Quote from: d5000 on April 18, 2025, 05:33:54 PM

Quote from: Free Market Capitalist on April 18, 2025, 07:29:56 AM

Not really,

You may have overlooked the word "claim". It's just the hypocrisy I'm talking about here.

I agree with you on the focus on "security" in Europe. Europe had a strong privacy movement about 10-15 years ago. It has scored some successes in some countries (there were much worse government proposals in this era, like a mandatory "real name" policy for all social media or, more recently, a German party proposed a registration obligation for Bitcoin addresses) but has lost steam and wasn't able to change much of the core tendency against personal freedoms.

Quote from: Alpha Marine on April 18, 2025, 10:45:26 AM

Freedom means people will no longer rely on them, and they won't want that to happen because when people rely on them, they have power.

I agree to some extent. As anarchists found out a long time ago, there's a tendency even in "democratic" governments to sustain themselves, instead of serving their citizens.

But unfortunately the problem often lies deeper. A lot of people do actually support anti-privacy and anti-freedom ideas. That makes it easy for the governments to enact policies against their own citizens.

Take Australia's social media ban for under-16-year-olds, which results in a KYC-style age verification nightmare. This aberration was supported by 77% of the citizens of this country according to a study.

It's thus not only governments, it's also people who have to become conscient.

Quote from: 348Judah on April 18, 2025, 02:59:45 PM

Maybe we should expect something positive within the first year of Donald Trump and that is if they are truly going to proof to the world they really support and understand what a decentralized network is with bitcoin and why everyone should have access to his financial privacy,[...]

To some extend I am positively surprised by some of the measures of the Trump government (e.g. the recent removal of the anti-mixer policy). But we have to wait a bit longer if this becomes really a state policy. Unfortunately other Trump actions are actually anti-freedom. He's not really a libertarian (and much less an anarchist).

Quote from: philipma1957 on April 18, 2025, 03:12:31 PM

Btw we are not going to become freed from our governments. [...]

I think what you mean with your post is that the "pro-security, anti-privacy" stance of many governments has its root in other problems, such as "real" perceived security problems. And here I can partly agree. See also my answer to @Alpha Marine.

Everything is connected in some way. Some European anti-privacy measures (e.g. cash bans) were justified with the war in Ukraine and sanctions evasion by Russia, for example. Social media censorship laws are driven by the desire of many to stop the widespread hate and shitstorms in social media. And so on.

Perhaps if we all "cooled down" a bit and were more tolerant to dissent, democracy could tend again towards freedom and not "security". At least the public support for pro-privacy would probably rise, and if governments still tried to enact anti-freedom policies then real undesirable intentions would become exposed.

A few people with box cutters took down the world trade center.

all governments point to this a a need for security.