> That's quite a game to play, one of mutually assured destruction.
I don't think so. These are arms races and they happen all the time, even in nature. This particular struggle is about principles.
For example: many people, myself included, think advertising is morally wrong. Are we going to ask the billion dollar industry to cease and desist? That'd be pointless. Better to make ad blocking technology that solves the problem whether they want it or not. They develop countermeasures, people develop countermeasures against their countermeasures. It goes on and on. We're winning so far.
In this case, it's a politico-technological arms race. People don't agree with whatever it is the government's doing so they make technology that prevents them from doing it. Government makes new laws to neutralize the technology. People make new technology to work around the new laws. And so on. With every iteration, the government must become more tyrannical in order to maintain the same power it previously enjoyed.
Technologies such as Monero actually bring the world closer to the principles the US was founded on, principles it apparently forgot about. Will the US remember its roots? Or will it turn into China? That's the political choice the existence of this technology forces the government to make.
> I suggest that instead technology be devised to help expose the information necessary to pursue crime and criminality under mutually reasonably circumstances.
That's idealistic. Every day governments prove that they are not fit to have this power. That they'll twist those circumstances until they are no longer mutually reasonable. They are corrupt. They will abuse this access for personal reasons. Global surveillance personnel are frequently caught spying on the people they know for personal gain, including their spouses.
I refuse to give them any power at all if it means even one person will be abused. Suffering at the hands of crime is one thing, suffering at the hands of the people who were supposed to protect you is an indignity without measure.
I don't think so. These are arms races and they happen all the time, even in nature. This particular struggle is about principles.
For example: many people, myself included, think advertising is morally wrong. Are we going to ask the billion dollar industry to cease and desist? That'd be pointless. Better to make ad blocking technology that solves the problem whether they want it or not. They develop countermeasures, people develop countermeasures against their countermeasures. It goes on and on. We're winning so far.
In this case, it's a politico-technological arms race. People don't agree with whatever it is the government's doing so they make technology that prevents them from doing it. Government makes new laws to neutralize the technology. People make new technology to work around the new laws. And so on. With every iteration, the government must become more tyrannical in order to maintain the same power it previously enjoyed.
Technologies such as Monero actually bring the world closer to the principles the US was founded on, principles it apparently forgot about. Will the US remember its roots? Or will it turn into China? That's the political choice the existence of this technology forces the government to make.
> I suggest that instead technology be devised to help expose the information necessary to pursue crime and criminality under mutually reasonably circumstances.
That's idealistic. Every day governments prove that they are not fit to have this power. That they'll twist those circumstances until they are no longer mutually reasonable. They are corrupt. They will abuse this access for personal reasons. Global surveillance personnel are frequently caught spying on the people they know for personal gain, including their spouses.
I refuse to give them any power at all if it means even one person will be abused. Suffering at the hands of crime is one thing, suffering at the hands of the people who were supposed to protect you is an indignity without measure.