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Comment by devit | Hacker News Reader

If you have anonymity, you can trivially turn it into pseudonymity by signing all messages with the same public key (which is what Satoshi Nakamoto did...).

Distributing pirated content and child pornography is perfectly doable with just pseudonymity.

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Satoshi published a PGP key, but never signed any of his public communication. Reading the recent email[1] sent under his name suggests why:

Bitcoin was designed to be protected from the influence of charismatic leaders, even if their name is Gavin Andresen, Barack Obama, or Satoshi Nakamoto.

[1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015...

> If you have anonymity, you can trivially turn it into pseudonymity

That's true. But anonymity isn't necessary (and by itself it's not sufficient).

> Distributing pirated content and child pornography is perfectly doable with just pseudonymity.

That depends on how the pseudonymity is implemented. If it's provided by a trusted third party, for example, it might not be so easy to use it to distribute child porn.

>If it's provided by a trusted third party, for example, it might not be so easy to use it to distribute child porn.

And what about whistle-blowing? Without true anonymity you're relying on humans to protection rather than verifiable and trustless systems.

That's true, but there is precedent for this sort of thing being viable. Lawyers, for example, are trusted third parties that provide this sort of protection in certain cases. We could, as a society, decide that providing political anonymity is important enough that we establish a profession whose job it is to provide it.

I'm not saying this is necessarily the best option. All I'm saying is that it's an option. If there's one other option there may be many other options. We ought to spend some time thinking about them rather than simply accepting as dogma that anonymity is an unalloyed good, and that anyone who challenges this view ought to be downvoted into oblivion.

>Lawyers, for example, are trusted third parties that provide this sort of protection in certain cases.

"[Attorney-Client Privilege] It applies in all situations, though a lawyer may be required to testify regarding client communications under compulsion of law." [0] All that you do in that system is shift the risk from the client to the attorney. If the attorney is not willing to lay down their life for you then you're out of luck. How does one verify that an attorney will not give them up if compelled?

> We ought to spend some time thinking about them rather than simply accepting as dogma that anonymity is an unalloyed good, and that anyone who challenges this view ought to be downvoted into oblivion.

People raping children and spreading the depiction of those acts is bad, but if you want provable protection then you have to take the bad with the good. If the anonymity or pseudo-anonymity is not trustless then it should not be trusted in life or death scenarios.

[0] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/p...

In a dual-state like U.S., there's no such thing as a trusted third party. The public legal system has courts that can override their protection for arbitrary reasons that can't be forseen by users. The Lavabit trial showed that one whistleblower using the service was enough for FBI to get judge to order them to compromise all users while also ordered to lie to same users about their privacy. And then there's the secret system that lets FBI "compel" U.S. companies to "SIGINT enable" their systems for NSA. However that happens. Then NSA shares that info with FBI and many other organizations that can charge people while telling them how to avoid due process. So, your concept is utter non-sense that doesn't reflect reality.

Further, a trusted third party having a goldmine like this won't work because every intelligence service and organized crime group in the world will come for them. It's the problem with all escrow at the national level. Even DOD hasn't been able to stop hackers from beating their systems with spearfishing and regular malware. And the LEO's plus DOD tell us they can secure a digital goldmine that will be specifically targeted by all attackers while being required to share with any court upon receipt of a piece of paper or digital request? Huh?

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