Quote from: qwk on January 25, 2014, 08:43:47 PM

Quote from: Augusto Croppo on January 25, 2014, 08:38:49 PM

Bro, no one cares about your role playing game scenarios. We are not playing Shadowrun here, we are discussing technical solutions for a security issue in the Bitcoin P2P network.

This.

+ it's not the users being affected, but people running a service for those users (see bolded part).
I doubt that under the given circumstances in the outlined scenario, there'd be any. People would offer those services from outside.

On The Other Hand... It is not some whacked theory that power structures can and will interfere with things they don't like or consider a threat. Witness what happened in China a few months ago (if that) and specific to Bitcoin even. Focusing to exclusively on technical aspects of almost any solution is likely a very big mistake.

You can argue that 'it cannot happen here' because our Western governments (or whatever) are so different. That would be the same argument used last year about the unbelievable level of spying and the construction individual dossiers on every citizen, and about the interaction between corporations and governments to conspire in this sphere. Now, well, 'not so much.'

You can still make the argument that (for the most part) the 5-eyes have not abused the powers they've cultivated. Even if true, I'm not buying that this means much about what the future holds. Just as Machiavelli is amazingly 'modern', the actions and activities of those who hold power and wish to maintain it will be almost indistinguishable from their counterparts going back thousands of years. I will bet on this (but I won't bet on when.)