Pavol Luptak
CEO of Nethemba - Slovak IT security company founded in 2007, primarily focused on web application security and various penetration tests.
By Pavol Luptak
The first implementation of asymmetric cryptography (PGP) at the beginning of the 90s, created a cypherpunks' belief that digital privacy is an integral part of ourselves and should be absolute. Simply no one has a right to intervene to our digital liberty. Since the 90s, the Internet has been changed a lot. It has become the government and social manipulation tool over the entire population. In 2006 Data Retention Directive was applied to all EU citizens. Few years after, other laws prohibiting using cash above specific thresholds were also adopted. Of course allowing financial surveillance of all people who use bank accounts. Many European countries started to use central government reporting systems (e.g. Czech EET) which can be misused to gain sensitive correlations about shopping habits, money flows or customers' solvency. The close cooperation of mobile network operators with the governments allows locating and targeting of almost all citizens, their movements, calls, and messages. Draconian privacy laws as the UK 'Snooper's charter' allow government backdoors to any communication. Digital dictatorship is here. In the EU. The following moral & philosophical questions arise: * How deep should we care about our digital privacy? And how much of our digital privacy are we willing to sacrifice for "social welfare"? How much anti-privacy draconian laws can we tolerate? * If our personal details, personal communication or personal data are the inevitable part of our digital privacy, does it also include our personal financial transactions in cryptocurrencies? * If not, which part of our digital privacy 'belongs' to governments and which not? * And who defines these borders of digital privacy? * Or do we deserve absolute digital privacy? Just because it is technologically feasible?