At the lower levels, one of the more interesting things I've run across is Bernstein's curvecp:  http://curvecp.org/

At a higher level, the Bitcoin protocol is actually pretty good due to certain of the inherent characteristics of the early (including current) implementation.  Or more accurately, it's 'being' for lack of a better description.  In fact that was one of the major draws of it to me.

1)  It is not real-time and has a high latency by most network standards.  That is to say, the block frequency is 10 minutes though of course this is variable and random which are two very useful features of a system which is hard to analyze and attack...though in fairness not terribly relevant to this discussion.  Latency kills when doing high-speed network analysis or shaping.

2)  It is compact.  An entire message can fit into one frame.  This is key because it is fairly difficult to perform stream and correlation analysis when there is no stream.  Of course there will be a handshake, but by the time a payload is inspected, it is likely already gone.  The only defense is to perform DPI and filtering in real-time rather than to cut off the first payload packet when it is discovered  to contain objectionable content, but doing this on all syn payload data would be expensive.  Another very useful feature of a tiny and discrete message is that it can more readily hide in various cracks and crevices.  I think there may even be enough frame space to effectively obscure packets in such a way that it would give filters grief but I am not sure about this.

I don't claim to be a guru at this stuff, but do have some experiences with it and again these natural defenses attracted me to the solution when I first heard about it.  Basically from early on I figure that if Bitcoin never needs to protect itself against a robust and dedicated network level attack, there would not be a very compelling need for the the solution at all.  Which would be great actually.

To be more clear, I probably should mention that I'm thinking more about how/if individuals can perform individual transactions in hostile jurisdictions.  Hopefully it would be possible for heavier support infrastructure (e.g., miners) to operate in more 'free' environments meaning either jurisdictionally friendly locales or private networks or both.

Well, the 'asset' that was causing troubles was likely just some pixel from a piss-ant marketing firm.  The domain was actually "mookie1.com" and it is very possible that their servers were just overloaded from the traffic or something silly like that.  I would not expect a search of "Media Innovation Group, LLC" (which I looked up through whois) to yield much of anything.

OTOH, it is poor design to have a page fail to load due to a timing-out asset.  I wish now that I had spent some time analyzing the page assets, but at that moment I was more interested in understanding the latest goings-on on since my country was an the war-path and about to cause the deaths of god knows how many more souls by stretching out the Syria conflict by another year or two.

One way or another, a story from Reuters about the Syrian ambassador imploring the UN to research who actually fired the various chemical weapons salvos (there have been many) appearing on Google then disappearing a minute later is suspicious indeed.  Something caused it to disappear.  What, exactly, is kind of an important question.  Or is to me. 

If Duckduckgo is producing more trustworthy and less censored and manipulated data than Google, hopefully market forces will bring people to them.

I've 'quasi-known' that the story-line about B. Assad using his chemical weapons at all is a bunch of BS in the same way I 'quasi-knew' that S. Hussein had a WMD store that in any way threatened us (though it took me by surprise that he was able to destroy everything he had which I didn't think possible even if he tried.)

For one thing, Assad (both father and son) are/were highly inteligent and practical.  B. Assad would not shoot himself in the foot like this, and especially since there is no need since he is already winning the war against Western funded mercenaries anyway.

For two, it would be trivial and obvious for the chems to be be false flag operations.  The US has few qualms about seeing gas attacks against geo-political enemy personnel as our support for Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war demonstrated.  We tend to use proxies for such things and the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc are in abundance for such operations.

Unsurprisingly (to me) evidence is mounting that false-flag operations to gas civilians were planned and executed.  The e-mail hack of the British-linked defence contractor (http://stormcloudsgathering.com/leaked-documents-us-framed-syria-in-chemical-weapons-attack) strike me as credible although I have not studied them in detail yet.  Then there is the material that Syria claims to have found in tunnels they overran with precursor chemicals.  And assorted observations like the unlikely fusing material found on the rockets and such.

Bringing this back to 'PRISM'...  I've long felt that Google is one of the most powerful voices in the media because I and I am sure a lot of others click the update button on google/news like a monkey with an electrode in it's brain when interesting things are happening.

This morning I notice twice that stories disappeared immediately.  One was of a Syrian ambassador imploring the UN to take on the question of _who_ used chems.  That was Reuters.  The page was extremely hard to load, and it hung for a particularly long time trying to load an asset from "Media Innovations Group, LLC".  Another was also related to the suggestion that the rebels used chems.

I believe that there pretty likely another PRISM-like program which forces Google to keep their news search 'clean' during times when propaganda is of particular importance to the West.  Another possibility is that Google themselves take such action autonomously, but my experience is that this is not as likely as being forced on them.  Another would be, I suppose, that such alternate views are attacked at the network level and Google's algorithms respond by removing them.  I don't know the news search algorithms they use of course.

A privately operated network would be a very useful thing to have actually.

What would likely be most robust and practical would actually be physical lines.  Coax when possible, though POTS could be used as well but it would radiate signal better and thus be more easy to detect.  Fiber would be ideal when it can be arranged.  Deployment would be within reach of most people and the raw material is available for appropriation.  Stock up on ends and crimping tools ya'all.

Routing is a complex subject and any robust routing protocols will likely detract significantly from the bandwidth capacity of the medium.  This is particularly true since it would be an ad-hoc network with continuous damage as pathways are discovered and destroyed.  Anyone hoping to satisfy their need for streaming porn should probably start making plans (e.g., personal libraries) right now since there is little hope of a privately maintained and surreptitious LAN or WAN being very suitable for that purpose.

I was musing about LOVEINT and such things today while working and my mind wandered back to an earlier time when I (in theory) served our country in the armed forces.

We had an officer who, IIRC, served in S2 (battalion intel.)  We'll call him Lt. Man.  He apparently had a neighbor who was female and he had a habit of sneaking over to her window and spying on her.  He was caught.  Friends in S1 (battalion admin) pulled his records and the victims testimony.  When she caught him he said "I'm looking for my cat.  Have you seen it?  Meow, Meow."  We were rolling on the floor laughing at the thought.  He was found guilty of 'conduct unbecoming and officer' and demoted to buck private.  Dunno what other punishment he may have received.  We didn't see him around after that which is unfortunate because we would have had great fun making cat noises when we saw him.

Anyway, someone amusingly asserted 'It's not like some creepy stalker would be interested in working as an NSA analyst or anything.'  Hit the nail on the head.  Had Lt. Pvt. Man been a little more careful/lucky there is every possibility that he would be a higher-up in NSA right now, particularly if was able to supply his superiors with the kind of glossies that got them off.  One senses that Porter Goss might have had a weakness for such things.

Why bother.  Really.  Especially after the Win-8/TPM goings-on.  Making something secure for Windows is kind of like putting a V8 engine in a riding mower.  Some people have nothing better to do so it does happen from time to time I guess.  But it makes a lot more sense if one is going to build a significant structure to have it rest on a reliable foundation.

Sure.  Brilliant!  What could possible interfere with line-of-sight?

I don't think it Bitcoin a very useful vehicle unless the recipient has the same sorts of speculative hopes that some of us (like yours truly) hold.

The persistent and public ledger makes Bitcoin transactions highly prone to analysis by anyone with technical skill are resource, and it's a bloody nightmare to covertly cash out into fiat which 99.9% of the potential recipients would wish to do if the solution is used to pay off independent conspirators.  Currently the market cap is to small for anything meaningful anyway.

Indeed, one of the biggest arguments in my mind for Bitcoin being a wholly private development effort is that it suck so badly for typical covert work.

I doubt almost everything to some degree.  I hold open the hypothesis that the entire Snowden episode is a staged operation in fact.

Early on in the release of the PRISM docs, some commentators with a supposed insider background said that it is an unusual document and not representative of the form which one would expect at this level.  Further, there are a ton of minor jerk-off businesses milking the rapidly expanding national security sphere and they come up with all kinds of puffed up marketing material and what-not.  In fact one scheme was to plant various stories, false or not, with Greenwald (mentioned by name, and without his knowing cooperation) in order to achieve certain goals.  This was discovered in the HB Gary Federal e-mail hack.

That said, I feel it most likely that Snowden is the real McCoy and the PRISM doc is legit.  It's just that since I don't 'known' this I try to be careful in my wording.

 - edit in:

Cass Sunstein is in the news recently to chair the 'independent' panel on the state surveillance system.  He is a public proponent of planting 'conspiracy theories' in an attempt to discredit organic ones or achieve other objectives.  I've not studied his work yet, but it sounds interesting so perhaps I'll do it as a winter project when the weather gets shitty.

Anyway, I would say that one is a world-class fool to take almost anything at face value, or to consider almost anything as 'fact'.  There always has been a lot of subterfuge in this world when it comes to centralized power means and mechanisms and it is probably more true today than ever...but we live in the 'information age' where it is much more possible to independently analyze these things.  I am lucky to be comfortable to not 'know' almost anything for sure and to be able to weigh observations which are against what I believe or wish to be true.  I find it entertaining.

I bolded the part which I feel is especially important.  Most for-profit corporations under US law are legally compelled to maximize shareholder profit.  This is wholly incompatible with bucking the state's desire for the organization to participate in surveillance and incurring the expense of non-compliance.

In the corporations I've worked in, I've known a minority of people who are deeply disgusted by the police state apparatus being constructed,  and a majority to are ambivalent and/or willfully ignorant about it.  I've never met anyone who was in favor of it (though I mostly worked in engineering.)  In the end, it does not matter.  Upper management who draw plan the direction of the corporation's trajectory comply with the directive of maximizing shareholder profit.  If they fail, they are pushed out of management positions.

To me this is classic 'merger of state and corporate power' which Mussolini used when he preferred the term 'corporatism' to 'facsism' in seeking a characterization of his system of government in Italy.  It is also why even back in the 1700's there was considerable concern about the utility and dangers of 'corporations'.  It is also worth noting, however, that the definitions of 'corporation' has changed as society and business has evolved, but the basic structure of cooperation between parties in a corporation remains.  And more importantly, the concerns about the priorities of the corporate and how much harm/good they do for a society at large associated with these priorities, remains an interesting question.

One conundrum about mesh networks is that they would not be needed except in an extreme scenario of totalitarian network control, and in that case participating in one and thus subverting the network control would carry a harsh penalty.  To make matters worse, anything transmitting on an electromagnetic spectrum would be a beacon saying 'come arrest me' or 'drone target here.'

Probably the most effective means of overcoming the problems associated with a totalitarian form of government would be to overthrow it, but that would take time and a functional monetary solution would have difficulty remaining viable with years of down-time.

The best bet has always seemed to me to piggyback on a functional official network to send transaction messages covertly.  Read 'steganography.'  This would, however, require competent people operating in relatively safe locations.  It would also necessitate a tight protocol and limited activity since the overhead and risk of performing a transaction would be significant.  This is the primary reason I lobby strongly for an 'off-chain' solution whereby the 'gold standard' or 'reserve' was carried on compact chain upon which ad-hoc off-chain solutions were built as needed and adapted (or abandoned) as the threats evolve.

I've always kinda hoped that Bitcoin would take on the role of the 'reserve', but as it develops into a solution with aspirations to natively support all economic activity it picks up baggage which would be hard to handle in a situation where it was living under significant network attack, and hard to easily unload if the need arose.

Tor is 'run by the feds' to the extent that they provide the operating expenses.  I seem to be the only one who finds the 'we run it to help Iranian dissidents' line a little hard to swallow.  It also is not necessarily completely effective against correlation attacks by an adversary who has an array of network taps (such as 'the feds' as, thanks to Snowden, a lot more people are now aware.)

I'd say that Tor is the cat's pajamas for protection against entities who don't have a in with the 'five eyes' folks.  Even here I would not be not at all surprised if the NSA did a bit of horse-trading of intel data with 'our enemies' (Russia, China) in something akin to a prisoner exchange program.  Both sides would gain much more then they would lose in such an arrangement.

Having a sense of humor is one of the more reliable markers of trustworthiness in my observation.  Why this would be I do not know and my hypothesis about it are weak.

I have been on balance impressed by my interactions with both boussac and daveout.  My best guess at this point is that they are mainly for real.  But they may either legitimately feel that they need info which you would be hard pressed to provide, or simply not have the money.  Either would put you and they at logger-heads.  As always, I wish both you and Bitcoin-Central the best of luck in arriving at a satisfactory result.

I'm much more likely to use Mt. Gox now even though the possibility exist that the abuse of their service by regulators (who are effectively also competitors by virtue of the mechanics of their compensation packages) is fabricated or mis-represented.

Indeed, I have just used their service for Mt. Gox for the first time, and my expectation is that I'll get my fiat in several months at best, and never at worst.

If I needed better/faster results, I'd take my chances with a smaller outfit who is flying under the radar or is new enough to not have pressure mounted on them.  Indeed, I split my sale between Mt. Gox and Bitcoin-Brokers as an experiment and hedge.

At the end of the day I place a vast majority of the fault for my inability to capitalize on Bitcoin squarely with the corp/gov system of government that I live under here in the US and which I have some theoretical ability to work toward changing when they are excessively abusive.  I'm happy to support Mt. Gox, although I'm a shitty customer since I don't trade (and thus lose fees to them) and only use them (or try to) as and entry/exit point to the Bitcoin economy.

Observations:

 - Anyone who uses this public forum as a helpdesk ticketing system should be prepared for release of any and all information related to their problem.  Of course if it is the only option, or is perceived to be, that sucks.  But it's a balance that one must weigh.

 - Bitcoin-Central seems shocked when people will not take their word for things without verification.  Cut's both ways.  If steelboy says he owns the BTC, who better should know, right?  (Obviously I'm being sarcastic here for those who don't pick up on such things.)

 - Color me unsurprised that steelboy's consummate dick-eating was not 100% effective at getting all of his stash back.  It was amusing while it lasted though.

Ya know what's kind of interesting?  Nary a peep about Booz, Allen, Hamilton for a while now.  A few weeks ago there were some 'official leaks' saying 'Oh, Snowden got info when he worked at Dell' and very little about BAH for a while now.  Early on it was reported that he took a job there specifically because it offered the possibility to get his hands on material.  I think that came right from the horse's mouth.  So BAH should be a major part of this story yet and there should be some interest in knowing why they had what they had and how they let it get away.  It's very interesting to me that there does not seem to be.  Hmmm.

Just a follow-up since this post popped to the top of my list just now:

I hedged my bets on this sale.  Half through Mt. Gox, and am waiting on a wire.  The other half through Bitcoin-Brokers.  That is done and it was a fairly quick and downright enjoyable experience for me.  I got Mt. Gox prices and didn't pay any exchange fee.  Or wire fee for that matter, but that is pretty negligible in larger dollar amounts.

Unfortunately for other potential sellers they stopped taking seller's BTC the other day to keep a buy/sell balance.  Now one has to get on a list it sounds like.  Possibly others were in my situation in having a certain quanitity that they wanted to sell, getting the sale over with, and moving on in which case some slots may have opened up.

My banker says that everything is OK with random people all over the country depositing cash in my account, but she recommended setting up a different account next time so I did not need to give my account number out and take the risk that someone might try to abuse it.

Bingo!  Since we are talking about a financial system which we hope people can feel confident relying on to store and utilize value it some quantity it is more critical to consider a wider range of attack surfaces than would be the case with other applications.

There is also the fact that any nation's monetary system is a hugely important facet of the state's function.  So, an alternate system which could challenge the official system could be a significant threat justifying a significant response.  Problems here would be triggered more my a weakening of the official system than by a strengthening of alternate solutions, and and economic or currency crisis would be accompanied by a lot of extra-normal policies.  A clamp-down on freedoms of access to the global internet would probably be a lesser of the multitude of complaints.

The use of packet filters and protocol recognition and disruption is common to control people's behaviors within organizations.  It seems (to me) not much of a stretch to project that it could happen at the direction of a nation-state level when a compelling need arises.  There will be a golden period of time when it is quite effective since it will spur a lot of interest in developing work-arounds.  For this reason it is good policy to wait until a crisis situation for any real use so that people are lulled into a belief that since it has not happened yet it never will.  Or more typical; "What is packet filtering?"

I use Google since 8.8.8.8 and 4.4.4.4 are easy to remember.  I ran Bernstein's old jdbdns for a while but eventually it had to many problems that I didn't fell like dealing with.  In the future if I have nothing better to do I may run one in the cloud and access it through a tunnel or something like that.  Of course I had to deal with BIND as well for work reason.  At least to the degree that I had to make it work and make a token effort to keep it secure...again...and again...and again...

Point is, from an ISP's point of view the though of losing a tiny fraction of customers, and especially highly technical ones who are more prone to cause problems, is simply not a huge concern.  Also, it is unlikely that we geeks are going to rally a army of grandmothers to our cause on the basis of being denied use of an obscure system which very few people understand.  This is especially true if it can be painted as a tool for miscreants, and like it or not a lot of this technology can be.  With some amount of legitimacy even.  Failure to appreciate this unpleasant reality will lead to a failure to construct the proper defenses against potential threats.

Most people use either the resolves configured by the ISP, or one of the compliment providers of such service.  Rules to pass port 53 could easily be constructed.