Bitcoins and The Privacy Illusion

[MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2]

Long OP that didn't really say anything about bitcoins. And I've seen the "government knows all" argument used by people who want to give the government more of your private data. For instance the denomination I belong to put all of their membership data online some years ago. Someone raised the question "But what if the government wants to go snooping in it." And ignorant person (who happened to be an information sciences professor) rebutted with "The government knows that about you already." Bullcrap! I've worked with government databases and they're in sad shape.

Yeah, but how long ago was that? (And I'm not making a rebuttal... it's a real question.)

The fact that they are storing every data stream they can get their hands on is bad news. Google, for instance, is very good at parsing data. Google also saves your email and search history FOREVER. As they get better at parsing the data, they will be working backward. My gawd... who the fuck knows what I said on USENET in 1998? Google knows. Their buddies know.

Does anyone give a shit about me? Probably not. Are they building algorithms that assigns scores to people? Just like they do websites? I'm certain they are. And while they may not be very accurate, they'd rather wisk away innocent people than let people who dislike their political philosophy go free. They don't make laws like NDAA for no reason. They make them to use them.

[gatomalo]

just look up Goggle Dorks - hackers love goggle and other search engines -- OSINT - Open Source Intelligence - they gave it a fancy name but people like me have used it because we created these searches -- geeks -- 4 fun -- no excuse - just fun for me
hacking from a browser is normal for governments and corporations -

where were you last Tues. at 8:23 pm - google knows, Facebook, twitter, yahoo, bing --- so if they know everyone knows ---- they know your friends but they also know your enemies --- use Tor pls - I don't really want to know but i'm a gAtO mEoW - check your cookies

my 2 cents @gATOmAlO2 - http://uscyberlabs.com.com/blog
New Book -The Deep Dark Web - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009VN40DU*
Print Book -
http://www.amazon.com/The-Deep-Dark-.../dp/1480177598

[kpitcher]

Bitcoins also have a number of ways to break the chain from accounts. There is a 'taint' checker built into the bitblocker explorer. There are relatively cheap bitcoin washers that will send money from one address to a new one. Also easy to put money from one account to another large pool like at an exchange, and then draw it out to a new address. This adds multiple layers to make following any specific coin a very difficult challenge.

The new NSA data warehouse they're building is going to be huge. Also because of laws the NSA can capture all the data they want. It is only an intercept when a human looks at it. So yeah encrypt if you can but realize the feds can datamine to their heart's content. If it's in public or digital in any fashion and you want it truly secret then you best do something that will ensure it's secret in 20, 30 years. Just because something isn't broken now doesn't mean it won't sit on a server that long until tech can break it.