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It's really harmful to the cause of privacy when people equate enablement of privacy with criminality, as you're doing.
by Jabanga 9y ago
It's really harmful to the cause of privacy when people equate enablement of privacy with criminality, as you're doing.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoI agree. I'm not trying to make that equivalence, but that sentiment is so prevalent that it has to factor into your risk assessment as a developer. If you are in this situation and are confident nothing is going to happen to you, you haven't been paying enough attention.
- Jabanga 9y agoThanks for the clarification. I agree that the decision made by the operator will likely to prove to be a wise one from a self-perservation pov.
- darawk 9y agoWhile true, the fact remains that privacy and criminality go hand in hand in this context. And i'd say it's more dangerous for people to censor the truth (that 99% of his users were criminals) for fear of how it may be wrongly construed.
- mjevans 9y agoI feel that it is improper for you to make such an unsubstantiated claim. You can state an /opinion/, such as: "I believe the majority of that site's users were probably criminals."
- darawk 9y agoYou're right. But the owner himself believes the substantial function of his service has been to support criminality, and that's why he's shutting it down.
- user5994461 9y agoLet's be reasonable and word it as "A sizable portion of the service was supporting criminality."
- mirimir 9y agoOne could say the same about credit/debit cards, with a suitable definition of "criminality". Charging of interest is illegal under Sharia. Porn and gambling are illegal in some jurisdictions. And so on. Edit: My point is that "criminality" is a meaningless concept without context. Also, it lumps too many things that are clearly distinguishable.
- FRex 9y agoAnd Amish do not use technology. You are free to get off the site now to not commit a sin in their eyes. People mentioned here are criminals by any reasonable definition of the word: illegal drugs, weapons, ordering hitmen, identity thefts, cc frauds, etc. The linked thread outright mentions few of these as the reason for closure. This isn't some moral dilemma.
- zzzcpan 9y agoLook at it this way, almost no bitcoin mixers' users will ever be prosecuted to be called criminals and yet you do call them criminals for no reason. I don't believe there could even be much legitimate use of bitcoin without mixers, people won't be willing to disclose that much information about themselves to everyone in the world.
- FRex 9y agoAre you making an argument for or against Bitcoin now? What you basically said is: people who deal in illegal goods using Bitcoin are not criminals because they will never be caught thanks to Bitcoin and mixers. Bitmixer.io guy/girl and others over there call them criminals and say they do illegal things (i.e.: weapons and drugs) using Bitcoin and mixers. Your distinction is really a moot point and being so pedantic serves no one and just looks stupid.
- Pfhreak 9y agoEhhh... this case I think it's fair to suggest that a mixer could be used for criminality, and that might be too much of an risk for an operator. The OP is not equating the too, just pointing out that one of the two is enough to add significant risk.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoI'm having trouble understanding this... Could you help me think of an example where this type of privacy is useful, for non criminal reasons?
- Jabanga 9y agoNon-private transactions leak your entire transaction graph to the world. There are a plethora of reasons, many of them rooted in avoiding becoming a victim of crime, one would prefer their transactions be private.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoOr you could just use a traditional payment method that doesn't, by default, leak your entire transaction graph to the world.
- Jabanga 9y agoTraditional payment methods can't do certain things, like send money to someone in another country for a fee of $0.05 in a matter of a minute, or make a payment on a website without disclosing to them your personal details. You may also not feel comfortable with your bank or government knowing all of your private financial interactions. There is no reason to blindly trust your bank or government to that extent.
- gnopgnip 9y agoPaypal can do both of those
- Klathmon 9y agoPaypal can also close your account at the drop of a hat, and has a very nice long list of things you can't do with your money when it's connected to paypal (a list of things which will get your account close and your money confiscated in some areas).
- tptacek 9y agoYou can't even sell gift certificates on the Internet without having built a business that will probably have criminals as a plurality constituency. The idea that a Bitcoin mixer was most used for legitimate purposes is pretty hard to swallow. As a positive claim, rather than a normative one, it has to be possible to observe that services like this have their great practical impact on criminals. Making such a positive claim can't "hurt the cause of privacy". If the cause of privacy wants to be taken seriously, it will need to grow up and stop demanding that people accept false sets of facts.
- bykovich2 9y agoIf you run an online store that doesn't validate credit cards correctly you will become an API for fraudsters to check the validity of Visa numbers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- _-david-_ 9y agoWhat is the proper way to validate credit cards?
- castis 9y agoTo just validate the numbers themselves, you can use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm Beyond that, I'm not sure what that person is talking about.
- meesterdude 9y agoFYI that's not enough. That may act as a form validation, but does not verify that the card is active and able to be used. Anyone can run the Luhn against a card # - but thieves have known CC numbers and want to verify they can be used. As a merchant you have to be somewhat on top of your orders and cancel any "suspicious" ones to prevent chargebacks.
- aphextron 9y ago>It's really harmful to the cause of privacy when people equate enablement of privacy with criminality, as you're doing. It is criminality in this case. It's called money laundering. Like it or not, it has been illegal since money has existed for very good reasons. The point of Cryptocurrency is not to enable anonymous money laundering by criminals. It is in fact the exact opposite: to shine light on the entire system, as the OP stated.
- wyager 9y ago> it has been illegal since money has existed for very good reasons. Neither of these claims are true. "Money laundering" as it is understood today only emerged in the 1980s during the war on drugs. It's a crime because it's easier to prove and prosecute than any actual crime that might be facilitated by anonymizing money, like tax evasion. I'm not sure if that's a good reason, although it is a practical one. It's kind of like making encryption illegal because people might use it to break copyright law. The use of encryption isn't the actual crime, but it's easier to prosecute.
- aphextron 9y ago>"Money laundering" as it is understood today only emerged in the 1980s during the war on drugs. Nonsense. From wiki: "The term "money laundering" is said to have originated with the Italian mafia and such criminals as Al Capone who allegedly purchased 'Laundromats' to commingle (or mix) their illegal profits from prostitution and bootlegged liquor sales with legitimate business sales" But furthermore I don't think it needs to be argued that people have been hiding money from governments since there has been money and governments. It will always be an implicitly illegal act regardless of the existence of specific statute because you are in the end avoiding taxation.
- dragonwriter 9y agoYou don't launder to avoid taxation, you launder to provide a plausible legitimate excuse for your criminal income, usually paying taxes in the process. It's usually highly illegal because it involves falsifying records, including those filed with tax authorities (and because the purpose of that falsification is to conceal another crime.)
- curun1r 9y agoIt's also really disingenuous to deny that criminals benefit from privacy tools. We can acknowledge that criminals benefit and are, perhaps, the largest "customer" of privacy tools without invalidating the argument that those tools should exist and be legal. Not being realistic about it is also harmful to the privacy cause. His comment isn't equating privacy and criminality, it's acknowledging that some, if not a majority, of the profits of his service came through being an enabler to criminal activity. He's being realistic on the subject, you're the one who isn't.
- tertius 9y agoWhere do you draw the line? One terrorist attack that was enabled by Signal? Should Signal then be destroyed? Draw the line and we can debate that.
- celim307 9y agoYou went full straw man real quick. Where in this chain is anyone advocating shutting anything down by force? And how did we go from dealing drugs to terrorism? Time out dude, time out.
- donatj 9y agoI wouldn't call asking you to clarify your position going strawman.
- tomjakubowski 9y agoI would, when the question makes unjustified presumptions about the person's position. GP asked "where do you draw the line?" to a person who didn't make any normative claim at all.
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- nodesocket 9y agoI've been thinking about this recently, and there are few cases where anonymity on the internet is a positive. Let's take Hacker News as a case-study. The open registration system without email verification or any sort of verification allows users to comment and act without retribution or fear of being called out. While I support strong security and encryption, generally being anonymous on the internet promotes negative behavior. Anonymity on the internet causes people to act inappropriately, troll, comment offensively, conduct fraud and illegal activities.
- donatj 9y ago> act inappropriately, troll, comment offensively I'd argue this is the single most important thing the internet has given us. The possibility of honest discourse without fear of repercussion. It has single handedly changed the world. The terms "act inappropriately", "comment offensively"… these are terms of control; tyranny of the majority. Having to hear arguments you don't like or agree with is the single most important development humanity has ever achieved. I hold nothing but scorn for the people who fight against minority voices.
- nodesocket 9y ago> The possibility of honest discourse without fear of repercussion. It has single handedly changed the world. Of course there is evidence and particular pockets of great good, but internet trolling, bullying, acting inappropriately, fraud, and scamming people greatly outweighs the good. Can't movements as important and big as Egypt still occur without anonymity? After all, a lot of the people tweeted and used Facebook with their real names and information.
- pdkl95 9y ago[warning: this may sound hostile, which isn't intended. I want this to be educational, but I fear my writing ability may not be sufficient.] > Can't movements as important and big as Egypt still occur without anonymity? How is that even a question. Of course governments target people they see a potential threat. History is full of examples of movements being suppressed to protect the established seats of power. You don't even need to go all the way to Egypt; the FBI's former program known as COINTELPRO was specifically about targeting potential leaders who speak up before they can form a larger movement. > trolling, bullying Have you ever actually been targeted by a person or group engaging in active trolling, bullying, or harassment? I doubt you have, because reliable anonymity is one of the only defenses against the current weapon of choice used to harass people that dare to express their opinion online: "doxing"[1]. Without anonymity, a lot more people would be subject to death threats (including their address and other specific details), calls to their neighbors or employer with slanderous accusations, swatting[2] or worse. However, the largest problem with insisting that communication must include real names is the chilling effect it has on groups like the usual racial minorities, LGBT people, or women. The entire concept of being "in the closet" is based on the fear that comes form knowing that speaking publicly in support of civil rights might risk sever harassment or even death. I suggest watching Vi Hart's video[3] from last year. It's difficult to watch. I'm hoping it can give you a sense sense of scale about the problems that are the daily reality of many people. Thanks to anonymous communication over the internet some of these problems are finally being discussed. People in targeted minority groups finally have a way they can communicate without risking harassment or death. Do you really want to tell them that they need to take that risk or get back in the closet? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toap7iPpTbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toap7iPpTbs
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pithic 9y agoVery true. Additionally, it's harmful to the cause of morality to equate illegality with immorality (as the term 'criminality' seems to imply).
- zzzcpan 9y agoIt's like "a criminal" is a truly dystopian term. An attempt to equate a bad guy with the guy the government prosecutes or even merely wants to prosecute.
- FooHentai 9y agoBut it is true that enablement of privacy enables criminality. Use by criminals is a valid argument against privacy! However, strong and valid arguments against privacy don't make privacy not worth fighting for if you believe there are stronger arguments for it. I do. I assume you do based on your stance. The world isn't black and white, so suggesting people shouldn't surface valid arguments (on either side of any issue) is more harmful in the long run. We need all the valid arguments, from as many people as possible, that we might make informed decisions on these important issues.