Privacy and freedom

You're on your way home and a stranger walks up to you, greets politely and asks your ID number. Oh and your car registration. Also your physical address oh and your birthnames and a face scan with a smartphone and just press here for your fingerprint.

Sounds crazy - like nobody would consent to that, right? Why not?

Because it reveals a lot of information most consider private. Because once information is given it can't be taken back and because having that information available significantly increases the angles of attack for fraud and other crimes against you.

It means something - it has power.

But of course I do hand it out, regularly, to complete strangers. Every time someone scans my drivers license at a security gate. Protest I have, in all practical and impractical ways, but with little success and if I need to be somewhere I have to go along to get along.

I still don't like it though.

Eric Hughes wrote the Cypherpunk manifesto in 1993 and it turned out to be one of the steps that led to the creation of bitcoin 13 years later. Eric speaks about the need for privacy.

"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world."

"We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place"

"We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence"

"For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society"

Eric lives in the US, but I get the feeling he doesn't love ID scans either.

Personal information that is leaked to bad actors like fraudsters is one type of risk, but a sneakier, even more dangerous risk arises when those in authority gain extraordinary power because of their access and control of information.

Erik Voorhees speaks about this second type of risk. He was one of the first people to promote bitcoin back in 2012 when a bitcoin was worth $5. This is a quote from a speech he gave last year:

"Every time you pay with your card, you are being granted permission. It appears as if the permission is simply if you had enough money, but in reality there is another insidious layer of approval taking place. The bank, government, and numerous intermediaries all along the line, strangers to you, people you will never meet must bless each of your transactions. And you don’t notice because permission is usually granted. So long as you behave, the permission will be there. But if you require permission to spend and to trade, you require permission to exist. So why do we accept this world where you are only free to transact only at the approval of strangers? This is not freedom, it is subservience. It is serfdom. And that the chains bear lightly down in most circumstances should not lull us into forgetting the chains exist. If they are tolerated, they will grow heavier."

Now as we are required by our banks to take selfies in order to verify our faces against a Home Affairs database (shared with the bank without consent). As we give away not only addresses and ID numbers, but unalterable biometric data we should be aware that those with their finger on the button grow ever more powerful. We should notice that technology is making it easier to collect this information in an instant rather than filling in forms and asking for each element separately.

We should notice that those with the power to protect us from these practices are the same forces who would benefit most by not doing so.

Maybe that power won't be abused today and maybe it's already happening but let it increase long enough and it's likely to fall into hands that won't resist the power it brings. Like the English cricketer Geoff Boycott used to say "It doesn't matter how many good shots you play - one bad shot and you're out."

Increasing and centralizing data for "the common good" is popular in places like Europe and China today and has the same philosophical allure as communism. "If only the government had more power they could ensure equality and safety for all". It seems unlikely that governments leaning toward centralism/communism would not adopt technologies like digital ID's and Central Bank Digital Currencies and thereby gain immense power in the future.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive…those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” CS Lewis

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” George Orwell - Animal Farm

At JbayFinclub we want our community to be free.

We want to have a thriving, local economy that utilizes an independent, permissionless network like bitcoin and allows anyone to transact anonymously. If you're able to service your needs locally using a value transfer mechanism that can't be controlled it bestows upon you a type of freedom that may seem silly and burdensome now, but could be invaluable in a multitude of future scenarios. If the supply of that currency is fixed and it shields you from inflation then all the better.

The internet for freedom of speech and bitcoin for freedom of transacting.

SARS recently announced that they are working toward a unique digital identifier for all South Africans. This system aims to use biometric data ( ex. face scans) in order to identify citizens across different databases and services and would include a host of personal information.

These "advances" will no doubt continue and head-on resistance may prove to be futile, but I agree with Eric. First that we should defend our own privacy if we expect to have any and second that we should come together and deploy these alternative, private systems for the common good.

*We include a couple of references to frame the topic below.

• Former US Secretary of State John Kerry making a case against freedom of speech

• Canadian government freezes accounts of those involved in protests.

• European Central bank launches the European Digital Identity wallet. This wallet will include a Central Bank Digital Currency (more on that in the next installment) and resembles the Chinese system.

• WEF panalist explaining the potential of a CBDC.

• Milton Friedman predicting bitcoin's role in reducing the role of government (25 years ago)

• FA Hayek explaining the right place and nature of "money".

• A great explanation of bitcoin by Peter van Valkenberg to a US Senate committee.