Comment by ETH_start
12 hours ago
GNU Taler provides a backdoor for spying. You cannot create an open system in line with FOSS principles and be compliant with laws that mandate centralized control. That's why this project began with an architecture that prefaces dependence on the backdoor key holders, and is now going even more pronouncedly in the direction of asymmetrical power relationships, by becoming an entirely centralized bank. This is the only way it can remain compliant with the laws in question.
If you want to maintain FOSS principles and provide people with monetary technology, you need to be noncompliant — whether in letter or just in spirit — with the law in most of the world, where the law limits people's access to financial activity, in order to fulfil a public policy of empowering gatekeepers.
There is no backdoor. There may be bugs (point those out, we'll fix!), and there is the very clear and documented statement that the receiver of funds is subject to legitimization based on the legal requirements under which the exchange operates. That is not a backdoor. Backdoor implies secrecy, we have no secrets other than our private keys. ;-)
> GNU Taler provides a backdoor for spying.
And that backdoor for spying in this entirely free/libre software is…?
The centralised state-run exchange that you have to connect to to make the software useful?
My understanding is that you (the buyer) connect to the exchange to get tokens, and the seller later connects to the exchange to get money for your tokens. The exchange doesn’t know where, how and when you spend your tokens. Where’s the backdoor?
(And I think the exchanges aren’t expected to be run directly by the state, but that’s probably irrelevant to the topic at hand.)