A lot (if not almost all) emphasis on financial privacy in the bitcoin community is focused on privacy-from-government as the core concern. For good reason. Particularly those using bitcoin to avoid political repression. It's life and death. I know some of these people personally.
This completely ignores the more proximate concerns of the need for financial privacy that emerge from the private sphere. If we don't have privacy, it puts a target on our back from bad, private actors. Fraudsters, thieves, or worse.
Privacy is fundamentally important within our personal lives, even if you take the government out of it the picture. State abuse of power is surely a critical concern. But so is private abuses of power -- such as in the phenomenon of "surveillance capitalism". The full-throated defense of privacy does not start and end with concerns about the state.
This completely ignores the more proximate concerns of the need for financial privacy that emerge from the private sphere. If we don't have privacy, it puts a target on our back from bad, private actors. Fraudsters, thieves, or worse.
Privacy is fundamentally important within our personal lives, even if you take the government out of it the picture. State abuse of power is surely a critical concern. But so is private abuses of power -- such as in the phenomenon of "surveillance capitalism". The full-throated defense of privacy does not start and end with concerns about the state.
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