8 ms·
We must protect our ability to transact privately online (2019)
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoI don’t disagree with the title. I do disagree that the current system is right in almost any way. So what think I’m seeing is “the money has stopped coming in, and we are afraid of what happens next”. But I’m wrong all the time, so could be here too.
- thesausageking 4y agoWhen Roe V Wade was overturned, there was a lot of talk encouraging women to remove period tracking apps in case the data could be used against them in the future. But the easiest way to track women is to simply watch financial transactions for abortion bills or services at a clinic. Even if you try to obfuscate by having a friend pay, if there are no private, cash-or-crypto links, it's trivial to connect the dots. It was a reminder to me that being able too freely and privately make financial transactions is one of the most important and fundamental rights we have.
- sneak 4y agoIt's also impossible to hire a defense attorney with frozen bank accounts (which happens, of course, before trial). I spoke about how uncensorable payments are a prerequisite to a society with human rights at the CCCamp back in 2011: https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolution-en https://media.ccc.de/v/cccamp11-4591-financing_the_revolutio...
- null0pointer 4y agoThis is actually a fantastic counter-argument to the “nothing to hide — nothing to fear” people. It’s a good example of how an individual can remain unwaveringly righteous, but due to environmental changes all of a sudden they do have something to hide.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 4y agoHammer/nail fallacy. I agree with the premise / problem statement. The solution has profound issues.
- jrm4 4y agoSure, but what I find odd is how crypto gets a large amount of techno-pessimism (among folks like us) that most other "new tech" doesn't? Like most often, when there's a proof of concept that doesn't work exactly right, right now, it pretty much never ends with "oh, well, guess that means it's broken forever and it will never work," which appears to be a prevailing sentiment around crypto.
- staplers 4y ago
- Beltalowda 4y agoCryptocurrencies have been around for almost 15 years now; it's not "new tech". In 2010 or even 2013 I would have agreed with you, but that's a long time ago.
- jrm4 4y agoFax Machines invented in the 1800s, Voice Mail invented in the 1930's, etc etc. Not a compelling argument.
- dredmorbius 4y agoBoth those examples were delayed principally because of 1) technical limitations and 2) network effects. Cryptocurrency faces neither. The systems used to create, store, and transfer them are widely available. The network on which they can be transacted is ubiquitous. Cashing in/out is easy. What's holding the concept back is its fundamental and intrinsic costs (imposed by the algorith / concept itself, rather than economic limitations), opacity, inferiority to trust-based systems (e.g., credit payments or ordinary cash currency), inherent risks (both economic and criminal), and lack of safeguards (individual / transactional, systemic / institutional).
- thr0wawayf00 4y agoDumb question: why can't we just pass a law that requires all businesses to accept cash? The problem I have with articles like this is that I don't trust these coins. What are Grin and Zcash going to be worth in 5 years? Are they going to be stable enough to use as an actual currency and is the marketplace going to be confident enough to use them as currency? I agree that cash is an important aspect of the economy that should be protected but I don't see how a couple coins that I have not heard of are going to be the panacea they purport to be.
- brightball 4y agoThere is some law about being required to accept any form of legal tender. I think there are some specifics to it though.
- thr0wawayf00 4y agoI've seen more and more fast casual restaurants in the US starting to go cashless, so there's definitely a way for businesses to get around it. But I don't know the law at all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- josephcsible 4y agoThe key word is "debts". If you owe a debt to someone, e.g., in a restaurant where you eat first and then pay, they have to accept cash. But in situations where there's no debt, e.g., restaurants where you pay before they give you your food, they can refuse cash.
- josephcsible 4y ago> why can't we just pass a law that requires all businesses to accept cash? Why shouldn't business owners be able to choose which forms of payments to accept?
- brightball 4y agoUltimately, this is what cash based transactions are for. Ever since Covid started it seemed like there was an extreme push toward going cashless everywhere but cash is the only place you’ll find real privacy in a transaction. In the mean time, there’s always privacy.com.
- godmode2019 4y agoI bought something online yesterday. They following fields were mandatory - email - phone - address ( for delivery ) - first name - last name They created an account for some reason, and retain payment information was prechecked. I just want the thing you are selling, here is my address. Thanks. Another situation, paying a government fine. They wanted me to verify my identity to give them money. My address, Phone number DOB, middle name... Asked me if they could save my voice profile.. Said I could not pay the fine until I verified my identity. The lady got noticeable bothered when I said that would not be happening and I don't need to know any PII just process a payment. Asked if I had something to hide. What's next a biometric scan to enter government buildings?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- barrysteve 4y agoIf you wanted to be truly biometrically private nowadays, you'd need to wear a Darth Vader suit over a ghillie-suit and forest gump leg braces everywhere public, which includes inside your house. No face, electronic voice, no thermals or IR, no gait detection, height equalized by leg brace, gloves with fake finger prints. Of course you'd stand out like a sore thumb and that's the point, I'm sure it's been engineered that way to capture us all in the ideal panopticon. If you ever wanted to dodge the draft to the Vietnam war 2.0 or a bill collector with access to all this information, you'd have a very hard time.
- godmode2019 4y agoI think we are being slowly conditioned to give up our info, I hear people all the time saying well Facebook has been spying on you for years, so what does it matter? Facebook is like the litmus test for normal data collection
- stevebmark 4y agoThis is a joke right? All crypto transactions become part of the permanent public record. If you ever want to exchange your garbage commodity for a useful currency, you’ll be easily track able and outed.
- gojomo 4y agoNot all crypto transactions. Some blockchains effectively use advanced cryptography to obscure sender, recipient, & amount beyond any known methods of revealing them. Zcash & Monero are the leaders here. Zcash, used with its fully ‘shielded’ addresses, is theoretically strongest; Monero probably enough against most realistic threats – but maybe a very-deep-pocketed nation-state could decode some flows. But neither creates an ‘open Venmo’ or Bitcoin-like full public record of payers/payees/amounts for casual analysis by anyone. [Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor to the company, now a nonprofit, that initially launched Zcash.]
- zen_1 4y agoPlease read about "privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies like Grin, Monero, and Zcash" and how they work. I can assume that you already have strong opinions against cryptocurrencies, but if you're going to critique privacy-coins, it's probably a good idea to have at least some understanding of how they work.
- ls15 4y agoPrivacy coins like Monero are not making all your transactions public and exchange to fiat gets only tracked with certain exchanges. One could as well sell it for cash on the streets.
- hanklazard 4y agoSome other projects / resources in addition to those mentioned by the siblings … https://railgun.ch https://railgun.ch https://aztec.network https://aztec.network https://dark.fi https://dark.fi
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- analyst74 4y agoFull surveillance state sounds scary, but reliable, private, non-traceable financial transaction scares me more. I wished all the articles promoting those schemes talk about potential risk, i.e. increased crime, and how they can be mitigated.
- Fargoan 4y agoBetter start by getting rid of physical currency
- null0pointer 4y agoWhat is it that scares you about reliable, private, non-traceable financial transactions?
- genev 4y agoNot the person you replied to, but I could think of something like certain countries avoiding sanctions as an example. Or someone selling illegal weapons online. I realize that can be done in cash now, but it's easier with an untraceable digital currency.
- roenxi 4y agoEveryone on the planet can identify an alternate political group who would have them murdered if the situation gets dicey. The rich have been murdered by communists, the communists by fascists, the fascists by liberals, minorities by majorities, this religion by that, family against family, etc. If political opponents are moving and have provably robust infrastructure to organise it would get very, very scary. At the moment the police/authorities do make use of the ability to disrupt such things to keep the peace. In theory. Although I personally think the trade off would be worth it. The social downs would go lower but the ups will more than offset that.
- nly 4y agoThe UK tabloid media is already riddled with outrage stories where some granny is robbed of her life savings through some crypto scam and her bank won't refund her. With untraceable non-reversible digital transactions you're very vulnerable to being robbed and completely wiped out.
- HidyBush 4y agoTo me the question is very simple: make a digital currency that has both a completely traceable way of exchanging money and a completely anonymous one. If you send someone money in the traceable way then the state knows exactly the motives of the transaction and can automatically calculate the taxes you ought to pay on it. If you send someone money anonymously then you get taxed at the highest bracket possible and nobody asks questions. Are you a drug lord paying his cronies? sure, it's untraceable and safe but 40% goes to the state automatically.
- Aerroon 4y agoI think governments should create a digital equivalent of cash. They should put strong safeguards in place to make it as anonymous as cash. Maybe even protect access to these records even at a constitutional level. I think having such a digital cash system could revolutionize online commerce. Right now you need a fair bit of "capital" (know-how) to start a small online business. You can't just set up a street stall or garage sale like you can with cash. I think this makes it harder for people to get a foot in the door for entrepreneurship. A government-run digital cash system would make it possible again. It might also allow a reasonable alternative to the current ad-based economy.
- anovikov 4y agoWhy not use simply USDT/USDC? It provides what you are asking for now.
- pjc50 4y ago> You can't just set up a street stall or garage sale like you can with cash. I noticed in Norway even the people selling cold water on hot days by the side of the road took Vipps. Electronic payment systems really can be that simple if people want. It is of course not anonymous, but that's far less important to most people.
- tomohawk 4y agoUntil it is. Many people were unconcerned about depending on Russia for energy. Until they were. Wait til Russia takes over the breadbasket of Ukraine. Then there will be a food dependency too! Basing these kinds of things on sunny day thinking, such as believing that government will be benevolent (against the backdrop of history where government generally isn't), is foolish.
- nly 4y agoThere were workable proposals for private, cryptographically secure digital cash way back in the early 90s. The proposals didn't require blockchains, or proof of work, integrated seamlessly with the traditional fiat banking system, and would have been easy as a credit card card or mobile payment for people to use in 2022. Government doesn't want this. Banks don't want this. Businesses don't want this. That's why it never happened. Here's one from presentation by the NSA from 1996 https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/mone... David Chaum and Stefan Brands are 2 names to google to look at this stuff. Chaum was posting papers on this in the 80s. Who knows, perhaps Bitcoin will be the VHS that finally makes this happen one day.
- YeBanKo 4y agoI was about to say the same thing, it has been suggested long time ago. In this paper on blind signatures [1] Chaum describes in simple terms untraceable digital cash in one paragraph. [1] https://sceweb.sce.uhcl.edu/yang/teaching/csci5234WebSecurityFall2011/Chaum-blind-signatures.PDF https://sceweb.sce.uhcl.edu/yang/teaching/csci5234WebSecurit...
- nly 4y agoIkr. The only win the cryptocurrencies of today have over these early digital cash proposals is that they are permissionless... Satoshi didn't need the cooperation or the permission of vested interests to get going. Now central banks and governments are being dragged kicking and screaming in to a world in which they could have had influence in 30 years ago.
- hnbad 4y agoWhen "crypto enthusiasts" talk about privacy some people think they just mean the usual confidentiality expectations of conventional banking. But banks are required to keep records for accountability. The goal is to prevent money laundering and tax fraud. Cash payments are generally accepted for smaller transactions but anyone accepting large amounts of cash as payment will want to keep similar records to avoid running afoul of these same money laundering laws (unless they're intentionally trying to do a crime). Banks offer confidentiality, these people want complete secrecy. But most of them aren't insurrectionists or revolutionaries who fear political persecution while they try to overthrow the government. They just want to conduct businesses outside the reach of the government. Or to put it simply: they want to commit money laundering and tax fraud without being caught. Don't mistake "crypto enthusiasts" (as in cryptocurrencies) talking about privacy for actual crypto punks (as in cryptography). There's a reason the people rallying for "privacy" in crypto tech are venture capitalists and sketchy wealthy people rather than organizations like the EFF.
- nervuri 4y agoThe ECASH act is so far my favorite initiative for private online payments. A government-issued open-source anonymous digital dollar, functional both online and offline, no blockchain involved, no transaction fees. I hope they can make it work technically. And I hope Americans support this. It would also pave the way for other countries. Official site: https://ecashact.us/ https://ecashact.us/ Rohan Grey explaining the ECASH act: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BStXZH5PX1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BStXZH5PX1I It would also be great for GNU Taler to take off.