Privacy laws and the surveillance state by Costanza Gallo [Swarm] x Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress

so the whole point of the talk is to give an anthropological analysis of privacy this is because that is something that we don't yeah cool an anthropological analysis of privacy that is not something that it often happens and this is because my background is in anthropology um I studied low anthropology and Society so understanding how society and low combined together and how Society shapes the low and how the low shapes Society um and while doing so um it's going to happen I have faith um while doing so I focus a lot on the interplay between democracy and freedom of speech so how can we have both and how we cannot have democracy without freedom of speech and we cannot have freedom of speech without democracy so I'm going to help you to set it up yeah we made it okay so uh my name is Costa and uh I work for the swm foundation a de centralized and transship resistant St and communication Network and like I mentioned before I'm going to be talking about an anthropological analysis of privacy like always um disclaimers everything I'm saying is a personal View and I do not represent swarm I do not represent any organization that I was part of and yeah also don't take anything I'm saying for granted but do your own research so without any further Ado the question I'm seeking to answer today is why do states impose restrictions on privacy and the question is quite um gigantic and I'm not looking to give a universal theory of privacy we only have 20 minutes so what we're going to do is to examine a theory of privacy loads in the context of the surveillance State institution against crypto privacy toolings so we will see why States fear privacy and how crypto challenged that and why the fear as so to do so I'm first going to walk through the anthropological method and then I'll seek to answer those questions the institution of um the surveillance State how does it work what's the relationship between the institution of the surveillance State and anti privac laws and why is that the grip of the surveillance State on crypto projects is it tightening like we see that every day and I hope hope to address the questions that my family keep on asking me every Christmas you're an anthropologist what are you doing in crypto so um what is anthropology and why it is something important here anthropology studies the cultural aspect of human societies it examines um societal elements like Norms values practics languages economics social structures rituals belief artifacts loads so we Anthropologist aim to understand how people within different cultural context interact see and interpret the word around us the word around people so it's kind of like group therapist a psychologies for a group and culture and its development consist in technological inventions that could be the wheel or that could be the blockchain and that is discovered by man and it is being applied to to human ends so the anthropological method here will allow us to understand the underpinning reasons behind privacy lws and the surveillance State and I truly hope that this to will give everyone the tool to build products that can bystand the grip of privacy without compromising on human rights so in anthropology nothing should be taken for granted not just like obvious elements like religion but everybody here is sitting on a shair that is a cultural artifact not all societies people sit on chairs not in the way that everyone here is sitting so nothing is universal except for one thing they need to preserve life so that means Sheltering from dangers like the weather animals enemies sex both to reproduce and to satisfy a primodial IG and food so all the elements of the society from clothing to laptops um are buil to satisfy those needs so why do we live in a society where surveillance is De necessary to satisfy those needs why surveillance and why not privacy what's happening so any cultural artifact is significant only one place within the institution it belongs so privacy laws are cular artifacts that should be analyzed in the context of the surveillance institution otherwise it will be like analyzing a pack of dogs using a laptop that will make no sense whatsoever so institutions are organized constituent of a community they can be a tool for Freedom or a tool for oppression and so we need to understand the narrative that promotes the institution of surveillance which is a very fancy way of saying why does my high school friend support the surveillance State why does she believe that privacy is dangerous so here I would like to look at surveillance against crypto projects um against privacy toolings as an institution that is being the process of being legitimized so institutions have um a universal structur any type of Institutions they have a charter a a collective purpose that defines the values of the institution and why we have it so that means that we have the real and the mythological history we have the statement of big ideals and reason why so the charter of the institution is related to the mythologies and the moral principles underpinning it and in the case of modern States even before constitutional laws before The Constitution before the law or whatever legal documents we have a mythological reinterpretation of the history in order to shape the sentiments and emotion associated with the symbol of the state so we have reference to the past that is being constantly Rewritten and we have emotional elements that are talking to the gut of everyone now wait the surveillance State as an institution gains his legitimacy from reinterpreting the past creating a symbolism that makes privacy web tree crypto extremely dangerous when Senator Warren here talked about the shadowy supercoder she created this powerful image of people behind crypto being faceless almost like not human figures that operates in the dark outside of society in a opaque and non-transparent and threatening manner with ability that transcend the those of normal people so a super antihero a super villain operating against Society similarly yeah when tornado cash was sanctioned because they facilitated money lering on behalf of sanctioned countries all the US individuals and in entities are prohibited from any transaction with the platform but when BMP Paras engage in similar activities with more than six almost five half a billion of transactions involving countries that are sanctioned by the US by the US and they PL Guilty by the way not only the official press release makes no mention of money laundering um but nobody is prohibited with dealing with BMP Paribas and we have similar cases of big Trad fight companies of big banks that committed money laundering didn't go to jail or maybe like one person went to jail but they're still operating fine they're well and alive so the extreme treatment that tornado cash got was pretty unique and that served the purpose of reinforcing the symbolism that crypto and privacy tooling built on B threee is so dangerous that it needs to be killed all together now going to get fun so institutions have a system of organized activities which is made by Personnel people the group of followers that gets organized together for the execution of the institution's function and this is something that we need to be clear to be the Personnel of the in institution you don't need to opt in you don't need to subscribe to proactively seek to be part of the institution the M act act of birth so being alive makes you part of a social group it gives you a cultural identity it gives boundaries to your persona and so sometimes that means that being born being alive is enough to subscribe you to an institution without opting in even if you fundamentally disagree with the institution so we are all part of the institution of the surveillance State here um especially with regard to the US surveillance even those of us that are lucky enough to be born not in the US we are subject to the US imperialism and its reach so we are part of that Institution so me you tornado cash developers Senator waren the head of NSA law enforcement officials we are all part of the same group in this what next slide so in the system of organized activities we also have the material apparatus which is a body of artifacts that is basically the hardware or the code that is used to spy on us our phones internet the code everything that is being used by the institution and then we have activities the act of spying the actions that um the institution is carry out to satisfy his purpose um so spying and also the bureaucracy behind surveillance this is all part of the activity the middleware if you want it and finally we have the Norms the codify or customary loads the religious values the moral values so the software of the institution and in our quest to understand privacy as opposed to surveillance the first thing we need to ask is how surveillance is implemented at least in a perfect word in a perfect word which is not this one unfortunately um law enforcement follows the low so what is low why do men obey to certain rules low is a is an instrument for the accomplishment of the real task of a group so for example rules about property Duty privilege they exist to solve practical problems through the use of social cooperation and cultural values so basically low is like a tool just like solidity or Python and so as an anthropologist I will argue that LW is supposed to aim at preserving society and as Society is evolving because of Human Rights movement because of technological advancement law has to be flexible and change over time because the ction of law is connected to the development of extrajudicial process so if law aims at protecting the society if an institution chooses to exist a number of essential task fail to be done so anti-privacy laws here are to protect the institution of surveillance they here to kill the resistance so privacy preserving crypto projects but why what task choose to exist if the institution of surveillance chooses to exist what the hell went wrong here why do we have it so the Personnel of the institution engages in activities obeying the norms and using all the material apparatus and those that are Personnel of the institution so everyone here but don't obey the Norms of the institutions because work for projects that go in direct opposition of the surveillance State institution like privacy developer privacy developers are a virus that the organism needs to kill in order to survive so here we have the function the need around which the institution is built satisfying our primordial needs for security and food and if you follow the narrative so if you read newspapers or talk to people outside of the crypto space the purpose of the institution of the surveillance state is protecting Society from external threats so protecting people from within the state or as allies this is because States as we know them are defined by the Monopoly of well I'm going to move um are defined by the Monopoly of the legitimate use of violence and the crypto Pro the crypto projects are permissionless um they don't have a central form of authorities they TR understand borders and jurisdictions so they are the natural born enemies of the Modern Nation States this is because because of their Ence they transcend a traditional form of control at the cural artifact the code is not subject to Authority so privacy tooling not not only can escape the grip of the Monopoly of violence they exist to defy the Monopoly of violence and I'm going to give an example here so this is the chart of the Swarm Foundation as an institution the collective purpose is to defend digital freedoms by building a chancellorship assistant and privacy preserving permissionless system there is a mythology if you read a book of worm you will see that it is nothing short of um re interpretation of what the internet should look like the problems that are with current society and the purpose of the institution is to defy censorship and defy the defying their surveillance State and by doing so escaping the Monopoly of violence and creating a parallel word where we have more freedoms yeah so it is a system of organized activities there are actions to complete to the to get purpose defending your data against external actors and giving back control to the users so taking away power and control for from governments and from Big players like AWS and giving it back to the user change the slide so like before and this is the funny part the Personnel of the institution engaged in activity obeying the norms and using the apparatus yeah so you can see the m so and this is true for every crypto privacy preserving tooling is not just Worm but every project um as a privacy preserving project the existence of worm is in violation to the existence of the institution of the surveillance State and the personal worm so developers users Cor members supporters friends they have a dual responsibility because on the one hand they have their duty to swarmm which they subscribe to the institution that they seek to join but they also have their duties to the surveillance State although they never pledge loyalty to it and that creates a friction because joining a privacy project means that you are taking distances from the institution you born into and that is not something that anyone can accept it creates an acceptable precedent a member of a group escaping the group is the most terrifying thing that can happen in a society it means that the mythology of the group is wrong it means that you are cot in a fallacy and nobody likes to admit that they're wrong it's scary it undermines your identity and it means that you're entire systems of belief might fall apart so privacy laws are here to prevent that they're here to deize those shadowy super coder that are on the other side of the low so that is thank you I think we have time for one question o exciting Who Dares not all at the same time Manu Manu okay there we go why is it that um right now in the crypto space A lot of people are talking about creating Network States if the idea was to escape the state that would be super cool but can you keepe reality I don't know we're creating Alternatives of reality no yeah but in the moment that you cross the street you're still living in this reality in the moment that you cross the street with your motorbike and you crash into someone you can't say I belong to the network state of ethereum you need to obey the law of the country that you are into so you cannot Escape that what I would be cool is to have an intersection between the two which means taking over so basically um instead of being Thailand you are in this physical space that is the ethereum network state so that is the only way that you can escape reality you can escape the national state and you can join the then you can join the network state but as long as you're here physically here and you go to an Hospital theal hospital is fed by okay maybe the hospital can be fed by the network state but if you cross the road and you crash into someone which flow do you B that's the I think that is the main question that unless we find a way to transcend this reality and make sure that whatever we're doing is not bounded by the low the of the physical country you're in you're always going to be abandoned by that