SEC’s Peirce, calls to protect people's right to communicate and transfer value privately
There's a growing war against privacy. Global surveillance by companies and the government have recently become an increasingly discussed topic.
It's not all a conspiracy, it is an actual concern. Just a while ago, I saw a Cointelegraph report on the EU's Chat control plan; a proposal to scan all private messages.
According to the report, 19 EU member states are backing this proposal, which could necessitate pre-encryption message scanning on apps like WhatsApp and Signal by October.
The plan reportedly seeks to implement client-side scanning, meaning software embedded in users’ devices that inspects content before it is encrypted.
Trust regulators to spin up some bull shit like “prevention of child sexual abuse material (CSAM)” as a reason to surveil citizens of a nation.
Beyond scanning, the package includes mandatory age verification, effectively removing anonymity from messaging platforms. Digital freedom groups are asking citizens to contact their MEPs, sign petitions and push back before the law becomes irreversible. – Cointelegraph
Evidently, this violates an individual's right to privacy and will effectively render private messenger useless as they fail to deliver on their primary use case.
SEC’s Peirce defends transaction privacy as Tornado Cash verdict looms
US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce told an audience of blockchain researchers and practitioners on Monday that lawmakers and regulators need to protect people’s right to transact privately.
Her comments come as Roman Storm’s Tornado Cash trial heads toward a verdict.
Peirce said in a speech at the Science of Blockchain Conference that privacy-protecting technologies and the right to self-custody crypto should be safeguarded, along with the rights of developers of open-source privacy software, who shouldn’t be held responsible for how others use their code.
“We should take concrete steps to protect people’s ability not only to communicate privately, but to transfer value privately, as they could have done with physical coins in the days in which the Fourth Amendment was crafted,” she said. – Cointelegraph report
While I haven't closely followed Storm's Tornado Cash case, it's been one that often comes up during privacy tech talks and for a good reason.
Roman Storm is a Russian-born developer and co-founder of Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer that anonymizes crypto transactions by pooling and redistributing them to reduce traceability.
Tornado Cash is essentially a privacy tool that anyone can use to conceal their financial operations, on-chain. Tools like this are very much needed because blockchains are open ledgers, and although one cannot typically know who's behind an address, the transactions are visible to all and in some occasions, transparency and traceability can be a problem.
Also, sometimes people may interact with platforms that gets their identity revealed, leading to the need for tools that can enable them to gain back some privacy.
This is a right every individual, globally, should have. Sadly, we are losing this every day. Today we don't even trust our mobile devices to not be actively listening and recording our conversations. We don't trust the cameras to not be filming our environment.
One could ask; why aren't devices designed with cover caps for cameras? It would be really helpful to be able to cover it all up and not have to worry if a random app or your device itself is secretly taking photos or video recordings of you.
There's an urgency to fight for our privacy and in today's tech-heavy world, that entails fighting for privacy tech and tools. The government will try to surveil the globe just as the EU is pushing for, and that necessitates significantly investing in solutions that can make any attempted process difficult to execute.
Being hopeful that regulatory bodies will play nice isn't going to help in the long run. We have to have systems in place before the inevitable attack on privacy kicks in, in full force.