For a couple of weeks, I have been reviewing materials and preparing a blog entry on the Nationalist Socialist Security Agency, also known as the NSA. Yes, obviously, I am saying that the American agency that spies on everyone in the world is a fascist organization which is evil in ways very similar to the Nazis. Earlier, I broke off a blog post about the predecessor to the NSA known as "https://silentvault.com/tiki-view_blog_post.php?postId=8" class="wiki wikinew text-danger tips">The Black Chamber," and reviewed its connection to war monger, racist, and fascist Woodrow Wilson's brown shirts, "The American Protective League."
Tonight, I'm still composing that more-than-complete essay on the NSA, and our chief of technology development, Justin, sent along http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-nsa-tampers-us-internet-routers-snowden" class="wiki wikinew text-danger tips">a link to Glenn Greenwald. I couldn't resist commenting right away on this paragraph:
"For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other internet devices pose a 'threat' because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the US accused the Chinese of doing."
Really, the USA government had every reason to know that it was possible to build back-door surveillance functions into routers and servers BECAUSE THEY WERE DOING SO.
The reasons why Greenwald and every other decent human being on the planet object to everything the NSA does in the name of State Security are covered very well by him in his essay. And, of course, the reasons I object are shared by other pro-decentralization individualist anarchists. We simply don't trust giant organizations with our privacy, which is why we use encryption. We don't trust every possible viewer of the block chains, which is why we are developing SilentVault as a layer of indirection to allow for exchanges among SilentVault wallets of assets such as Bitcoin and Litecoin without involving the respective block chains.
For those who still think government regulation is a good idea, here are a few other thoughts on what it is to be governed.
"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle The General Idea of the Revolution of the 19th Century (1851); quoted in The Anarchists (1964) by James Joll, Ch. 3, p. 78
Of course, today, both men and women control and order people about. So, we've come "a long way."
Proudhon, and I, are sceptical of the notion that it is in the public interest or for the general welfare, or general utility that all these things are done. Obviously, those with economic power want more, and they use political power to gain more economic power. Naturally, they use economic power to gain more political power. Power itself corrupts, and the more power, the more corruption. Lord Acton understood these facts. Apparently the people who want to have government agencies regulate every bitcoin in existence do not.