Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

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Rule of law & democracy began when people had far more privacy than today. The founding motivations for the USA included resisting privacy abuses like 'general warrants' – the state peeking into everyone's business, without specific suspicion, to find criminals.

The modern level of financial surveillance – KYC, etc – is only a few decades old, and collects more info for the state than any 'general warrant' could. Even in fairly-free countries, the burdens & murky liabilities created by turning every financial agent into a part-time police informer has the effect of persecuting & impoverishing disfavored individuals & groups – even those who've been convicted of no crime. In unfree states the same surveillance helps quash all kinds of dissent.

A blind faith in authorities' use of financial surveillance ignores history & the current reality of billions living under untrustworthy regimes. Many hardly even pretend to offer "rule of law & democracy".

I don't quite follow your logic. The parent comment pointed out that obfuscating financial transactions makes it hard to enforce laws. You responded by saying Monero improves privacy. That might be true, but it doesn't really address the concern about illegal/harmful activity that a current like Monero would enable.

I do agree that financial surveillance is an issue, but I'm not sure Monero is the best way to curtail it. Why not try passing strong consumer protection laws that ban companies from collecting and selling data on financial transactions as well as tighter restrictions on the access that law enforcement has on this data? If the problem is a government that is abusing its power, it wouldn't be too hard for them to crackdown on any cryptocurrency they consider a threat. Monero feels like a band-aid rather than a long term solution, and one with some pretty significant downsides.

> tighter restrictions on the access that law enforcement has on this data

I get your point here, but once someone has already lost trust in the government, having the government regulate itself isn't really a viable counter to that person's concerns.

“You responded by saying Monero improves privacy.”

I did not mention Monero at all!

I pointed out that “rule of law & democracy” did OK before the recent modern era of massive, preemptive, general-warrant-like financial surveillance. And that level of surveillance may in fact endanger “rule of law & democracy”.

“Why not try passing strong consumer protection laws that ban companies from collecting and selling data on financial transactions as well as tighter restrictions on the access that law enforcement has on this data?”

You are welcome to try that. Why don’t you start in China, Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Nicaragua? Or even Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Brazil, or India? Protecting financial privacy in those places would help show if your “pass a strong consumer protection law” plan might work.

Even in a country where such a law might have a chance, it’s a fragile protection, & ineffective against most abuses by the state itself. Much better is: built-in, inherent, classic privacy.

Monero may not be the best way to curtail financial surveillance, but privacy coins are here to stay, regardless of any future laws or opinions to the contrary. Your opinion of whether it is the best way to curtail it is an irrelevant footnote as privacy coins march on.

Technology such as atomic swaps mean privacy coins will never be killed by legislation. The best we can do is outlaw their use by the honest, relegating them only to the blackmarket (which is precisely the place you didn't want them in the first place).

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