Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] A compromise between BIP101 and Pieter's proposal

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 13:07:14 +0000

Yes, data-center operators are bound to follow laws, including NSLs  
and gag orders. How about your ISP? Is it bound to follow laws,  
including NSLs and gag orders?
https://edri.org/irish_isp_introduces_blocking/

Do you think everyone should run a full node behind TOR? No way, your  
repressive government could just block TOR:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427413/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/

Or they could raid your home and seize your Raspberry Pi if they  
couldn't read your encrypted internet traffic. You will have a hard  
time proving you are not using TOR for child porn or cocaine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption_ban_proposal_in_the_United_Kingdom

If you are living in a country like this, running Bitcoin in an  
offshore VPS could be much easier. Anyway, Bitcoin shouldn't be your  
first thing to worry about. Revolution is probably your only choice.

Data-centers would get hacked. How about your Raspberry Pi?

Corrupt data-center employee is probably the only valid concern.  
However, there is nothing (except cost) to stop you from establishing  
multiple full nodes all over the world. If your Raspberry Pi at home  
could no longer fully validate the chain, it could become a  
header-only node to make sure your VPS full nodes are following the  
correct chaintip. You may even buy hourly charged cloud hosting in  
different countries to run header-only nodes at negligible cost.

There is no single point of failure in a decentralized network. Having  
multiple nodes will also save you from Sybil attack and geopolitical  
risks. Again, if all data-centres and governments in the world are  
turning against Bitcoin, it is delusional to think we could fight  
against them without using any real weapon.

By the way, I'm quite confident that my current full node at home are  
capable of running at 8MB blocks.

Quoting Adam Back <[email-masked]>:

> I think trust the data-center logic obviously fails, and I was talking
> about this scenario in the post you are replying to.  You are trusting the
> data-center operator period.  If one could trust data-centers to run
> verified code, to not get hacked, filter traffic, respond to court orders
> without notifying you etc that would be great but that's unfortunately not
> what happens.
>
> Data-center operators are bound to follow laws, including NSLs and gag
> orders.  They also get hacked, employ humans who can be corrupt,
> blackmailed, and themselves centralisation points for policy attack.
> Snowden related disclosures and keeping aware of security show this is very
> real.
>
> This isn't much about bitcoin even, its just security reality for hosting
> anything intended to be secure via decentralisation, or just hosting in
> general while at risk of political or policy attack.
>
> Adam