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| comment | | "parent_author":"",<br>"parent_permlink":"bitcoin",<br>"author":"chieppa1",<br>"permlink":"nsa-has-been-actively-tracking-bitcoin-users-since-2013-snowden-documents",<br>"title":"NSA Has Been Actively Tracking Bitcoin Users Since 2013 - Snowden Documents",<br>"body":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4bG6AHL32-o\n\nI saw this on [The Intercept (https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/03\/20\/the-nsa-worked-to-track-down-bitcoin-users-snowden-documents-reveal\/) today and didn't really understand what I was reading until I got through the whole thing. The title didn't really grab me,<br> need a lesson from Russian trolls:\n\n> INTERNET PARANOIACS DRAWN to bitcoin have long indulged fantasies of American spies subverting the booming,<br> controversial digital currency. Increasingly popular among get-rich-quick speculators,<br> bitcoin started out as a high-minded project to make financial transactions public and mathematically verifiable \u2014 while also offering discretion. Governments,<br> with a vested interest in controlling how money moves,<br> would,<br> some of bitcoin\u2019s fierce advocates believed,<br> naturally try and thwart the coming techno-libertarian financial order.\n\n>It turns out the conspiracy theorists were onto something.\n\nThe documents reveal that the NSA use programs normally used for drug money laundering operations to track transactions. Because they have access to the content has it moves through fiber optics,<br> the idea of a \"privacy coin\" becomes non-existent:\n\n>Emin Gun Sirer,<br> associate professor and co-director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts at Cornell University,<br> told The Intercept that financial privacy \u201cis something that matters incredibly\u201d to the bitcoin community,<br> and expects that \u201cpeople who are privacy conscious will switch to privacy-oriented coins\u201d after learning of the NSA\u2019s work here. Despite bitcoin\u2019s reputation for privacy,<br> Sirer added,<br> **\u201cwhen the adversary model involves the NSA,<br> the pseudonymity disappears. \u2026 You should really lower your expectations of privacy on this network.\u201d**\n\n>[Matthew Green,<br> who **co-founded and currently advises a privacy-focused bitcoin competitor named Zcash**,<br> echoed those sentiments,<br> saying that the **NSA\u2019s techniques make privacy features in any digital currencies like Ethereum or Ripple \u201ctotally worthless\u201d for those targeted.**\n\nI'm not technical enough to agree or provide a rebuttal to this article,<br> but the quotes and actual actions are something to consider. No one should be surprised the government was focused on Bitcoin,<br> but how will this effect the market and that mainstream money from re-entering the space?",<br>"json_metadata":" \"tags\":[\"bitcoin\",<br>\"politics\",<br>\"nsa\",<br>\"zcash\",<br>\"privacy\" ,<br>\"image\":[\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/4bG6AHL32-o\/0.jpg\" ,<br>\"links\":[\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4bG6AHL32-o\",<br>\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/03\/20\/the-nsa-worked-to-track-down-bitcoin-users-snowden-documents-reveal\/\" ,<br>\"app\":\"steemit\/0.1\",<br>\"format\":\"markdown\" " |
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