pull down to refresh

The Government Is Not Your Friend - Shinobi, Bitcoin Magazine bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/the-government-is-not-your-friend

1193 sats \ 10 comments \ @Scoresby 8 Aug Politics_And_Law

Shinobi starts out with a pretty nice summary:

So, how did we get here? Eight months after the election of a president who describes himself as a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocate, after the Department of Justice themselves have explicitly stated that they are not going to engage in regulation by prosecution, or prosecute mixing services, how was Roman Storm found guilty?

Which leads to the following conclusion:

"The government’s word is worthless. It means nothing."

While this is a mindset to which I am very sympathetic, I don't really agree with where it leads Shinobi:

We need to stop begging them for clauses and riders in bills. We need to take them to court. We need to stop kissing their ass and pandering to their egos and notion of public persona. We need to call them out as the two-faced spineless people they are.

I don't see why we would expect our courts to function any differently than the other branches of our government. The very fact that we have the third party doctrine is evidence that the courts will disregard the constitution if they see fit.

Sure, we can point to the cypherpunks' victory in court that secured our use of encryption, but it feels like an exception rather than the rule. What would have been the outcome if they'd had a different judge who ruled against them?

Shinobi does conclude that if the courts don't work, we'll have to embrace civil disobedience. And that's great, but I wish he'd made been a little more specific: I'm not so sure that civil disobedience itself wins the battle, rather it's being willing to develop and use technologies that make your disobedience effective.

One of the most hopeful things for me is reading stories about the governmental responses to invasive species. Unless the government goes full scorched earth, it's almost always a lost cause. By the time they see one bullfrog or zebra clam or whatever, there are a million in the bushes, breeding like mad. Information is like this. As long as people are willing to use the tools we have, I don't think any government will be able to keep up.

This is one of the reasons things like copyparty catch my imagination.

view all related items

202 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 8 Aug

Agreed. The idea that the courts somehow aren't part of Leviathan is absurd. In fact, I'm surprised Bernstein hasn't been overturned yet.

I'm happy to see my spotted lantern fly population has now successfully occupied my garden

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 8 Aug

our symbol of hope is a foreign insect.

102 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 8 Aug

We need to stop begging them for clauses and riders in bills. We need to take them to court. We need to stop kissing their ass and pandering to their egos and notion of public persona. We need to call them out as the two-faced spineless people they are.

Easy to say when you're primarily a critic and will never see a courtroom for speech ... because there is a clause in an ancient bill (gasp) that protects your right to it.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 8 Aug

good point. why do you think the first amendment has been generally successful at protecting speech in the digital age, while the fourth amendment has not been so successful at protecting privacy?

(also it is really strange that one person can write words (opinion pieces) and feel entirely safe that they won't go to prison and another person can also write words (code) and be very much at risk of going to jail.)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 8 Aug

privacy is more abstract and/or the people directing public opinion have less incentive to publicize violations of privacy

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @perscrutador 9 Aug

This does not protect anything and no right. You can say what you want, there is no right to that. This bill you mention is an order among the minions saying that "a slave can say whatever he wants and we are not going to arrest him for it".

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 8 Aug

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @perscrutador 9 Aug

The faith of the so-called bitcoiners in support of politicians and all the departments of these big companies that are governments is somewhat childish.

We need to take them to court.

Courts, what a joke. The situation in itself is already abusive, to complain to the slaver about their own actions. I expected more from bitcoiners and their self-layered sense of freedom and sovereignty. Your observations are pertinent, except for that:

we'll have to embrace civil disobedience

What is missing for civil disobedience is to stop calling it civil disobedience. If it is not an individual action of sovereign individuals using tools that are already available, making exchanges with each other, making deals with each other, communicating, all of this without having to go through or ask permission from any agent or group of agents of the self-styled government, then it will lead to the same hole that they are now complaining about. The tools are already there, just use it. To insulate this movement with a term that means "disobedience of slaves" is to validate that they have and always will have dominion over you.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwapMarket 8 Aug

Better yet, the government's word means exactly the opposite.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TadiRetata 8 Aug

You're right to be skeptical about the courts. While the cypherpunks' victory in the 1990s—which successfully challenged government restrictions on the export of strong encryption as an infringement on free speech—is a powerful example, it's also a product of a specific legal and political moment. It’s hard to ignore that the courts, like other government branches, are influenced by politics and the prevailing legal philosophies of the day. The Third-Party Doctrine is a perfect illustration of this. This legal principle, developed through a series of Supreme Court cases, holds that you have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in information you voluntarily share with a third party, such as your bank, email provider, or social media company. This doctrine has been widely criticized for being out of step with the realities of the digital age, where sharing data with third parties is unavoidable. It shows that the courts can, and do, create legal frameworks that can significantly erode privacy protections.