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Taler proposes an extraordinarily unethical panopticon, where unaccountable entities (both commercial and governmental) without any due process can surveil ever

by nullc 6y ago

Taler proposes an extraordinarily unethical panopticon, where unaccountable entities (both commercial and governmental) without any due process can surveil every transaction you make. Engage in the "wrong" kind of commerce and after the political winds change-- maybe you get rounded up and executed. Regardless of your political alignment, one can't really look at the governance of many nations and say with confidence that you can trust that they won't change in a way which profoundly disrespects your human rights. Taler misleads people into thinking that its private by claiming that only merchants are surveilled. But every time you pay you both were previously a recipient and you are paying to someone else who relieves. Monitoring reception is equivalent to monitoring everyone, and taler's surveillance is realtime and always active. > It makes income traceable in a way that bitcoin does not, to facilitate lawful taxation. Taxation is based on self-reporting, whistle-blowing, and serious criminal penalties for evasion, not on invasive realtime state surveillance into the private transactions of individuals. Facilitating "lawful taxation" by pervasive surveillance of everyone who receives a payment is like preventing sexual assault by requiring a camera in every bedroom streaming in realtime back to government.

kderbe 6y ago
This contradicts one of the claimed principles of Taler, "Protect the privacy of buyers". Can you please explain how the example you gave would be possible with Taler, in a way that wouldn't be with crypto currency? (off-topic: thank you for Opus.)
igorkraw 6y ago
What do you think of Bitcoins/Ethereum etc. public ledgers?
- nullc 6y ago
  In theory Bitcoin could provide a reasonable amount of privacy by leaving identities unlinked, in practice it doesn't. (Etherum's 'accounts' are extremely privacy toxic way beyond Bitcoin) Of course, if one wants to trust other entities one can already easily use chaumian cash w/ Bitcoin. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5302025.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5302025.0 That works similar to Taler except no integrated spyware. This approach can even be implemented with multiparty security relatively easily, so that the funds are protected by a majority threshold rather than just requiring a single point of failure.
helen___keller 6y ago
> Taler proposes an extraordinarily unethical panopticon, where unaccountable entities (both commercial and governmental) without any due process can surveil every transaction you make. No, actually, you are describing the current state of affairs with mainstream online payment systems like PayPal and Venmo Taler uses blind signatures which means that your exchange has no knowledge of where you are spending your tokens. In essence, when you make a payment the merchant knows you have an IOU to the exchange, the exchange knows it's a valid IOU, but since it was issued with a blind signature the exchange is not aware that it's an IOU that was issued to you. This gives you privacy that parallels the use of real world cash.
- nullc 6y ago
  Chaumian digital cash is fine, but that isn't what taler actually implements. Instead, it requires the recipient to identify themselves and the amounts for every payments. This is a continuous realtime surveillance which does not exist for cash. Used perfectly it might be potentially more private than paypal, but no one is under any illusion that paypal is particularly private. On a scale of ethical behavior providing strong privacy is superior to providing limited privacy but both are vastly superior to falsely claiming something has strong privacy when it is limited. Taler takes matters a step further a falsely claim that its continuous realtime mass surveillance is required to facilitate lawful taxation. This claim is false-- an outright lie in fact. Not only is it technically not required, it's not legally required either and taxation has existed for countless generations when this kind of electronic surveillance was unimaginable.
  - helen___keller 6y ago
    > falsely claiming something has strong privacy when it is limited Taler provides strong privacy for buyers, not for merchants. It's important to note that Taler is not a peer-to-peer system for transferring money (there are claims for interest in implementing such a system in the future, but it does not exist), so the receiver is always a merchant Personally I don't mind that businesses are surveilled when I purchase at them, because businesses are not people and do not have the right to avoid surveillance. I would be very concerned if such surveillance could extend to me, but as discussed Taler provides buyers privacy and blindly signed tokens cannot be traced to me.
PeterisP 6y ago
The claim "can surveil every transaction you make" does not seem justified. The way I see the process, the flow of Talers is strictly asymmetric and one way, with a clear distinction between users(consumers) and merchants: 1. From exchange to user (deposits). 2. From user to merchant (payments for orders). 3. From merchant to exchange (withdrawals). The monitorable steps are 1. and 3., which allow tracking the total amount that you can spend and the total amount that the merchant has received. The actual transactions (step #2) are not surveilable, the system does not track who paid what to whom. The statement "every time you pay you both were previously a recipient" is not correct, since as a non-merchant user you can't be a recipient of payments, you can't have any income in Taler, you can only spend what you yourself deposited in the system through an exchange. And vice versa, as a merchant, you can't make any payments, you can only withdraw your Taler income for real money at the exchange - it's exactly just as with a merchant account for receiving credit card payments, which is strictly separate from any credit card payments that the company might want to make themselves.

by nullc 6y ago

kderbe 6y ago

This contradicts one of the claimed principles of Taler, "Protect the privacy of buyers". Can you please explain how the example you gave would be possible with Taler, in a way that wouldn't be with crypto currency? (off-topic: thank you for Opus.)

igorkraw 6y ago

What do you think of Bitcoins/Ethereum etc. public ledgers?

nullc 6y ago
In theory Bitcoin could provide a reasonable amount of privacy by leaving identities unlinked, in practice it doesn't. (Etherum's 'accounts' are extremely privacy toxic way beyond Bitcoin) Of course, if one wants to trust other entities one can already easily use chaumian cash w/ Bitcoin. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5302025.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5302025.0 That works similar to Taler except no integrated spyware. This approach can even be implemented with multiparty security relatively easily, so that the funds are protected by a majority threshold rather than just requiring a single point of failure.

helen___keller 6y ago

> Taler proposes an extraordinarily unethical panopticon, where unaccountable entities (both commercial and governmental) without any due process can surveil every transaction you make. No, actually, you are describing the current state of affairs with mainstream online payment systems like PayPal and Venmo Taler uses blind signatures which means that your exchange has no knowledge of where you are spending your tokens. In essence, when you make a payment the merchant knows you have an IOU to the exchange, the exchange knows it's a valid IOU, but since it was issued with a blind signature the exchange is not aware that it's an IOU that was issued to you. This gives you privacy that parallels the use of real world cash.

nullc 6y ago
Chaumian digital cash is fine, but that isn't what taler actually implements. Instead, it requires the recipient to identify themselves and the amounts for every payments. This is a continuous realtime surveillance which does not exist for cash. Used perfectly it might be potentially more private than paypal, but no one is under any illusion that paypal is particularly private. On a scale of ethical behavior providing strong privacy is superior to providing limited privacy but both are vastly superior to falsely claiming something has strong privacy when it is limited. Taler takes matters a step further a falsely claim that its continuous realtime mass surveillance is required to facilitate lawful taxation. This claim is false-- an outright lie in fact. Not only is it technically not required, it's not legally required either and taxation has existed for countless generations when this kind of electronic surveillance was unimaginable.
- helen___keller 6y ago
  > falsely claiming something has strong privacy when it is limited Taler provides strong privacy for buyers, not for merchants. It's important to note that Taler is not a peer-to-peer system for transferring money (there are claims for interest in implementing such a system in the future, but it does not exist), so the receiver is always a merchant Personally I don't mind that businesses are surveilled when I purchase at them, because businesses are not people and do not have the right to avoid surveillance. I would be very concerned if such surveillance could extend to me, but as discussed Taler provides buyers privacy and blindly signed tokens cannot be traced to me.

PeterisP 6y ago

The claim "can surveil every transaction you make" does not seem justified. The way I see the process, the flow of Talers is strictly asymmetric and one way, with a clear distinction between users(consumers) and merchants: 1. From exchange to user (deposits). 2. From user to merchant (payments for orders). 3. From merchant to exchange (withdrawals). The monitorable steps are 1. and 3., which allow tracking the total amount that you can spend and the total amount that the merchant has received. The actual transactions (step #2) are not surveilable, the system does not track who paid what to whom. The statement "every time you pay you both were previously a recipient" is not correct, since as a non-merchant user you can't be a recipient of payments, you can't have any income in Taler, you can only spend what you yourself deposited in the system through an exchange. And vice versa, as a merchant, you can't make any payments, you can only withdraw your Taler income for real money at the exchange - it's exactly just as with a merchant account for receiving credit card payments, which is strictly separate from any credit card payments that the company might want to make themselves.