Could Blockchain Protect Our Privacy?
I don’t wanna die in a Panopticon.
In 1785, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed his famous Panopticon. The basic setup of Bentham ’s panopticon is a central tower surrounded by cells. This design makes it possible for only one monitor to know every move of the prisoner, but the prisoner cannot determine whether they are being monitored.
The same situation continues in today’s Internet age. Every click, search, and payment made by a user on the network will be recorded and analyzed, becoming an important resource for personalized recommendation algorithms for Internet companies. With the support of the Internet of Things, AI, and cloud computing technology, data analysis runs through all aspects of our lives. In the era of the digital economy, personal privacy and security are being seriously threatened.
Should We Lock Them in Jail
Ron Lee Wyden, an American senator, had unofficially proposed a bill to hold tech industry leaders themselves responsible for damages resulting from breaches of users’ private information in 2019. By making those tech CEOs responsible, he means putting them into jail.
The bill “requires that the executives sign off on the validity of the balance sheets that are audited by the accounting firms so now they are personally liable”, and it went on fire immediately on Hacker News.
Although many people agreed, others suggested that the proposal was too utopian. It is true that Internet companies collect and use a large amount of identity information, but they do not actually give users these identities. This identity paradox is made by the combination of Internet structure, big data model, and insufficient legal regulations, which also means that data self-determination andautonomy are difficult to achieve.
In the cross-section of technological and historical iterations, blockchain technology may not be able to completely break the cage of the “Panopticon” , but it can at least set a barrier for personal life and leave some space to breathe freely.
How Blockchain’s Doing at Privacy
Blockchain privacy solution is focused on identity privacy and transaction privacy. Identity privacy refers to the association between the user’s identity information and the blockchain address, and transaction privacy means the facts behind the transaction records and its storage in the blockchain.
Maskbook, in the form of a browser plug-in, turns Facebook and Twitter into an unmonitorable square. Users can still use their previous identity accounts to play here- meet new people, post your updates, make new friends — but the difference is that the data you post will be encrypted into a string of garbled codes. Only the friends you chose can interpret those codes into the correct meaning. Facebook and Twitter still help users store the data they post, but this data has become a ciphertext that it can’t be cracked. In fact, even the Maskbook team can’t crack the messages you send.
Bitcoin was developed as an anonymous cryptocurrency, but its anonymity is not thorough. Other people wouldn’t know your real name, but they can still make a relation to you through various transaction information. When trading on the Bitcoin network, you will leave “on-chain information” and “off-chain information”. The former associates your transaction information with others, and the latter reveals your identity information.
So privacy coins like Zcash, Monero, and Gim and Beam based on Mimblewimble have appeared one after another. Although their technologies are different, the main purpose is to cut off the “connection”.
Zcash uses zk-SNARKs technology, a further developed the zk-SNARKs technology based on zero-knowledge proofs, which allows people to concisely and non-interactively prove that they know certain information while not disclosing specific content.
Monero uses ring signatures. By building Kovri to support privacy-protected packet routing, users can hide their geographic location and IP address. The key features of Mimblewimble are no public address and complete privacy.
Brave Browser, the number one download app in Japan’s Google Play browser, blocks third-party ads by default. You can choose whether or not to see ads. If you enable the ad push function, the ads you see while browsing the web can be converted into your income. Besides, Brave’s WayBack Machine can even help you find the historical archive of 404 pages in the Internet Archive.
Despite those meaningful new technologies brought by blockchain, such as zero-knowledge proof, zk-SNARKs, and technologies used by Monero and Brave, blockchain does not point use a way to protect privacy. But this is all just a beginning, the technology will need some time to grow and be strong.
