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A take on why payment in signal is a bad idea (and not because of the chosen tech).
E2E and secure messaging are at dangerous place right now. With more and more governments arguing for trapdoors, wanting to limit / forbid the use of the technology, ...
E2E and secure messaging are at dangerous place right now. With more and more governments arguing for trapdoors, wanting to limit / forbid the use of the technology, ...
Imagine now you get an E2E app, that also allows to exchange money securely and anonymously between individual.
1) You'll get the classical arguments about helping criminals, terrorist, or even sex work...
1) You'll get the classical arguments about helping criminals, terrorist, or even sex work...
2) Governments will then ask for accountability vis-Ă -vis embargos. (of course nice people did papers on how to do ZK proofs that you are not in a revoked list, and how to batch those proofs... we still want chocolate) but that's not going to be enough
3) then we'll have questions about tax evasion, and such. Normally you're supposed to pay taxes on everything you buy, and for example french gov is readying attacks on people who "forget" to do that for what they buy in BTC.
(and income taxes, and, ...)
(and income taxes, and, ...)
As such Signal will become a tool to canonically circumvent "money" laws... and history shows that's where things usually gets ugly very fast...
4) I am not stating that it is a bad thing overall, but this is giving a tool to various governments to ban the signal app using tax evasion laws, skipping the whole privacy protection debate.
5) My main hope, is that there is going to be an official "signal light" version with the sole purpose to officially not support the payment option *at all*.
Otherwise, this just created a perfect reason to ban the app, in a lot of countries...
Otherwise, this just created a perfect reason to ban the app, in a lot of countries...
This is not a comment at all, on the security of the integration, on the quality of the work of the people involved, ...
But just, what the repercussions are going to be in the real world...
Large scale anonymous payment/transfer is frightening and will lead to bans...
But just, what the repercussions are going to be in the real world...
Large scale anonymous payment/transfer is frightening and will lead to bans...
