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https://github.com/telekommunisten/politics_of_distributed_systems


https://github.com/telekommunisten/politics_of_distributed_systems

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README 

        

a political manifesto about distributed systems

===============================================



Motivation

----------



Even before the industrial revolution new leaps in technology have

slowly trickled into society such that the existing power structures

are reinforced instead of challenged. Here we examine why distributed

software systems that exist today also reinforce these older existing

power structures instead of dispersing the authority among many more

actors in the system. We discuss how future protocols and distributed

systems may be designed to challenge existing power structures with

anarchist software design principles that not only protect our human

rights but also make systems much more robust in the face of partial

system outages.



Scope

-----



We have several objectives:



* identify software design principles which support human rights

  (privacy and article 19 right to free assembly), robust security and

  correctness.



* examine how existing distributed systems do not adequately express

  our desired design principles



* Software development needs sustainable economic models: An analysis

  of existing economic models supporting the development of Internet

  protocols and distributed systems; showing how our current economic

  structures do not effectively support the development of much needed

  infrastructure we all rely on.



Glossary

''''''''



ambient authority: an actor is said to have ambient authority if it

has the same authority as many other actors in the system



excess authority: an actor is said to have excess authority if it

posseses more authority than is necessary to perform it's task



least authority: an actor is said to have least authority if it only

posseses the minimum amount of authority to perform it's task. For a

thorough introduction to this software design principle please read

`The Structure of Authority`_



.. _`The Structure of Authority`: http://www.erights.org/talks/no-sep/secnotsep.pdf



Call for the abolishment of systems administrators

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''



An "administrator" actor in a software system has more authority than the

other actors. This violates the principle of least authority and

creates a deep pocket of excess authority. State actors such as the

NSA take advantage of these systemic flaws by targetting sys admin

(see "I hunt sysadmin" below). Once the attacker compromises the

admin's laptop they will then be able to access all of the

infrastructure that the sys admin was able to access. We should

therefore strive to create software systems without an "admin" role.



anarchism == principle of least authority

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''



Noam Chomsky defines anarchism as: the extension of the idea that all

authority must be justified.



The principle of least authority is a software design principle that

is defined as: every module must be able to access only the

information and resources that are necessary for its legitimate

purpose.



That is, all software modules must only have authority they are

justified to have. This is anarchism applied to software design!



Evaluation of existing distributed system designs

-------------------------------------------------



Exemplary usage of anarchist design principles

----------------------------------------------



Human rights considerations for distributed ciphertext storage systems

----------------------------------------------------------------------



Problematic economic models for supporting software development

---------------------------------------------------------------



Bibliography

''''''''''''



#. wikipedia article about ambient authority

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_authority



#. The Structure of Authority: Why security is not a separable concern

   http://www.erights.org/talks/no-sep/



#. Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control

   and Concurrency Control

   http://www.erights.org/talks/thesis/



#. IRTF HRPC's draft-doria-hrpc-report-01

   https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-doria-hrpc-report-01.txt



#. IRTF HRPC's draft-tenoever-hrpc-research-05

   https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-tenoever-hrpc-research-05.txt



#. leaked NSA document: I Hunt Sys Admins

   https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/IHuntSysAdmins2014-03-20nsadocs



#. User Interaction Design for Secure Systems by Ka-Ping Yee

   http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2002/CSD-02-1184.pdf