Original title: DeSec? Where Crypto Meets Security, Surveillance, and Defense
Written by: Luffistotle, Zee Prime Capital
Compiled by: Tia, Techub News
Recently, the West has started to have problems with safety and order. Usually, the way we measure whether order is good is to walk around cities and parks during the day and at night. But now this measurement is becoming less and less reliable. Social order is constructed and maintained through three components:
Laws and social norms
Law enforcement (police, surveillance, etc.)
Justice (application of law)
The interactions between these three are complex and deeply integrated. When people start to be afraid to walk in the park, or stores start to move their positions and no longer operate in the original city (usually a very obvious sign), it means that there is a problem with governance. In fact, some current policies do have some problems. In fact, we can try to understand the possibility of crypto improving law enforcement, which will help improve social structure. We will discuss this below, focusing on the application of crypto in surveillance tools.
Throughout history, societies have resorted to lynching to solve their problems during periods of declining trust in public institutions and agreements (laws). This power was originally used to solve practical problems of the community, but eventually became corrupted and turned into extortion.
Perhaps there are more modern solutions, such as cheaper surveillance technology, through which law enforcement agencies can be given the "leverage" to address problems at scale to ensure that the goals and aspirations of the community are achieved. Technology can enable the same number of people to do more. And decentralized protocols can help ensure that this new power is not used for other purposes.
The idea of using surveillance to enforce law enforcement is terrifying because of the threat of abuse of power.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Cryptocurrency brings the possibility of financial freedom - it eliminates the state's monopoly on money and puts checks and balances on the state's financial behavior. In the same way, it can also put checks and balances on new surveillance tools. By combining ubiquitous, cheap robots, cameras, and sensors with a reliable neutral collaborative network, the state's surveillance monopoly can be checked and balanced.
We are exploring this in depth through interesting conversations with great people in a category of projects we call DeSec. The security space is another opportunity for crypto, as it is one of the few areas where customers (governments, communities) are willing to pay for it in the form of insurance (defense is happy to pay for redundancy). Redundancy costs are an inherent feature of crypto. This feature is also the reason why many crypto products are often unable to compete with other solutions, crypto needs to constantly pay for higher levels of security/redundancy/verification.
That being said, redundancy is not a bad thing. It is a trade-off between deterministic fixed costs and variable future costs. In the case of Bitcoin, its value and success is derived from the fees paid to enable trustless verification (breaking consensus is expensive, so its security is extremely high). In defense manufacturing, the tolerance for safety or failure is also extremely low, even if it costs a lot to do so.
DePIN meets DeSec: NeighborhoodWatchDAO
Much of the value of DePIN comes from shifting the burden of capital expenditures from the company/protocol to the node operator in exchange for a percentage of revenue. This opens up the possibility for many types of networks to scale in ways that would not otherwise be possible.
Leveraging these features, there are some immediate applications that can be brought to market. For example, Dempsey is a DePIN-style network of SoundThinking (formerly ShotSpotter) nodes that can sell to ShotSpotter itself or have its own protocol. For those unfamiliar, ShotSpotter is a network of microphones mounted on buildings that can triangulate the location of a shooting and alert law enforcement or first responders so that resources can be deployed faster/immediately.
Such protocols can scale globally as node operators deploy to their respective cities, much faster than the internal reinvestment cycles of companies like SoundThinking.
Likewise, there is a growing risk of small drones intruding into potentially important airspace, as the recent intrusion at Langley Air Force Base showed us. While the U.S. military may have a classified solution to such attacks, another solution may be needed for other less secure airspace. This could be achieved by energizing a network of small radars or visual observations of the relevant airspace to help law enforcement understand the situation at the launch point.
A similar model can be used to look at signal strength. (Although this is usually provided by wireless providers to ensure network quality, wireless providers have the disadvantage that their signals are often more transient.) DePIN can provide continuous signal quality monitoring for these networks (as some projects such as ROAM already plan to do). This is a simpler implementation solution.
In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of cheap cell phone jammers in the hands of thieves. These devices are scary because you might find that your phone, wifi or radio is unable to contact the police when someone breaks into your house.
A criminal could put it in his belt and rob your house or steal your car. Signal monitoring in cities and other areas can easily detect these types of jamming incidents. Similar to ShotSpotter, authorities can also be alerted.
We could also create similar protocols to periodically incentivize small drones to conduct surveillance in problem areas (Patrol2earn), or we could leverage existing DePIN projects to support surveillance agencies. Projects like Frodobots or DIMO capture key events with cameras.
communication
Similar to the monitoring part, DePIN networks can also be used to enhance the robustness of network transmission, whether electrical or digital. The benefit is that such networks can remain stable even in the event of a disaster.
Meshed edge networks can protect against today’s highly centralized CDN-centric internet traffic, while decentralized power plants can coordinate small-scale energy production to provide backup power when major production centers become targets.
This logic also applies to modern warfare. In fact, modern frontline forces need to be more decentralized. The use of FPV drones, as we have seen in Ukraine, is a major development in warfare. Small, low-cost (even cardboard drones), and fast precision strikes are now possible. Any critical facilities on the battlefield (i.e. logistics hubs, transmission/command bunkers, etc.) will become targets. This will cause these small facilities to become failure points, and the best way to deal with them is to use distributed communications.
In this economic situation, do you still want to use missiles?
verify
Multi-party verification can be applied to robotic manufacturing. Entering malicious instructions into a manufacturing robot could pose a serious risk to the entire manufacturing chain. One way to address this type of problem could be to multi-party verify the code as it runs. By reaching a consensus on the code to be executed, malicious changes to the manufacturing process can be caught.
Similar to authentication, STAEX provides a public network to facilitate trustless communication between IoT devices. This provides a novel way for these devices to communicate and reduces the risk of interference using traditional channels. Given the increasing risk of malfeasance, this is an important technology to build a strong network that allows these devices to transmit valuable data.
Other uses for verification include citizen submission of evidence (snitch2earn) as described above by Palmer Luckey. Highly complex operations such as covert identities and decoy vehicles may be difficult to implement within the current legal framework, but despite this, there are still a lot of ways to record criminal behavior in this day and age, and a simple place to deploy data can be set up, and even the location/time verification can be contextualized in a cryptographic way (ZK!!!).
DeSci
DeSci is another way crypto is converging with the defense/intelligence industry. For example, DeSci DAOs fund research in otherwise underappreciated fields like materials science, biomanufacturing (like valleyDAO), cryogenics (CryoDAO), or longevity (Vita)/human performance enhancement (anyone want to join me on a peptide DAO?). These DAOs can actually have a meaningful impact on these research areas. For example, HairDAO is now one of the largest funders of non-hair loss research in the world.
I believe that as more scientists are abandoning traditional research paths, more cutting-edge research innovations will come from this type of DAO.
Why agreements are important
Why do we need protocols? Many of the ideas presented above are clearly about enhancing state-ruled surveillance. But suppose these surveillance tools were brought to market and governed by protocols. In this case, decentralized governance could check whether the authorities using them are enforcing the law properly, and whether the values of those governing with monopoly align with those of the people they govern. If not, the protocol could vote to no longer provide value-added information to law enforcement agencies (perhaps they would choose to support private police forces or private intelligence agencies).
Skeptic's Comments
Increased surveillance capabilities are likely to have negative effects on society, regardless of who controls them. Don’t overly question the practical possibility of decentralized governance, because similar to Bitcoin, such a protocol must rely on the absolute principle of permissionlessness, that is, governance minimization. That is, maximizing trustlessness.
Society is constantly evolving, and the ability to impose absolute rule of law may undermine our ability to adapt. Disobedience can promote progress, albeit a very specific form of disobedience (not street crime). How can specific types of crime be eliminated? This can become a slippery slope if surveillance technology is used to its maximum potential.
So we must be careful to protect privacy when implementing technologies that help maintain the established order. We humans must have the ability to speak outrageous thoughts and resist tyranny. If the asymmetry between enforcement and resistance becomes too great, we are simply promoting Minority Report-style tyranny.
If we look deeper into this asymmetry, we see that the right to bear arms in the United States is meaningless. When it was established, its goal was to ensure the possibility of a potential rebellion, but once we invented missiles (not to mention nuclear weapons), this possibility no longer exists. Of course, the right of individuals to defend their property still exists, but it is ineffective in terms of government resistance.
Crypto has the unique ability to take markets into a new realm. Will the future be MerceneryDAOs, crypto-funded defense technology, community-owned drones, or libertarian pacifism? No one knows. Maybe the answer lies in more niche areas, like decentralized micro-nuclear plant monitors and drone protection networks, or maybe the answer lies in places we haven’t even considered.
