Privacy Highlight: Take a Stand

uh moving right along our next panel is called taking a stand so you know taking a stand can be scary it can be challenging it can be a lonely thing to do especially when you may be taking a stand against something like a government uh these folks are going to talk about how to have courage in the act of taking a stand um all of our panelists are subject matter experts so we're gonna do this in a slightly non-traditional fashion but I'm excited to introduce David usby the co-founder and CEO of Cryptid Technologies who is going to quote unquote moderate I.E participate in the next panel it's a small panel but it is a panel of giants in the space so I'm excited about it all right take it away guys thank you so much thank you so this panel is called taking a stand and not that the other panels weren't important but this one actually has a call to action in it and it actually is directed at every one of us in this room and um before we get started I wanted to point out that one of my greatest Inspirations to take a stand was probably one of the greatest hacker activists in our generation there's a young man named Aaron Swartz yes he does deserve a round of applause um he is most well known for being probably the first person to weaponize the organizing power of the internet to raise the signal and lower the noise of the desires of individual people so much that the people who are in charge who have power and money had to listen to us he organized the you know helped organize the resistance to the sopa Bill the stop online Privacy Act and the pipa Bill and really showed the power that the internet can have for individuals to come together to self-organize for us to um you know as the Constitution says get together and petition our government right and uh sadly we Mark the 10th anniversary of his passing this last January and I just wanted to bring it out that taking a stand does have a cost a lot of us Lose Friends lose family lose jobs lose access to financial services which is what we're going to talk about here today and I know that when that kind of heat comes down on each one of us it can feel profoundly isolating and sadly I think that's one of the key factors in why Aaron took his life I think he found he felt profoundly alone and didn't have anybody on his side and so before we get started I want to take just 15 seconds and I'm going to ask everyone in here because we're all here for a reason this is take a stand so these people are sympathetic to this idea just take 15 seconds and introduce yourself to the people next to you just say hi I'm so and so please 15 seconds all right now you're not alone anymore you know people who have the same thoughts you do and I just don't want ever to hear about any one of you doing what Aaron did because you're so alone you're not alone I will miss you okay you will be missed there are people who love you so you know take a stand have conviction and build your community around you and just remember that you are human and we love you and don't do what Aaron did please don't so with that um we're here to talk about Financial we're actually we wanted we talked backstage we want to talk about financial uh privacy Financial surveillance and censorship before we get there I'm gonna do I'm going to introduce myself so um I'm Dave hughesby co-founder CEO of a company called Cryptid Technologies there's a company I built to take a stand very specifically I wrote some blog posts that put our values out there publicly and stated our commitment to how we were going to build the solutions we did I proposed a definition of decentralization to be the direction in which user sovereignty increases and then I wrote another blog post outlining six fundamental principles of user sovereignty such things such as privacy by default pseudonymity by default open filed formats and protocols everywhere open and strong encryption for all transactions who not what for authorization and lastly a user-directed consent driven power structure and since then we have put in a lot of effort to address the needs of well I guess the first product that we're launching addresses the fact that the government does have a legitimate interest in regulating Financial transactions you know coming from the hacker Community it was really easy for me to be like you know to heck with the government but I don't think that's the right way to be I don't think it's the right choice to stick your head in the sand and hope the government's going to be nice to you and so we built technology it's open source open technology that allows us to to do financial transaction compliance in zero knowledge so this is the native language of cryptocurrencies and web3 and I am trying to approach the government with my hand out and a smile on my face and say I recognize your legitimate interest in doing this here's how we want to be regulated we would we want to comply but we want to do it in our native language which is cryptography and it's been tough taking a stand is difficult and so one of the things that we build or the thing that gives me hope is that in these transactions we provide a way for people to be private by default but if there is ever a warrant issued there is a way to walk back and find out who the counterparties are this is perfect Fourth Amendment privacy it's how I think it should be done and you know shout out to my buddy Wayne he said to me earlier isn't that the American way to do it and I think so so enough said for me I'm going to focus on my co-panelists here so I've got Anaya Robinson ACLU of Colorado senior policy strategists excellent and yes thanks for being here tonight Mark Belcher who is I've known Marta for a long time we met many years ago back at eff I believe right and um Marta is now president of filecoin foundation and general counsel for protocol labs so Giants in this field so I'm going to pose you a question to both of you in the interests of finding or under the topic of financial surveillance and censorship okay I think we'll start with the night I'll put you on the spot tonight what is your greatest concern in that topic and if you were dictated for a day and could rewrite any piece of policy what would it be it's a loaded question Dave um I think today because the answer to that question I think changes constantly working in policy and specifically like Tech and data surveillance and policy um but there's been especially in the past week several bills introduced in States across the U.S uh around gender affirming care and Reproductive Rights limiting the ability to utilize credit card processing transactions to pay for gender affirming care reproductive access in states that are trying to erode access to those civil rights and civil liberties and I think that in conjunction with a lot of the other pieces of technology that the government is using as surveillance tools while eroding our rights um Israel right we have States like Texas that is really trying to limit people's ability to access life-saving care in States like Colorado that have embedded protections for that care and when folks move between spaces the government in Texas can utilize facial recognition to know where they're going they can utilize alprs to know where they're going they can utilize credit card transactions to know what they're paying for they can utilize period trap tracker apps to understand whether or not it was the right time in somebody's cycle to come to Colorado spend that money in the space that it shows up on the credit card statement and then drive back to Texas and as soon as they can get back there could be arrested and prosecuted for accessing reproductive care in a different state and this is continuing to happen and continuing to build in States across the country these bills have been introduced in 43 States so far in 2023 yes um and it's an erosion of Rights right and it's an erosion of our ability to access who we are have bodily autonomy and show up in spaces authentically while the government is surveilling us and disallowing us that access while criminalizing it on top of just the removal of the access to um so I think one of the Realms of financial surveillance that I'm the most concerned about is that government ability to access that information and know what we are spending our money on when where and why and then prosecute us for it for making choices that should lie only within ourselves and the people that we choose to have those conversations with and the government should have no voice and no say in that and no voice and no say in whether or not credit card processing companies can be able to process those transactions in the first place so how would you like you could write a law how would you would would it be something like a financial transaction Privacy Law like what kind of policy would you recommend yeah um I mean removing the ability for that surveillance right I think in a lot of spaces um but when it comes to personal data specifically around biometric data too um not not allowing the government access to that information so making sure that that data cannot be shared to government entities on any level of government and that there is a consent based process when companies are collecting that type of data too um I'm I'm a huge proponent of opt-in and I think that in any regard the government should not have access to that level of personal data of anyone who lives in this country so Marta what would you say as being someone who works from the legal side of this and has been very close to cryptocurrencies and you know the eff and privacy Tech um what would your greatest concern be and maybe address Anaya's uh suggestions here like what kinds of tools do you think we could deploy to achieve such a thing yeah absolutely so I think that um there's something very interesting happening at this moment in time in the cryptocurrency space which is that what we're seeing is the mass surveillance of the traditional Financial system being extended on to cryptocurrency and for some reason for decades we have just come to accept it as completely normal that our financial transactions are turned over to the government in the United States by default without a warrant in what is effectively a master balance program um and what we're seeing right now is this moment where that is increasingly being applied to cryptocurrency and we're seeing a lot of very concerning uh bills but also regulations um and even things like what happened with tornado cash where suddenly regulators and governments are trying to make sure that cryptocurrency transactions are also fully transparent to the government and also turned over to the government by default that is a really interesting moment in time because I think it gives us a moment to reflect on the mass surveillance that happens in the financial system and not just fight about should it be extended to cryptocurrency but should it be happening at all right um and I think that what's going on right now is really unconstitutional in my view I believe that if we were to take this up to the Supreme Court now that the Supreme Court would actually agree with us and so in answer to your question of what would I change the thing that I would change is the third party Doctrine so what the third party Doctrine is there's this idea right that we balance the reasonable needs of law enforcement with the civil liberties of people through the Fourth Amendment which says that what you need to do in order to get information about citizens is you need to go if you're law enforcement and get a warrant you have to have probable cause get a judge to issue a warrant and then you can get information about individuals so why is it that our financial transactions are turned over to the government by default why doesn't the government need to go get a warrant the answer is a third party Doctrine it's this very outmoded Doctrine and the idea is that once you've turned over your information to a third party you have lost your reasonable expectation of privacy and that information now that was one thing in the 1970s right at the time that this Doctrine was coming about where the information you gave to third parties was very limited but now we live our entire lives through a handful of Corporations all of us are sending information into third parties literally every second and it really doesn't make sense anymore and in recent years what we've really been seeing is the Supreme Court recognizing that recognizing that the the details you can get from someone's life through third parties today is really paints an intimate portrait of their life and chipping away at the third party Doctrine so the thing that I would change is that I would I would do away with a third party Doctrine and you know I have to say I do think that in this moment in time when we have the moment where suddenly cryptocurrency and people who actually care about privacy are suddenly facing these regulations that everyone has taken as totally fine for the last few decades in the traditional banking system I think we have a really interesting moment where we can challenge that kind of surveillance not only on cryptocurrency but also the rest of the financial system so now here's the tough one how do we turn this into taking a stand how can everybody hear participate how can they how can we push back you know I I brought up Aaron earlier he was really good at getting everybody on the internet to say hey stop it right how could we do that collectively I mean what I'm doing is they can have all the zero knowledge proofs for me they want I don't care that's the point of zero knowledge proofs um and I like the third party Doctrine but I'm not sure how that would translate into law maybe you can comment on that and same thing here also for the reproductive Health stuff right maybe something applies like that to insurance companies as well um it sounds like the financial transaction privacy stuff would go a long ways to help that yes thank you we have two minutes left so how are you going to take a stand Mart and then and I had like real quick real quickly hello super quickly I think there are um so many amazing organizations including the ACLU including eff including fight for the future Queen Center who are really taking on these issues head on also the blockchain association including all of the arguments that I I just talked about the third party Doctrine and really not only challenging uh things that involve cryptocurrency but actually challenging the constitutionality in general so I would say supporting those organizations is actually really incredible there's some incredible work with the organizations here today are doing you know yeah I think um in the realm of policy uh all of the pushed back that we get on getting data in Tech privacy legislation through comes from tech companies that's where all of the pushback comes so the more folks in this field who are willing to come and work with us and stand with us and fight for these policies at the legislative level at all levels of government changes that narrative so that legislators understand that the entire tech industry isn't against them to push for these regulations um but when we don't have folks who understand the language understand the Nuance understand how this Tech works at its core we can't explain to legislators and to Regulators why it needs to change and why law enforcement and other entities shouldn't have this level of access to our personal data I I can't as a policy dude like I can't explain that level of nuance to legislators so like I need more Tech folks to come with me to help me write these bills in the ways that make the most sense so that we can get them passed and increase protection from government surveillance and increase protection for our everyday lives thanks well we're just about out of time I just want to remind everybody here that um it cryptography itself and the organizing power of the internet itself are real forms of power and their power that is available and uh Deployable by individuals cryptography used correctly can resist any amount of money and any amount of will to break it and using the internet to get the message out to millions of people potentially billions of people to talk about an issue that's common to all of us has incredible power as well so I encourage all of you to think about how you can take a stand and you're all here at East Denver you must know a little bit about cryptography in the internet maybe those tools can help you take your stand thank you [Applause]