{"id":10646,"date":"2022-03-17T21:11:42","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T21:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci029c65f94000272a"},"modified":"2022-03-17T21:11:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T21:11:42","slug":"snowden-discusses-bitcoin-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/snowden-discusses-bitcoin-privacy","title":{"rendered":"Snowden Discusses Bitcoin\u2019s Lack of Privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><ul>\n<li>\u201cBitcoin is not an anonymous ledger,\u201d said Edward Snowden. <\/li>\n<li>\u201cYou get chain analysis people and whatnot who are doing fairly devious things with it,\u201d he added, discussing companies focused on on-chain analysis. <\/li>\n<li>Speaking on the privacy of Bitcoin, Snowden stated that \u201cit\u2019s really just private to the public, but it\u2019s public to the prominent, shall we say.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Edward Snowden, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/jun\/23\/edward-snowden-nsa-files-timeline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">whistle-blower<\/a> and president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation \u2013 a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting journalists \u2013 recently took an <a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/videos\/interviews\/BW49Ik6c\/edward-snowden-talks-governments-and-crypto-cbdcs-and-ethereum-vs-bitcoin-at-camp-ethereal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interview<\/a> to discuss Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, privacy, and nation-state influence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBitcoin is not an anonymous ledger, it is a truly public ledger, and those things are always out there,\u201d Snowden explained as he recounted his experience with Wikileaks, in which there was a seemingly insurmountable amount of pressure from the U.S government to shut the organization and his story down. <\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin allowed \u201ctime and distance,\u201d as Snowden said, which ultimately allowed him to communicate with and meet the necessary journalists that would eventually lead to his escape to Russia, as well as the release of his leak. <\/p>\n<p>Time and distance is an important distinction that is separate from the idea of safety. Possessing safety would assume Bitcoin was capable of hiding identity and traceability perpetually, however, Snowden knew this was not the case, nor was he taking extensive steps to be anonymous, as he explains in the interview. <\/p>\n<p>The mark against anonymity is not necessarily a critique, but rather a statement of fact when proper steps toward anonymity are not taken. Companies have an entire business model built on tracking Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions, through which <em>Bitcoin Magazine <\/em>has <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/ukraine-russia-resistance-needs-bitcoin-privacy\">reported stories<\/a> on the traceability of transactions for donation causes. <\/p>\n<p>Snowden explored chain analysis companies saying, \u201cYou get chain analysis people and whatnot who are doing fairly devious things with it,\u201d including objectives like \u201ctrying to get a financial edge out of the on-chain analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Snowden addressed the idea of privacy as it relates to one\u2019s capacity to discern or obtain information when compared to public capability of discerning or obtaining that exact same information. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you think about Bitcoin having a public ledger, well, once a dollar enters the banking system, there is a private ledger that is available to the people who are performing financial surveillance,\u201d he explains. \u201cSo it\u2019s really just private to the public, but it\u2019s public to the prominent, shall we say.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When asked why cryptocurrency and financial privacy are important for whistle-blowers, Snowden responded that \u201cthere\u2019s this question we all have to ask ourselves: What is the role of the government in a free and open society?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Snowden went on to explain that it is important to examine the roles nation-states actually play in our lives, as it relates to the philosophical question of what role they should be playing. Snowden then brings to bear the consideration that an open and free society, or one that wishes to be so, must also do everything in its power to achieve its idyllic state. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent interview, Edward Snowden discussed his concerns with Bitcoin privacy, other cryptocurrencies, and the ethics of governance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2785,"featured_media":10647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2129,922,93,991,73,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-10646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-blockchain-surveillance","9":"tag-edward-snowden","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-on-chain-analysis","12":"tag-privacy","13":"tag-surveillance"},"author_data":{"id":2785,"name":"Shawn Amick","nicename":"shawn-amick","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/MjEwMTYzMzc3Njg5ODYzNjQ2-96x96.webp"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/us-suing-edward-snowden-over-new-memoir.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2785"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}