In the war for data privacy, crypto may be the last line of defence

With the rapid advancement of technology and the permeation of high-speed internet throughout many people’s lives in the modern world, fears have been increasing about how readily accessible the private data of citizens has become to the states under which they live.

While this ubiquity has created the highly problematic “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” argument, with some showing a lack of concern about government penetration of their personal spaces in exchange for security and convenience, not everyone is convinced governments can be trusted.

This is particularly the case with those who live under repressive and authoritarian regimes.

“All governments have the right to protect their sovereignty and national security, but not through lies and doubts,” Ahmed El-Affendi, a Sudanese data journalist and digital privacy advocate, told The New Arab.

“Technology is the…main tool in the people’s fight for justice,” El-Affendi said. “There’s no nation that can survive or prevail in the fight for basic, ordinary rights and digital privacy without utilising every possible and affordable technology.”

"Decentralisation and crypto technologies have come to the fore as a potential last line of defence for citizens to reclaim the digital privacy landscape"

While those who surrender their privacy for the sake of convenience or the appearance of compliance with the authorities tend to live in developed economies and democracies, their reality is often not shared by billions of others around the world who live under authoritarian police states, from China to the Middle East and beyond.

In such a world where personal freedoms are at constant risk and data can readily be exploited by malevolent actors, decentralisation and crypto technologies have come to the fore as a potential last line of defence for citizens to reclaim the digital privacy landscape.

Mass surveillance and police states

Dystopian stories of Orwellian state control and surveillance are becoming increasingly common in the public debate around privacy.

In China, one of the world’s most powerful economies yet repressive polities, Beijing has instituted a number of policies designed to not only keep an eye on their citizens, but also to ensure they are behaving in a way the communist regime approves of.

Chinese citizens are constantly graded for their “social credit” rating, where good behaviour leads to more “trustworthiness” and therefore continued access to privileges, while behaviour that the ruling Chinese Communist Party deems to be poor, like buying too many video games, will lead to punishments such as throttled internet connections and travel bans.

This chilling level of moral policing is made all the more systematic by Beijing’s development of some of the most advanced police state surveillance technologies the world has ever seen, with facial recognition becoming ubiquitous and even leading to persecution of ethno-religious minorities, such as the Uyghur people, who are constantly monitored to ensure they behave as the regime wants them to or else they will be sent to “re-education camps”.

Tom David, Head of Marketing at Exidio, a software company that develops blockchain solutions, told The New Arab that crypto and blockchain technologies were increasingly becoming a valuable tool in the fight for privacy.

“Freedom and privacy are two sides of the same coin. When countries like China remove the public’s right to privacy, they inhibit and even strip them of their freedoms,” David said.

“Suddenly, you cannot criticise the government or raise legitimate concerns. Some charities may even be closed off to your donations because the authorities don’t like them. One solution…is to use decentralised private networks that take advantage of blockchain technology.”

As a basic definition, blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that records and tracks transactions, which has led many to criticise the blockchain-centric approach to privacy as it could mean that anyone with access to the ledger will be able to identify which parties were engaged in any given transaction.

But this argument has itself been criticised for raising fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or FUD as it is commonly known in the crypto community.

“Blockchain technology has been continually developing since its inception,” Chris Terry, a board member of the Blockchain Privacy, Security and Adoption Alliance (BPSAA) told The New Arab.

“Things like ring signatures, zk-SNARKs and other developments allow users to maintain their privacy by only allowing themselves and the person they are transacting with to know the details of the transaction,” Terry explained.

"The UAE, China, and others use the justification that they need to secure their citizens from the threat of terror, and crypto technologies will be used by terrorists and organised criminal organisations"

Perhaps seeking to emulate China’s behavioural control prowess, countries such as the United Arab Emirates have also taken to spying on not only their own population using malicious apps, but also foreign journalists and human rights campaigners they deem to be a nuisance in coordination with Israeli surveillance firms, as exposed by the NSO Pegasus scandal.

Further, domestic Emirati companies such as the Abu Dhabi-based DarkMatter have also sprung up in recent years.

DarkMatter bills itself as a cybersecurity firm that intends to help governments and commercial enterprises defend themselves against cyberattacks, yet their public record betrays the reality that they are intertwined with the Emirati security state.

In 2018, it was revealed that 80 percent of their contracts are with the UAE government, while a 2016 investigation into their activities spoke to whistle-blowers that described the organisation as “big brother on steroids”.

The UAE, China, and others use the justification that they need to secure their citizens from the threat of terror, and crypto technologies will be used by terrorists and organised criminal organisations.

“The problem with trying to tie privacy coins to nefarious acts such as terrorism and illegal activities is that it bypasses the fact that the number one currency used for illegal activities and terror is still the US dollar,”  the BPSAA’s Terry said.

“The problem with the phrase ‘fighting terrorism’ is that over the past 20 years, the war on terror has been used to justify taking everyone’s privacy away, even though most of the population hasn’t even done anything wrong.”

The case for privacy

China and the UAE are not the only states fighting against the rights of citizens to have private lives. It was not that long ago that Edward Snowden’s infamous NSA leaks exposed the extent of how even powerful democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom were not above spying on innocent people without any oversight.

In such a global socio-political climate where the individual rights of citizens are degraded more and more under the guise of combatting organised crime or terrorism, the public would be foolish not to exploit the opportunity granted to us by blockchain technologies, David said.

"With governments increasingly monitoring every aspects of citizens' lives, including how, when, and where they spend their money, the case for re-empowering citizens to stop ceding so many of their freedoms to governments has become stronger"

“Snowden’s leaks confirmed that Western governments are also spying on their citizens,” Exidio’s David said.

“If both repressive regimes and democracies that profess ‘freedom’ are both doing this, we can’t trust our privacy to either. We therefore need to use these technologies before there can be any discussion of the trade-off between security and freedom.”

As an indication of how Arab citizens, in particular, are starting to acknowledge this reality, Iraqi dissidents have begun to use blockchain technologies not only to resist oppressive state forces, but to also keep themselves safe while doing so.

By utilising decentralised VPNs, as well as more mainstream tools such as TOR, Iraqi demonstrators are increasingly able to protect themselves and communicate anonymously while keeping up the fight for their rights in a shielded digital space.

With governments increasingly monitoring every aspects of citizens’ lives, including how, when, and where they spend their money, the case for re-empowering citizens to stop ceding so many of their freedoms to governments has become stronger.

The worst-case scenario for activists not adopting these technologies in the long-term struggle for personal privacy and freedoms could be disastrous.

“Abortion,” Al-Affendi explained when asked what repercussions activists for basic rights might face. “All of their dreams to achieve justice and decent living in their own countries will be aborted.”

In the war to resist the public’s entitlement to privacy being gradually eroded by powerful governments, it is now arguably more important than ever to take steps to secure rights to privacy. In that war, the public’s best and last line of defence may well be crypto.

Tallha Abdulrazaq is a researcher at the University of Exeter's Strategy and Security Institute and winner of the 2015 Al Jazeera Young Researcher Award. His research focuses on Middle Eastern security and counter-terrorism issues. 

Follow him on Twitter: @DrTalAbdulrazaq