Re:ZCash (formerly Zerocash/Zerocoin) technology preview
by omginternets on Sunday February 07, 2016 @02:20PM
(#11054303)
The response to this will be "yes, but it's only natural to give up some privacy for the greater good", and they'll be right insofar as there's a lot of precedence for this.
- We have driver's licenses, passports and all manner of ID's
- The IRS can audit banking records to ensure there's no tax fraud, sans warrant.
- You can be filmed and photographed in public places for security purposes
The list goes on, and the argument will be that new technologies require new compromises. Yours is hardly a constructive (or even correct) approach to the problem, because it (a) dismisses valid concerns and (b) implies a warped interpretation of privacy law. There is no absolute right to privacy; there cannot be!
That said, we're largely in agreement -- restricting privacy is probably the wrong approach in this particular case, but I think the counter argument should instead be made as I previously described, rather than by a knee-jerk opposition to restricted privacy.
- We have driver's licenses, passports and all manner of ID's
- The IRS can audit banking records to ensure there's no tax fraud, sans warrant.
- You can be filmed and photographed in public places for security purposes
The list goes on, and the argument will be that new technologies require new compromises. Yours is hardly a constructive (or even correct) approach to the problem, because it (a) dismisses valid concerns and (b) implies a warped interpretation of privacy law. There is no absolute right to privacy; there cannot be!
That said, we're largely in agreement -- restricting privacy is probably the wrong approach in this particular case, but I think the counter argument should instead be made as I previously described, rather than by a knee-jerk opposition to restricted privacy.