Rectify inflammatory language in FAQ

[yanmaani]

This PR removes the following (unintentional?) political or inflammatory language in the FAQ:

• US-specific discussion about ISPs. I do not think Namecoin needs to take a position on the American telecom market. ISPs provide a boring commodity and don't want to do crazy stuff, that's a much simpler explanation.
• Implications that LE volontarily engage in censorship. This is false. There is no evidence to suggest they would do it if they didn't have to.
• Aggressively incredulous language with respect to such actions.
• Overly familiar nickname ("Ed") used for Edward Snowden.
• Language implying the government of the PRC to be illegitimate (one would say that Belgium has jurisdiction over a majority of registrars, not that the Belgian government has it)
• Other hostile language in such respect

[JeremyRand]

The ISP thing might or might not be inflammatory, but if it is inflammatory, it's pretty clearly picking the more popular side, so I don't see this as a public relations downside. American ISP's are widely despised. Plenty of non-American ISP's also do sketchy things (I'm aware of plenty of British ISP shitfuckery), so I don't think it's too American-centric. Even if it were American-centric, the question mentions Google DNS, which is an American service, so it would probably be on-topic.

I don't think we have any solid evidence that ISRG is forced to do this censorship. Josh certainly claims that they are, but lots of corporations hide behind claims of legal obligations to do things that they in fact might not be obligated to do. Without seeing a copy of an OFAC order telling ISRG to do this, or a court order establishing that gratis TLS cert issuance is subject to OFAC regulation, I don't think we can be confident that ISRG is legally obligated to revoke those certs. We do link to Josh's statement where he claims that it's due to legal requirements. If you think there's a way to accurately convey in our summary that ISRG has alleged that this is due to legal requirements (without endorsing that allegation), I might be willing to entertain that.

I am not willing to take OFAC's claims about USA Really at face value, given that the entire premise of their press release is that USA Really was part of a Russian government scheme to rig the U.S. election, which is the kind of propaganda that should never be taken at face value. Thus I'm NACKing the removal of "allegedly". There's plenty of disinformation regarding Russia and election happenings spreading as a result of people taking unsubstantiated government claims at face value, we don't need to contribute to that problem.

Ed refers to himself as Ed, including in his initial public statements made via The Guardian when his leaks were published (and also prior to leaking, e.g. when he introduced himself at the CryptoParty he organized in Hawaii). The fact that certain media outlets decided to use his full legal first name (Edward) when he doesn't call himself Edward doesn't mean that we should follow suit.

Literally no one has expressed any concern that any entity other than the Chinese government might coerce Chinese mining pools to attack Bitcoin or Namecoin. It's very clearly government pressure that is at issue, not privatized pressure. This has nothing to do with alleging that the Chinese government is illegitimate; the exact same language would be appropriate if most hashpower were in the U.S. ("U.S. government"). I have no idea why being unambiguous about government versus private pressure could be perceived as a geopolitical statement; it's not one.

[yanmaani]

The ISP thing might or might not be inflammatory, but if it is inflammatory, it's pretty clearly picking the more popular side, so I don't see this as a public relations downside. American ISP's are widely despised. Plenty of non-American ISP's also do sketchy things (I'm aware of plenty of British ISP shitfuckery), so I don't think it's too American-centric. Even if it were American-centric, the question mentions Google DNS, which is an American service, so it would probably be on-topic.

If you pick the 90% side in 10 uncorrelated disputes, you'll be on the 34.9% side. That is a bad idea. Please do not take sides in politics. Please please do not take sides in contentious politics. Those statements are better suited for a blog post entitled "I, Jeremy Rand, really hate the Internet Service Providers of my homeland".

Some American ISPs are hated. Some non-American ISPs also do sketchy things. Neither of those are very good reasons to insult their business, or to levy blanket accusations against them of violating the law. There are much simpler explanations for why they don't want to deal with you than moral turpitude. If that were the case, why isn't Namecoin a national standard in, say, Moldova or Singapore?

I don't think we have any solid evidence that ISRG is forced to do this censorship. Josh certainly claims that they are, but lots of corporations hide behind claims of legal obligations to do things that they in fact might not be obligated to do.

Are you claiming ISRG really hate the Russians for some reason? If they gladly issue certs for fraud sites, why this concern them?

Without seeing a copy of an OFAC order telling ISRG to do this, or a court order establishing that gratis TLS cert issuance is subject to OFAC regulation, I don't think we can be confident that ISRG is legally obligated to revoke those certs. We do link to Josh's statement where he claims that it's due to legal requirements. If you think there's a way to accurately convey in our summary that ISRG has alleged that this is due to legal requirements (without endorsing that allegation), I might be willing to entertain that.

I do think the presumption should be that Mr. Aas' claims should be taken at face value. The present language sooner does the opposite, imbuing them with an agency and almost implying it's their geopolitical censorship. That being said, would the following language work? Italics for removal, bold for add.

Let's Encrypt also has the ability to censor your ability to receive TLS certificates. Let's Encrypt is routinely allegedly forced to use this capacity to engage in censorship on political grounds. For example, in response to a support request pertaining to an error "Policy forbids issuing for name", Josh Aas (Executive Director of ISRG, the corporation that operates Let's Encrypt) stated made the following statement on February 6, 2018:
...
Let's Encrypt is also routinely allegedly compelled to censor news websites. For example, on January 2, 2019, Let's Encrypt revoked the TLS certificate for such a website that was funded by Russian entities, owing to the U.S. Department of the Treasury alleging it to have "engaged in efforts to post content focused on divisive political issues" and "attempted to hold a political rally in the United States".

---

I am not willing to take OFAC's claims about USA Really at face value, given that the entire premise of their press release is that USA Really was part of a Russian government scheme to rig the U.S. election, which is the kind of propaganda that should never be taken at face value. Thus I'm NACKing the removal of "allegedly". There's plenty of disinformation regarding Russia and election happenings spreading as a result of people taking unsubstantiated government claims at face value, we don't need to contribute to that problem.

It's not removed. Before:

Let's Encrypt revoked the TLS certificate for an allegedly-Russian-funded journalism website aimed at American audiences, on the grounds that the website allegedly "engaged in efforts[...]".

After:

Let's Encrypt revoked the TLS certificate for such a website that was funded by Russian entities[/u] owing to the U.S. Department of the Treasury alleging it to have "engaged in efforts[...]".

---

Ed refers to himself as Ed, including in his initial public statements made via The Guardian when his leaks were published (and also prior to leaking, e.g. when he introduced himself at the CryptoParty he organized in Hawaii). The fact that certain media outlets decided to use his full legal first name (Edward) when he doesn't call himself Edward doesn't mean that we should follow suit.

That is in an informal context. Mr. Snowden's verified twitter page uses "Edward Snowden", and so does the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

I do think that language is very strange though. You can be saint while writing a documentation whose main characters are Hitler and Stalin, and you can be a very evil person despite writing documentation where Mother Theresa is the only named figure. So it does not seem obvious to include it there, and rather undermines the other claims made.

Literally no one has expressed any concern that any entity other than the Chinese government might coerce Chinese mining pools to attack Bitcoin or Namecoin. It's very clearly government pressure that is at issue, not privatized pressure.

I do remind you that Chinese miners did mine the "Bitcoin Cash" altcoin at a loss. This did not seem to be instigated by their government. (Anyhow, the basic claim you're making that would be contented is that there's such a split between a government and its people, or that a government can instigate anything; a Chinese might find that sentence nonsensical, saying that "the Chinese might coerce Chinese mining pools" is total gibberish.)

This has nothing to do with alleging that the Chinese government is illegitimate; the exact same language would be appropriate if most hashpower were in the U.S. ("U.S. government"). I have no idea why being unambiguous about government versus private pressure could be perceived as a geopolitical statement; it's not one.

You're trying to distinguish the government from its people. Usually we say that a court or a country or perhaps an administrative body has jurisdiction somewhere, not a government.

More charitably, I think that this could be an AmE vs. BrE difference. In the U.S., the term "government" encompasses the legislative, executive ("administration"), and judiciary branches of government, whereas in the rest of the world, the term "government" is used to refer principally to the executive branch, and the word "state" to refer to what Americans would call "government".

Still, saying that the "Chinese state" has jurisdiction over anything is also deeply concerning. We could perhaps say that for a subnational body, like a U.S. state, but it seems very jarring for a country. Perhaps the term "Chinese country" or "country of China" would be more appropriate.

[yanmaani]

@midnightmagic Would you be able to review this? I shall be obliged.

[yanmaani]

Factored out ISP and pool discussion into #633 and #634 respectively. The rest needs some more work so I'm marking this as draft for the time being.