Comment by Eridrus
14 hours ago
I don't have a predetermined opinion on whether it is good or bad for cash to be untraceable.
I think arguments for privacy are pretty poorly argued and often come down to "isn't the idea of someone watching you icky" which this thread is not disabusing me of.
The main argument for privacy is that a lack of privacy is the primary vehicle of crimes against humanity.
When you do not have privacy, you must then have trust. You are trusting, typically blindly, that your governments and other organizations will not use knowledge against you.
Before the Holocaust, Germany built a registry of known Jews by census. Obviously at the time, nobody knew what it could be used for, the latent evil within just plain information. It was done innocently, naively.
The same applies to all privacy violations. Yes, we could monitor, record, and analyze all text messages. Sure.
What are the consequences of that? What if you live somewhere where being gay is punishable by execution? What if you out yourself?
What if you're not even gay, but it seems as though you might be?
Or what if you live in an authoritarian state, and dissent is punished with death? Your government has cornered you. They can do whatever they like, and you cannot so much as vocalize complaints.
You may say, "oh well this isn't the case for me, so who cares?"
Yes, now, in this particular point in time, in your very specific place. What garantees do you have that things stay that way? None. You are blindly trusting that those who hold your information will not weaponize it.
You have given your enemies a gun, loaded it for them, held it up to your forehead, and said "please don't pull the trigger"
As a thought experiment, imagine how differently the underground railroad would look if everyone had smartphones that were tracked and communications surveilled.
This seems like an argument against the state in every form, you could say the same thing about the government collecting taxes, having a police department, courts etc.
Unless you are a committed anarchist though, you likely see a limit to the use of the precautionary principle as applied to state capacity in general.
Why is this argument sufficient to stop the state from monitoring financial transactions, but not sufficient to prevent the existence of a justice system?
> This seems like an argument against the state in every form, you could say the same thing about the government collecting taxes, having a police department, courts etc.
Yes and no.
Yes in that: all of those tools can be abused.
We need to take steps to ensure they are not, and we need to actively deprive the government of tools they can use for evil. The US has fought wars over this, which we why we created the constitution as we did.
No in that: information is both everlasting and fundamental. Privacy does not address bits or paper, those are proxies. Privacy addresses the human mind. This is the key people miss when they try to make an analogy.
The police and justice system only address actions by their nature. They are fundamentally restricted.
Private violations go to a deeper, lower, level. They attack the precursor to actions - thoughts and identity. Who you are, and what you believe.
What does this mean in practice?
Suppose I am a terrorist. If I want to avoid the justice system, it's simple. I will not commit acts of terror. I am untouchable, no amount of police activity can compromise my life or liberty.
Suppose we, instead, don't look at actions, and attack privacy. Suppose you deduce I am a terrorist. Maybe from the color of my house, from the jokes in my messages, from my patterns of movement, from the length of my hair, from the activities at my job.
Now, I can no longer avoid the attack, because it is intrinsic to my character. Like a stain, or a marker.
In theory this sounds like a good thing: we caught terrorists before they could commit terror.
But notice something: we cannot know someone's identity or beliefs. Mind reading is currently impossible. We are trying to implement thought crimes, without the ability to know thoughts.
This is compounded with the fact that surveillance is forever. Every data point collected on you, we should assume, will outlive you.
It does not matter if you're not actually a terrorist and you're just a brown person, and then you spend the next 10 years donating to children's hospitals. The damage is done.
This is all, of course, the happy path: we're trying to get terrorists. I'm assuming the government is not evil.
But, that's a bad assumption, isn't it? Time passes whether you want it to or not. What is good tomorrow is not what is good today.
This doesn't mean privacy should be absolute. But it does mean that a complete lack of privacy is disasterous.
Up until right about now, that has simply not been possible. We are limited by the physical world and technology.
What we have right now is a fatal combination of unprecedented surveillance tools and a complete disdain for privacy.
Make no mistake: such a combination will result in casualties never before seen to mankind. This allows a type of warfare and destruction that operates at a more fundamental level than primitive guns and tanks. Even nuclear weaponry is nothing in the face of the absolute dissolution of privacy.
If you don't agree with me, I don't need to kill you or your family. I don't need to invade your country. I know what everyone is thinking, so I will change their thoughts, and now you do not disagree with me. Think supercharged propaganda and complete silence of dissent.
> I think arguments for privacy are pretty poorly argued and often come down to "isn't the idea of someone watching you icky" which this thread is not disabusing me of.
Now imagine that "someone" hates people like you, has the power to hurt you with impunity and is actively looking for any excuse to do so.