Let's (fireside) Chat with Edward Snowden

“Bitcoin is free money.” – Edward Snowden

Free. Money. Two words you hardly ever hear in the same sentence, yet Edward Snowden, perhaps the most well-known America whistleblower, uses them to describe Bitcoin.

?!?!?!?!!?

Let’s (fireside) chat.

This summer, I had the opportunity to attend the Bitcoin 2019 Conference in San Francisco. I realize I’m a few months late getting to this ~content~ but I decided to treat myself to some nice summer vacays. Sue me.

Anyway, one of the highlights of the conference sponsored by BTC Media was definitely the fireside chat with Edward Snowden. Yes, the fireside chat was really a video call because, well, the man is exiled to Russia. STILL, it was so sweet.

PSA — this post is lengthy, but you’re def not getting this first hand content from anyone else. Get ready for some major realness.

Who is Edward Snowden?

Honestly, I shouldn’t even have to write about this, but I will.

Basically, Edward Snowden is a computer programmer who worked as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency (NSA). Snowden collected top-secret documents regarding NSA domestic surveillance practices and leaked them in 2013. The things he leaked included tons of global surveillance programs, which started a whole discussion about national security and individual privacy.

Obviously, the United States was not happy. Snowden was charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and stealing government property. They even revoked his passport. So, Snowden flew to Russia, where he was granted the right of asylum, and he has been living there since.

If you want to learn more, watch the movie Snowden starring Joseph Gorden Levitt. 10/10. Highly recommend.

Why is he speaking at Bitcoin conferences?

Well, as you can imagine, Edward Snowden is a big fan of privacy… and freedom.

Now, I’m going to walk you through some of the key points of Snowden’s chat. Let’s clarify, these are Edward Snowden’s words, not mine. They do not necessarily reflect my thoughts or feelings. However, I found it fascinating to have the chance to hear Snowden’s ideas first hand so I wanted to share them with you. 

That being said, Snowden had no problems saying that Bitcoin’s biggest flaw is its lack of privacy. He also has openly stated his thoughts on supporting Bitcoin … so where’s the connection?

Let’s start with the free money. Unfortunately, Snowden didn’t mean anyone was getting free money from Bitcoin, but rather that this is the first “money” giving us freedom. Why? Because we can exchange and interact permission-less. We are free to use this currency as we please.

With Bitcoin (I’ll stick to Bitcoin since this all took place at the Bitcoin conference), there is no centralized party telling you what you can and can’t do. You don’t need “permission” from a bank if you want to send funds to Africa, but you might if you were using any other type of currency.

 “I think about privacy, when I think about liberty. That’s what this is all about. What does liberty mean? It’s freedom from permission. It means we live our lives in a way where we can experiment, where we can engage, where we can try things, where we can even fail. And we don’t have to get a permission slip from the principal’s office. We’re not watched. We’re not recorded. And because of that, our mistakes don’t haunt us. This core point, this ability to act without permission -- as long as you aren’t harming someone else, as long as you aren’t infringing on the rights of others -- this is the foundation of all rights.” – Edward Snowden

What he’s saying:

Now, in today’s day and age, this is an interesting concept. We live in a society where we want everything documented… Well, okay, we want to document everything that WE want to document. We spend a surplus number of hours a day taking selfies, sending videos on snapchat, posting on IG, sharing our thoughts on twitter, keeping text message threads from years back, sliding into DMs and we absolutely love it. But as soon as your friend pulls up that embarrassing AF video of you puking at the bar from formal 3 years ago, we get so angsty that we threaten to blackmail them with walk of shame photos if they don’t delete it.

You take one too many tequila shots one too many times and suddenly you’re viral on Barstool. Your “right” to keep that video “private” is gone… as well as your dignity.

What does liberty mean? It’s freedom from permission. Like he said, you can do what you want and you don’t need permission from anyone else. As long of course you aren’t harming someone or taking away the rights of others, then who the heck is to tell you that you can’t do something. No one had to give you permission to take that tequila shot, but….well, the vomit spoke for itself.

Interesting how privacy and liberty go hand in hand, but we so often forfeit our right to privacy which really only ends up hindering us from living a life full of liberty. So what happens when the ability to act without permission (aka liberty) is the foundation of all rights, but acting without permission is inhibited due to our lack of privacy? What does that mean for our rights?

Is your head spinning yet? I know at this point mine was.

“Without privacy we don’t have meaning in the rest of our rights. Because what is a right? A right exists to protect.”– Edward Snowden

What he’s saying:

Basically, Snowden is saying that a right is what protects us. You know, like a bouncer’s right to refuse you from a club if he/she wants. We can’t legally do anything to the bouncer. It was the bouncer’s right.  

So, where are we at with privacy right now?

“Right now we live in a world where privacy is for the professional. It’s for the expert. It’s for the rich. It’s for the elite. It’s for the privileged. But we can’t live in a free world where privacy is a privilege. Privacy has to be a right. It has to be accessible to everyone.” – Edward Snowden

What he’s saying:

Basically, privacy is no longer a right because it isn’t accessible to everyone equally. Take his case of dealing with the NSA, for example. When the NSA was secretly collecting surveillance of average Americans, the average American had no idea it was happening. The average American didn’t have the same “right” to privacy that perhaps an NSA official might have had, simply because the NSA official is the expert in that area.

If they were the ones watching people, they would know better than anyone else how to protect themselves from being a watched - i.e. covering their computer camera with a sticker or bandaid.

The average American, however, who didn’t even know they are being watched, would simply have no idea their privacy is being extorted to begin with. For the NSA official, they maintain privacy because they have the privilege of working in a space that allows them to obtain such knowledge.

Ja feel?

Thank you, next.

Okay, let’s talk surveillance.

“Everybody thinks about 2013 and why I am came forward and they think ‘surveillance, surveillance, surveillance.’ 2013 wasn’t about surveillance. Surveillance was the mechanism used to discuss a conversation that was affecting all of us --- which is that our governance, even in what we like to believe are free and open societies, are becoming increasingly comfortable with making decisions without involving the democratic process. We weren’t asked if we wanted to vote in favor of mass surveillance, they simply did it.” – Edward Snowden

What he’s saying:

 So apparently, Snowden didn’t come forward in 2013 outing the NSA because of they were “watching” us, but rather because he didn’t like that the government made the decision to “watch” us without allowing ~we, the people~ to have a say or decision in it. He felt that it was invading our right to a democratic process/society and that it was taking away from our liberty and freedom.

Alright, now to circle back around to Bitcoin and to Snowden’s main point.

“Lack of privacy is an existential threat to Bitcoin… The reason why, is that privacy is the only protection that Bitcoin has for the users of it. The people that engage in the ecosystem… to protect them from changes and the political winds of whatever jurisdiction they have to live in. And you might be in the United States right now and go ‘look… I’m not worried about this. I’ve got my passport, I’ve got my bank statements, I’ve got everything… the exchanges are asking for today, and I can go about my business.’ But here’s the thing about privacy that people forget. If one of you gives it up…you’re taking it away from everybody else who doesn’t have that level of comfort. Who doesn’t have that level of privilege…because they live in China or they live in Russia or they live in Iran or they live in Venezuela… where they are very much in a more vulnerable system, or they could be tomorrow because the laws change everyday.” – Edward Snowden

What he’s saying:

So, as we know, a big part of Bitcoin’s draw is the elimination of third parties. From a privacy perspective, for example, users don’t have to hand their information over to a bank or an app or money exchange system that could potentially be misusing data (i.e. reselling or identity theft).

Maintaining privacy is a major benefit of Bitcoin on many levels, and as you can imagine, without that privacy, Bitcoin’s system and mission could get pretty messy. When Snowden said, “lack of privacy is an existential threat to Bitcoin… privacy is the only protection that Bitcoin has for its users of it,” he meant that without privacy, what rights does Bitcoin give its users? And without rights, what else doesn’t a person have? Liberty. And what is liberty? Freedom from permission.

See, full circle.

Snowden strikes a contrast between citizens in the US and citizens of places like China or Venezuela. He’s trying to make the point that here in America, we may not care about privacy, because we don’t typically have to. Yeah, Venmo has my data, but who really cares, I have rights here in the US that protect me. I’m not worried. Think about those of us who are American citizens.  We usually don’t think much about who or what has our data/info. At the end of the day, what are they really going to do? See that I bought 5 pairs of shoes from Nordstrom even though I could probably only really afford 1?

In a place like Venezuela, however, where it’s national currency can have annual inflation over 1.5 million percent, a collapsing dictatorship, currency controls that don’t allow you to exchange to American dollars, and a government that has a reputation for seizing the money of their people, normal privacy went out the window a long time ago.

With Bitcoin, since it offers self-sovereignty, not only could those people keep their $$$ without the worry of their government regulating or taking it but they can also get around the currency controls exchange to receive other forms of currency, even though their home-dollar is pretty useless. So, if you were a free-lancer who wants to work for an American company, it may have been impossible to get your pay in American dollars and then exchange them to bolivars (Venezeula’s currency), but you could easily get paid in Bitcoin and keep it for yourself ;)

So, in a place like that, yeah, the privacy that Bitcoin provides really does matter.

Alright, alright, so we’re almost to the end. Of course, to end the fireside chat, the question on everyone’s mind had to be addressed. Does Edward Snowden have Bitcoin? His answer was long… but entertaining.

“So as a privacy advocate… (I’ll have) to deny having any cryptocurrency what-so-ever. But I will say this… people think I published stuff in 2013. They think I told the truth and everybody knew… but that’s not actually how it worked. I gathered evidence of what I believed to be criminal or unconstitutional or simply just rights violating to adhere by the government and I took the evidence of that and I gave it to the journals because I wanted them to take my political biases and my strong feels out of the equation. And they got this information on the condition that they publish no story because it was interesting...but only publish stories that they were willing to stake their reputations on because it was in the public interest to know these things. And really the rest of history, right? They got the story out and the world knew how these systems worked a little bit better. It doesn’t have to change the world. I didn’t set out to change the world. I just wanted people to understand what their government was doing both in their name and against it… But it has caused a lot of good, I think… Now while I won’t say whether I have bitcoin or anything else, the servers I used to transfer this information to the journalists, because I didn’t want these records connected to my name when I understood how the system of mass surveillance worked… they were paid for using bitcoin.” – Edward Snowden

So, there you have it. The servers used to transfer the information and evidence of the NSA to the journalists was paid for using Bitcoin. Does Edward Snowden have Bitcoin? Well, that’s private.

P.S. this is now why we have been blessed with so many good FBI stalking memes. Here are some of my faves.