> imagine this argument being applied to End-to-End Encryption
There's a stark line between encrypted communication and encrypted money. If someone can't see the difference between those bits they shouldn't be handling other peoples' money.
It's certainly true that there's a line, but i've never heard a principled case for why they ought to be different. Money and speech are really not much different in terms of their power to organize problematic activity.
Certainly dragnet surveillance of speech could prevent a fair amount of terrorism, mass shootings, child pornography, etc. Dragnet surveillance of money flows accomplishes that too.
We just as a society decided it was worth it in the case of speech, but for some reason have decided the opposite in the case of money, except when that money is physical cash. None of this seems particularly well grounded in any kind of principled argument for one vs the other.
The benefits to anonymity and privacy are always highly diffuse and hard to observe, particularly in the moment. In another comment you ask for someone to enumerate the upsides, but i'd ask you the same question for speech privacy. What are the upsides to you being able to talk to your friends without the government listening in?
> i've never heard a principled case for why they ought to be different. Money and speech are really not much different in terms of their power to organize problematic activity
Speech is more primitive, and far less dependent on community efforts, than money. We can theorise working societies without money. I don't think we can do similarly without speech, at least not without changing what it means to be human.
Firstly I don't think that's actually true in any meaningful sense. I mean, yes, literally we could have a completely trivial society without something resembling money, but at even the most rudimentary levels of social organization that actually exist among humans, something resembling money exists. Certainly at the very least, the excahnge of value is occurring between people in anything that could reasonably be called "society".
Secondly, even if we accept that speech is "more primitive", i'm not sure why that implies anything about how they ought to be regulated.
Sure, there have probably been thousands of such societies throughout history. Bartering was common for many hunter gatherer communities. Having a standard currency isn't very practical if you have many groups across a large geographical area that meet sporadically. Directly trading goods would work just fine in those cases.
How did they agree on what the exchange rate should be? From my understanding, the answer was almost always plunder among the primitive societies or a tyrant/king enforcing a monetary system. There was really no bartering amongst equals across communities.
This line is drawn by society. At one point we did not see the need for E2EE or peer-to-peer file sharing, and now some of us do. At one point we did not see the need for privacy preserving digital currencies and peer-to-peer transactional systems, and now some of us do.
> we did not see the need for privacy preserving digital currencies and peer-to-peer transactional systems, and now some of us do
Fair enough. I think it's time for those who do to make their case. We've run the experiment. The downsides are documented and tangible. There should be a way to thread the needle whereby the downsides can be limited without strangling all of the upside.
The vast, vast majority of money laundering and illicit financial activity happens within the confines of the traditional banking system. Why don’t we start with regulating that properly first?
We’ve done a lot to regulate banking and when we catch banks engaging in problematic behaviours there are hefty fines attached. We’ve seen huge numbers of crypto schemes without any real consequences to those involved or those knowingly profiting off a scam. If we should be regulating all illicit financial activity the largest gap exists in cryptocurrencies not traditional banking.
Unless you are in the United States and your money is going to a super PAC, union, or other association. Then your transmission of funds is free speech and covered by the first amendment. [1]
> your transmission of funds is free speech and covered by the first amendment
Political spending has been equated with political speech by the Supreme Court. That doesn't mean the government can't e.g. freeze a criminal's assets.
Super PACs have to report how they spend their money and where they got it from. As long as they don't communicate with a campaign, how they spend it is free speech. This is very different from not reporting where you spend your money or where you got it from.
There's a stark line between encrypted communication and encrypted money. If someone can't see the difference between those bits they shouldn't be handling other peoples' money.