The War On Encryption And Bitcoin - Nothing To Do With Terrorism, Everything To Do With State Control

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. 
– James Madison, Founding Father and 4th President of the United States

By Michael Krieger: Politicians and intelligence agencies throughout the Western world are currently engaged in an all out, shameless propaganda campaign to exploit the recent terror attacks in Paris to convince the citizenry that it should relinquish privacy for absolutely no reason.
The primary targets of the post-attack push have been encryption generally, and Bitcoin specifically. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that these are two sides of the same coin. Both strong encryption for communication, and Bitcoin for transferring value, provide a level of freedom and dynamism outside of the oligarch-controlled, centrally planned, feudal global economic system. As such, these two tools must be demonized and eradicated to the extent possible.

Yesterday, in the post, Government is Lying – New Study Shows No Increase in Use of Encryption by Jihadists Since Snowden Revelations, I explained in detail how the whole push against encryption is based on total lies and fear-mongering. The key points were as follows:

1. Terrorists have not increased their use of encryption since the Snowden revelations.
2. The cat is already out of the bag when it comes to encryption software, and there’s nothing government can do to stop terrorists from using it.
3. Making private corporations provide backdoors would only destroy security on the internet for law abiding citizens, while still doing nothing to prevent motivated criminals from using encryption.

The above points are simple facts, which is precisely why corporations have been standing their ground against the nonsensical demands of government for backdoors.
Nevertheless, what makes current government propaganda so particularly clownish, is that it doesn’t appear the Paris attackers used encryption in the first place. So not only were several of the attackers already known to law enforcement, they didn’t even use encryption and still flawlessly pulled off the attack. This proves that all of the blame lies with government and not with technology. 
The Intercept notes:

In the wake of the Paris attack, intelligence officials and sympathizers upset by the Edward Snowden leaks and the spread of encrypted communications have tried to blame Snowden for the terrorists’ ability to keep their plans secret from law enforcement.
Yet news emerging from Paris — as well as evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January — suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted.
European media outlets are reporting that the location of a raid conducted on a suspected safe house Wednesday morning was extracted from a cellphone, apparently belonging to one of the attackers, found in the trash outside the Bataclan concert hall massacre. Le Monde reported that investigators were able to access the data on the phone, including a detailed map of the concert hall and an SMS messaging saying “we’re off; we’re starting.” Police were also able to trace the phone’s movements.
Details about the major ISIS terror plot averted 10 months ago in Belgium also indicate that while Abaaoud previously attempted to avoid government surveillance, he did not use encryption.

Moving along to Bitcoin, this is where things get even more clownish. Despite the fact there’s no evidence the Paris attackers, or any other terrorists for that matter, used Bitcoin to finance anything, this is what the EU is up to…
Reuters reports:

European Union countries plan a crackdown on virtual currencies and anonymous payments made online and via pre-paid cards in a bid to tackle terrorism financing after the Paris attacks, a draft document seen by Reuters said.
EU interior and justice ministers will gather in Brussels on Friday for a crisis meeting called after the Paris carnage of last weekend.

They will urge the European Commission, the EU executive arm, to propose measures to “strengthen controls of non-banking payment methods such as electronic/anonymous payments and virtual currencies and transfers of gold, precious metals, by pre-paid cards,” draft conclusions of the meeting said.

Can you believe this? They are focusing in on “non-banking payment methods” when the mega banks have been caught laundering billions of dollars in the past, and no executives went to jail. See:
Some Money Launderers are “More Equal” than Others
Some Money Launderers are More Equal than Others Part 2 – CEO of BitInstant is Arrested
To further prove the point of how ridiculous all of this is, Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center and adjunct professor of law at George Mason University, noted the following:

Not only are digital currencies not a higher risk, they may be a relatively low risk payment system. According to the “UK national risk assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing“ published by the UK Treasury this week, digital currencies are assessed as posing the lowest risk for money laundering. At the top of the list were traditional banks.

Now here’s a chart outlining the risk threats from various payment system:

But yeah, they’re going after Bitcoin anyway. What does that tell you?
Finally, the most destructive man in modern American history, of course, had to chime in.
This is what Ben Bernanke had to say about Bitcoin to Quartz:

But the real serious problem that it has is it’s anonymity, which is a feature, and is also a bug, in that it has become in some cases a vehicle for illicit transactions, drug selling or terrorist financing or whatever. And you know, governments are not happy to let that activity happen, so I suspect that there will be oversight of transactions done in bitcoin or similar currencies and that will reduce the appeal.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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