Not long before his passing, Grandad mentioned something that struck me as a bit quaint, a touch archaic.
He expressed his distrust of banks and insisted he didn’t want them privy to his financial dealings. I chuckled at his paranoia back then! But now, I realize I owe him an apology.
While we strolled through his home, he gestured to an off-white wall with an uncomfortable sofa positioned in front of it. This eye-sore of a couch had occupied the same spot for over a decade.
A small square door in the wall, when pressed, unveiled a crawl space. Inside, we found old packaging from the 1970s, nibbled board games, and seemingly trivial documents, stashed away as if they might shield against a harsh winter.
My Grandad directed my flashlight toward a brown padded envelope tucked away near what I hoped wasn’t exposed asbestos. I pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. Seizing the moment, he gave a brief speech. He was proud of my Master’s studies and recognized the financial strain, so he wanted to contribute. Inside the envelope was a musty wad of cash secured with a mostly decayed rubber band.
His words were significant, but it was what followed that took over a decade to sink in. I inquired why he hid cash in the wall, and he shared that he had stashed most of his savings throughout the house; in books, wardrobes, and under mattresses. He even joked that, upon his passing, I should search the house thoroughly before selling it.
Well, he did pass away, we did scrutinize every nook and cranny, and indeed found the bulk of his savings. Some of the cash was so old that we worried the bank might refuse to exchange it for current legal tender, though inflation had already diminished the piles’ purchasing power anyway, two scams of fiat I’ll save for another discussion.
My Grandad experienced poverty during wartime London, which ingrained a deep-seated caution regarding currency; money was hard to come by. Yet, his philosophy held merit, and it has lingered in my thoughts for years.
The people of my grandparents’ generation were fiercely protective of their privacy, at a time when it was regarded as a fundamental human right. I know, how charming.
In 1950, a motorist named Harry Willcock was halted in London, and an officer demanded to see his identity card, an unfortunate regulation instated at the onset of World War II.
Harry declined to present his documents and was arrested. According to the lord chief justice who presided over the subsequent legal tussle, the ID cards were being used for purposes exceeding their original intent. Hence, they were abolished.
In the 1950s, privacy was the norm for most, breeding skepticism toward anything resembling surveillance, despite its rarity. Just 70 years ago, surveillance was scarce, labor-intensive, and costly, typically involving someone physically trailing you, perhaps in a trench coat.
Conversations, cash exchanges, and public transit; no permanent records were left behind. Any generated records existed primarily on paper and, importantly, were siloed. Cross-referencing records easily was impossible; it’s what lawyers term “practical obscurity.”
Today, our data is harvested, traded, and cross-referenced in bulk, as surveillance has morphed into the new standard.
My Grandad would have detested today’s methods. Unknowingly a cypherpunk, those values are rapidly eroding.
Privacy, self-sovereignty, decentralization: Before it’s too late
The recent privacy discourse can be attributed to various factors, but it feels like a desperate and inevitable final stand.
Society seems so downtrodden that tools aiding privacy are vilified. Vitalik Buterin utilized a mixer for a donation and faced criticism, with insinuations of dubiousness surrounding his actions. Buterin countered with the simple yet profound, “Privacy is normal.”
There’s a prevailing notion that a desire for privacy implies having something to conceal, yet as Susie Violet Ward, CEO of Bitcoin Policy UK, once remarked: “You have curtains in your house, don’t you?”
Eric Hughes expressed in “A Cypherpunk Manifesto” in 1993 that “privacy is essential for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t wish the entire world to know, whereas a secret matter is something one wishes no one to know. Privacy is the ability to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
Self-sovereignty has mirrored the decline of privacy. Control over one’s identity, data, and even property has been gradually stripped away, year after year. We are often required to present identification, akin to a “papers, please” scenario, to most centralized entities with which we wish to engage.
With data, extensive legal battles have granted us a sliver of control through the “right to be forgotten,” but even that necessitates individual requests for data deletion from each holder.
Similarly, with property, the “right to repair” has become essential as manufacturers of everything from cars to phones have raised the walls around their possessions.
These matters are not solely the concern of the unscrupulous, and we need not whisper. Privacy is normal, as is agency over the myriad threads of our lives and the right to a just, pragmatically decentralized arena.
That’s why Cointelegraph is unveiling a show dedicated to dialogues on the erosion of these fundamental human rights, featuring genuine experts, visionaries, and those crafting the tools for a liberated and private future. It’s a program for the digital dissidents who champion civil liberties.
Because cypherpunk values are fading.
But they’re Not Dead Yet.
Not Dead Yet will premiere weekly starting Thursday, January 8th, with some of the foremost names in cryptography, privacy, and decentralization joining Robert Baggs to examine how these values endure in an increasingly centralized, surveillance-driven society.
