Richard Stallman: A Discussion on Freedom, Privacy & Cryptocurrencies

Dr. Richard Stallman is well-known for his free software movement activism.

RMS, as Dr. Stallman is also known, has some opinions regarding the concept of cryptocurrencies that have been widely discussed within the crypto community.

"Digital payment systems are fundamentally dangerous if they are not engineered to ensure privacy. China is the enemy of privacy. China shows what totalitarian surveillance is like. I consider that hell on earth. That's part of why I haven't used cryptocurrencies that are issued by the community. If the cryptocurrency is issued by a government, it would surveille people just the way credit cards do and PayPal does, and all those other systems meaning completely unacceptable."

"What is privacy? Privacy means being able to say and do things without there being known to some powerful entity that can use them to attack you. In general, the things you do should not go into a database. The things you say to a few people, they shouldn't go into a database. Now, exceptions to this are sometimes justified. We want the government to investigate. This needs a bit of editing. We want the government to investigate crime and catch criminals. And that can require getting private information from people and about people."

"We need laws restricting the use of such cameras to make sure that databases that track people around the city as they move around cannot be collected. Any systematic attempt to recognize people other than people subject to specific court orders, perhaps, a limited exception because their limits are safe for society. They will not lead to general repression. That's the approach that has to replace data protection."

Now, people might not know that my wallet belongs to me, but if I used it more than a few times it would be possible to figure out that it's me.

So this gives privacy in a much more reliable way than cryptocurrencies do, and it blocks the idea of using this system to enable tax evasion.

A few months ago the eurozone banking system became interested in supporting Taler payments, and just recently they succeeded using a test setup in obtaining Taler tokens with one bank account and paying them to another bank account through the Taler system.

If there are pickup boxes and various locations, post offices, convenience stores that don't belong to a monopolist like Amazon - by the way, I boycott Amazon absolutely, I've never bought anything through Amazon, and I urge people not to buy people for me through Amazon - but if the delivery boxes were independent of any company so that anyone could deliver to them, you could obtain the use of a suitable delivery box, and specify it along with your payment, and the product would be delivered there.

Richard Stallman: My criticism of cryptocurrencies is nothing new.