An intelligent defense must be created against the violation of privacy by governments. The cost of capturing all private information of people is one US dollar per day.
In recent days, Bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos gave a talk on the economy of privacy, in which he suggested reflecting on the low value that people give to their personal data. To protect oneself from micro-violations of privacy, the author of the book The Internet of Money proposed defending and attacking in the same way as powers threaten people’s private lives.
In this respect, the expert asked those attending his talk how much they thought that their privacy cost. He noted that the biggest problem is that most people are willing to give (away) their phone number, date of birth, location and preferences through Internet search engines, just to watch a cat video, for example.
The Internet works with micro-violations of privacy and people are very happy to use that currency. People are glad to watch the cat video, but they do not realize that they gave (away) their privacy, while losing some democracy, freedom and self-determination, all together.
Edward Snowden, cited by Antonopoulos, estimates that capturing all the information that a person has on his or her device through Google would be worth one US dollar per day. If about 7 billion people were monitored, then the privacy market would be getting USD 7 billion.
Usefulness of Personal Data
Antonopoulos explained how acts of micro-violation of privacy are committed and how the personal data and private information of millions of people that governments capture through the Internet are used. In that sense, he said that, while individuals melt watching cat videos, a dog (privacy thief) could assume power.
A person may be giving political information to an uncle in the living room of his or her house, while their conversation is being recorded. This means that governments will be able to keep doing this as long as the human race exists. Snowden says that people often stop trying to maintain their privacy as it is very cheap and easy to record everything that others do throughout their lives.
Antonopoulos’ Plan
To fight threats to privacy, the Bitcoin speaker and educator proposed using cryptography, now that humanity has the same cryptographic tools as superpowers. He recommends that people keep trying to protect their privacy, since this technology can now be applied asymmetrically.
Antonopoulos believes that surveillance monsters (or privacy thieves) can be defeated, at the same time as a certain degree of privacy is maintained to protect people from total monitoring. In that sense, he proposed continuing the fight against the surveillance of all the people on the planet. To do this, he proposed taking two steps: first applying basic defense on Internet stalking and then attacking.
He thinks that it is hard for the victims of surveillance to come together to create an open source application, so he proposes having the photo of each judge, police officer or politician on a blockchain. Now it is possible to have privacy symmetry behind those wanting to impose total monitoring, since there are more people with devices to threaten their privacy faster than they can affect other people.
The Bitcoin expert also calls for the application of a plan that allows protecting the privacy of each individual. To do this, he suggests reducing the access to the necessary technology by producing the strongest cryptography.
By Willmen Blanco
