Thread by @gladstein

1/ Seems like a good day to share my @TIME essay:

"In the Fight Against Extremism, Don't Demonize Surveillance-Busting Tools like Signal and Bitcoin"

An old narrative is rising up again: privacy tech is bad because it helps extremists and criminals 🧵

time.com/5933380/signal…

2/ We see articles everywhere from the @nytimes to the @ap on how mass surveillance-busting tools like Signal and Bitcoin are being used by domestic extremists.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that cryptocurrencies are “a particular concern” for terrorism + money laundering

3/ This isn’t the first time these arguments have filled the news cycle.

In the early 1990s, the Clinton Administration (and Joe Biden) opposed widespread strong encryption on grounds that it would help terrorists and pedophiles.

4/ The Justice Department even investigated Phil Zimmerman, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy, as the PGP project made it easy for PC users to exchange encrypted messages.

The administration tried to push the “Clipper Chip” to give them a backdoor into consumer devices.

5/ Eventually the Clipper Chip and anti-privacy restrictions were defeated by a coalition of civil liberties activists, tech businesses, and the cypherpunks: a group of coders who gave their unstoppable tools away for free.

6/ Privacy came under state attack again after 9/11 in the name of fighting terrorism, and has since been repeatedly breached in the service of surveillance capitalism, but Americans continue to fight back through software.

7/ Edward @Snowden’s revelations in 2013 prompted citizens across the political spectrum to consider the impact of government surveillance, and eventually helped incentivize major tech platforms to add e2e encryption.

8/ The Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, the more recent threats of cops spying on racial justice protesters, and the increased scrutiny of big tech are just the latest incentives for ordinary people to adopt privacy tools.

9/ Today even former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden has argued that Americans are safer with privacy tools.

The culture war over encrypted messaging might finally be ending.

But the fight for privacy isn’t finished, it’s just moving to the next medium: money.

10/ Most Americans may not yet grasp that financial privacy is just as important as communications privacy for our democracy.

Your spending habits say more about you than your words.

11/ In an open society, the ability to buy political books, have discreet medical procedures, and build communities without government surveillance is essential.

12/ Cash has traditionally served this purpose, but is in decline and now accounts for less than 30% of American financial transactions.

We use corporate money like Apple Pay or Visa for almost everything.

13/ And soon cash may be replaced by Central Bank Digital Currencies: electronic Fed liabilities held in phone wallets.

Corporate and government digital money will need to meet an increasing number of “anti-money laundering” laws and will be, in effect, surveillance tools.

14/ Bitcoin is neutral like cash, and can’t discriminate between good and bad.

Authorities will blame extremism not just on Signal and Telegram, but also on Bitcoin and anything they can’t control.

We should push back.

15/ Yes, some extremists use these tools. They also use mobile phones, email, and the internet.

The way to fight extremism isn’t to crack down on innovation and expand the surveillance state.

Those are the tactics of tyrants.

16/ According to the @EFF, mass surveillance ends up hurting the most vulnerable, and disproportionately targets minorities.

The main superspreaders of extremist content remain centralized corporate platforms like Facebook and YouTube, not open-source privacy platforms.

17/ Rather than expand spying, we can fight domestic extremism through better national leadership, citizen journalism and police reform.

In Congress, some already agree.

18/ On January 19, in the aftermath of the Capitol Hill riots, 10 officials led by @RashidaTlaib expressed “strong opposition to the expansion of the… surveillance powers of the US government.”

They warned, “we have been here before and we have seen where that road leads.”

19/ As you read more articles demonizing identity-guarding tools like Signal and Bitcoin, think about the police state that awaits if we shun them and turn to mass surveillance to fight extremism.

If we give up liberty to get security, we'll end up with neither.