The state celebrates its supposed victory over cryptocurrency anonymity

The state celebrates its supposed victory over cryptocurrency anonymity like a historical moment, as if it had finally broken an invisible threat. In official reports, the announcements sound like a big breakthrough, after a spectacular success, after a turning point in the fight against an allegedly dark parallel universe of digital payments. behind this oneHowever, a sober message is hidden from the bloated staging: Individual privacy is systematically dismantled, and every possibility of evading the state’s complete view should be eradicated. The jubilation is more reminiscent of a victory over one’s own citizen than of a success in the fight against actual crime.

The international team production

When there is talk of a large international investigative team that allegedly paralyzed a cryptocurrency mixer and confiscated considerable amounts of digital values, it feels like the script of a mediocre thriller. States, authorities and supranational institutions present themselves as watchful guardians of order as if any encrypted data stream wereattack on civilization. The fact that it is actually an attack on tools that offer technical anonymity and thus protection from prying eyes is carefully concealed. The mixer, the infrastructure, the software is declared the main character of the “crime”, while the concrete damage remains pale or hardly described. This is how aEnemy image that is abstract and perfect for stigmatizing any form of digital shielding.

Stage for authorities and cameras

Such actions are only too fond of camera teams who turn public broadcasting into a kind of live chronicler of state self-portrayal. Public prosecutor’s office, police and a whole alphabet at special authorities perform like stars in elaborately produced documentation, with clips, O’ sounds, cut scenes of keyboards, monitors andemergency vehicles. The viewer should feel: Great things are being achieved here, the evil is being tracked down in its digital cave. But what feels like great cinema is in fact a frightening proof that critical distance has almost completely disappeared. The public broadcasting institutions applaud politely instead of questioning whether the acclaimed interventionindeed perpetrators or whether he primarily sends a message to everyone who value privacy.

The disappeared presumption of innocence

At its core there is a deeply disturbing shift: If you don’t want to make your payments completely transparent, who uses anonymity or just discretion, you will be tacitly moved close to criminals. Anonymous or pseudonymous transactions become a suspect in itself, as if the mere decision to conceal was already the first step to the crime. theThe presumption of innocence is reversed, because the citizen has to explain why he wants to hide something and has to justify himself because he should not report every private edition, every gift, every referral to state agencies. In the subtext, the message is: If you have nothing to hide, you don’t need anonymity, so every form of encryption is an admission of guilt. This is how it becomesA technical option a moral flaw, a silent charge that can be turned against the user at any time.

Suspect as permanent condition

Anyone who does not voluntarily open up to every gaze is increasingly considered a suspect, and even this suspicion justifies measures that were previously reserved for massive interventions. In the logic of money laundering and counter-terrorism laws, it is sufficient to be conspicuous to end up in databases, profiles and risk lists without ever having committed a concrete act. The use of anonymous or onPrivacy of technology-focused technologies is enough to freeze accounts, seize assets, or start lengthy exams, while those affected hardly understand how they were even targeted. The individual experiences himself no longer as a citizen with rights, but as an object of a permanent, invisible examination, in which any deviation from the state-preferredpayment behavior becomes risky. The fear that an ordinary use process will be marked as suspicious eats into every decision.

The perfect enemy: digital privacy

For authorities who have been trying to declare any form of digital privacy a security risk for years, the anonymous crypto user is the ideal enemy. It is faceless, elusive, technically adept and therefore perfect for legitimizing new monitoring measures. Instead of putting the focus on specific crimes, the infrastructure itself is criminalized:The mixer, the privacy-coin function, the encrypted wallet, the decentralized marketplace. Those who use these tools automatically fall into a gray area where every defense sounds like an excuse. This creates an atmosphere in which privacy is synonymous with suspicion and transparency with virtue, even if it is naked from the public eye of the state,service providers and potential attackers.

Infrastructure as a new main goal

The trend is unmistakable: The focus is no longer on the individual perpetrator, but the technical infrastructure itself. Whether mixer, privacy coin, communication server or decentralized platform – everything that enables anonymous or difficult-to-understand activities becomes the goal of legal and technical attacks. The logic behind it is brutally simple: What you can’t control willtaken off the net or regulated to lose its original function. Instead of doing classic investigative work, the state tries to rewrite the rules of the game in the entire digital space so that in the end every trace, every transaction, every relationship can be traced. Freedom is no longer assumed and limited, but is viewed with suspicion from the outset andThen broken down into small, controllable fragments.

Confiscation as standard tool

It is no longer just a matter of confiscation of individual devices or accounts, but complete server landscapes, mail accounts and data stocks from providers who only provide infrastructure. File hosts, communications services, smaller crypto platforms get into the same vortex as classic suspects, although in many cases they only provide neutral technology. theAuthorities use a familiar vocabulary: There is talk of comprehensive evidence, important findings, other investigative approaches, as if every stored data set was a potential trace of the great crime. In truth, this means that masses of information are collected, secured and evaluated by the uninvolved without them ever realistically expecting tocould be drawn into a punitive complex. The technical operator becomes the accused from the service provider, the user from the citizen to the data set.

The bureaucratic language of the intervention

The official language of these interventions is cool and factual, but it is precisely this sobriety that makes them so disturbing. Behind terms such as “Improvement of traceability”, “risk assessment” or “strengthening transparency” there is a program that wants one thing above all: close any gap in which the individual is out of the field of view of state and private surveillancecould act. Terms like money laundering, terrorist financing and tax evasion become magic words that can be used to justify almost any aggravation, even if it hits millions of law-abiding users. Bureaucratic rhetoric turns massive fundamental rights interventions into seemingly harmless administrative steps, while the consequences for freedom, security and autonomy are the onlybecome visible when it is too late.

The slow loss of informal self-determination

At the end there is a gradual but profound loss of the fundamental right to informational self-determination. What was once intended as a protective wall against overlying data collection frenzy has become a hollow formula that is mentioned in statements, but is pushed back further and further in practice. If every flow of money is traceable, every transaction is personal and everydeviation from standardized payment methods is subject to reporting, remains of the right to self-determined data sovereignty, little more than an empty shell. The citizen turns into a glass object whose financial behavior can be evaluated to the last corner. The possibility of moving anonymously is not only limited, but morally devalued as if it were aAnachronistic relic from a time when trust in the individual still played a role.

A state that knows too much

The state that celebrates its successes in the fight against anonymity does not recognize how much it undermines the foundation of trust. The more surveillance, reporting obligations and infrastructure breakdowns are announced, the stronger the feeling is that not only criminals are the aim of these measures, but everyone who wants to avoid the constant view. If officialIf you look at any form of digital veil with distrust, the liberal order is transformed into a grid of suspicious moments that is closely related to anyone who takes their privacy seriously. The alleged victory over anonymity thus proves to be a defeat for the idea that citizens are first people with rights and not data sources that are down to the smallestneed to be evaluated.