To censor, he has to orphan other miners' blocks that do include the transactions. That is visible.
This requires to assume that we all see and
believe this. Right now chinese speculators can bribe a small pool to generate 10 consecutive orphaned blocks and start spreading FUD that someone tried to attack Bitcoin. With intention to buy cheap coins.
Wow, such horrible logic.
You can not know an attack
did take place, because the forks could be a ruse, yes.
But you can know that an attack
did not take place because there is no such fork anywhere in existence.
Unless you believe that all miners are colluding. I don't believe that. Even then, censorship would leave the censored transactions in the mempool.
@TPTB you are falling into the same logic trap as CfB. Proving an attack is not the same as proving the lack of an attack.
But...we certainly can't know there won't be an attack tomorrow, or the day after, or any other time. That is not only true, but clearly implied by the wording of the white paper.
People need to decide whether they can live with that risk or not.
Sorry smooth. You are going to be embarrassed this time. Get ready.
Hint: mempools prove nothing.
You should have read my Decentralization thread. Obviously you did not.