Ant 🇺🇸

This is some of the craziest shit I have heard in a while. _________________________________________ The Highwire with Del Bigtree: Episode 450: BROKEN FAITH Episode webpage: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-450-broken-faith--68574990 Media file: https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/68574990/episode_450_broken_faith.mp3

> *"The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier, and the ability of computers to track us doubles every eighteen months."* Phil Zimmerman Isn't it strange that in the so-called "free world," freedom has terms and conditions? That the rule of law bends like warm metal depending on who's holding the hammer? We live under a two-tiered justice system where financial privacy is a privilege reserved for the powerful and a crime for everyone else. Financial privacy isn't merely discouraged, it's criminalized. For the average person, it's treated like contraband. The system demands your transactions be transparent, your spending traceable, your life legible to the bureaucratic eye of the state. Unless, of course, you're an oligarch with twelve shell companies in Panama and a trust fund parked in the Caymans. Then you get "discretion." For everyone else, you get surveillance. When HSBC launders billions for the Sinaloa Cartel, it's "settled quietly." Meanwhile, your $5 latte and $300 side hustle trigger surveillance systems designed to track your every transaction. The tax authorities demand total transparency from you while the financial elite operate in shadows the size of small nations. The hypocrisy is industrial. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) laws were allegedly designed to stop criminal finance. The data tells a different story: they catch virtually no serious criminals while imposing billions in compliance costs and stripping ordinary people of privacy and dignity. It's not a crime prevention system. It's a control system. ## The Persecution of Privacy Developers The persecution of privacy developers has become a grotesque theater of double standards. Keonne Rodriguez, co-developer of Samourai Wallet, pled guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, not for committing crimes himself, but for building software that gave people financial privacy through CoinJoins and transaction obfuscation. Judge Denise Cote handed down the maximum possible sentence: five years in prison, three years supervision, and a $250,000 fine. Rodriguez's defense requested one year and a day. Probation authorities recommended 42 months. The government demanded the maximum and got it. Samourai Wallet was non-custodial, meaning Rodriguez never held or controlled users' funds. It used CoinJoins. a collaborative transaction method that breaks the traceable chain of Bitcoin inputs and outputs; and Ricochet, a feature adding extra "hops" for enhanced privacy. These tools weren't about hiding crimes; they were about preserving a basic human right in a digital age. Yet Rodriguez was convicted under §1960(b)(1)(C), a clause originally meant to criminalize knowingly transmitting illicit proceeds. The same clause was controversially used against Tornado Cash cofounder Roman Storm, in open defiance of the government's own April 2025 "Blanche Memo," which promised it would no longer prosecute developers simply for writing code. Even Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti publicly stated that where software is "truly decentralized and solely automates peer-to-peer transactions," prosecutions under §1960(b)(1)(C) would not be approved. Yet Rodriguez, whose wallet was exactly that, decentralized and non-custodial, sits in prison. The government has chosen to criminalize privacy technology not because it enables crime, but because it enables independence. Rodriguez's sentence wasn't about law enforcement. It was about sending a message: financial privacy itself is a permissioned privilege. The state wants everyone to know; *thou shalt not have financial privacy.* ## Privacy as Guilt Judge Cote openly questioned whether Samourai Wallet had any legitimate non-criminal use. In her worldview, wanting to shield your transactions from surveillance is inherently suspect. Never mind the documented cases of kidnapping and blackmail targeting cryptocurrency users whose transaction histories are public. Never mind that Bitcoin's transparent blockchain allows anyone to track your financial life with forensic precision. Never mind that privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in international law. If you want privacy, you must be hiding something criminal. Privacy, especially financial privacy, is now treated as inherently suspicious. To want it is to be labeled a criminal. If you build tools that provide it, you're facilitating crime. If you dare articulate a philosophical defense of privacy rights, you're morally blind to human suffering. Meanwhile, genuine bad actors, megabanks, political insiders; launder money by the billions with impunity. This is the logic of totalitarian states, privacy is for criminals and elites alone. Everyone else lives under the watchful eye of Sauron. ## Why They Fear Your Privacy The question we must ask is *why. *Why are the powers that be so terrified of ordinary people transacting privately? Why do they crush developers who give individuals tools of autonomy while turning a blind eye to institutional fraud? Because the state doesn't see you as a free individual, it sees you as a taxable resource. Financial privacy represents independence from their fiat-based cage. It means you could say no to unjust wars, corrupt politicians, exploitative taxes, or monetary debasement, and they can't allow that. Free people can say no. They can opt out of tyranny. They can build parallel systems outside state control. Slaves cannot. And a slave who can hide resources from the master? Unthinkable. This is why they hate Bitcoin. This is why privacy tools are criminalized. This is why every attack on financial privacy follows attacks on free speech: control the conversation, control the money, control the human. ## The Questions That Matter If you can't spend your money privately, is it really your money? If writing open-source code can put you in prison, are you truly free? If privacy tools are treated as criminal infrastructure, how long until thought itself becomes a regulated service? And when they finally roll out their programmable Central Bank Digital Currencies, will you still believe you have "nothing to hide"? ## "I Have Nothing to Hide" The most common defense of surveillance is always the same: "I have nothing to hide." This is the refrain of the comfortable, the naive, or the historically illiterate. As Cardinal Richelieu warned: *"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I will find something in them which will hang him."* Think about that the next time you justify your own surveillance. The state doesn't need you to be guilty, only vulnerable. Every transaction you make, every purchase you record, every financial decision logged in their databases, it's all ammunition for future Richelieus. Rodriguez wrote privacy software and used cash. That was enough to hang him. What will be enough to hang you? ## The Conclusion You Already Know Financial privacy isn't a luxury for criminals and elites. Building privacy tools isn't a crime. But we live in a society where both are treated as threats to national security. That's not civilization. That's an open-air prison where freedom exists only as state-sanctioned privilege, granted or revoked at will. Where judges openly question whether privacy has legitimate uses. Where using cash is evidence of guilt. Where maximum sentences await those who dare to code freedom into existence. Financial privacy is a cornerstone of liberty. A world where privacy is treated as guilt and code as crime is not free. It's a minimum-security prison dressed up as a democracy, where obedience is mandatory and freedom is contraband.