short.
Don> Am I right to presume you don't directly or indirectly advocate for backdoors, and your position on cryptocurrencies is not incongruous with that? ;)
Bruce> Of course not. I don't even understand how "blockchain is useless" has anything to do with backdoors.
Don> If so, could I share that fact, and have you written any articles about your position on backdoors that I could link to please?
Bruce> This might be my latest:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/12/scaring_peopl...