Thread by @zooko

Privacy technology (such as Zcash) doesn't *just* protect Americans from their own government (in accordance with quintessentially American values such the Fourth Amendment). Perhaps more importantly, it protects Americans from *enemy governments*.

Listen to Chairman Powell. Liberty, and limitations on central power, is the way we do things here. It's what makes us different and better.

https://twitter.com/zooko/status/1227475696840323077

In fact, because of the way law, technology, information security, and industry interact, fully-transparent blockchains expose normal everyday American users to foreign military/espionage operations *much more* than they expose criminal users to law enforcement.

And conversely, because of the way blockchain technology and encryption technology actually work, encrypted blockchains like Zcash protect normal, law-abiding users from criminals and foreign enemies *much more* than they protect criminals from law enforcement.

Regulators and policy-makers — especially in the U.S.A. — have already come a long way in their understanding of these powerful new technologies and their implications, but they (and we all) still have a long way to go to understand their impacts.

I've been thinking of this — again — today because of the news that the Treasury department responsible for financial surveillance of Americans (and probably all other American government agencies!) have been hacked, probably by Vladimir Putin's spy agency.

There *is* a tension between American law enforcement and the American people. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution really *does* make their job harder sometimes.

But there is an outright conflict between Americans and foreign enemies, and in that conflict, technologies like blockchain and encryption are tools that served the interests of both the American people *and* their government.

This is a process we went through when deploying encryption for the Internet. For a few years, fearful, short-sighted officials tried to ban it, on law enforcement and national security grounds. A few years later they mandated it! On law enforcement and national security grounds.