You'll Pay For That: Payment Systems, Surveillance, and Dissent

Presented at A New HOPE (2022), July 24, 2022, 5 p.m. (50 minutes)

There has been a quiet revolution in payment systems and government power. Government efforts to track credit and banking transactions have exploded. Government efforts to discourage cash and to regulate cryptocurrencies have increased. Using examples from Canada, Ukraine, China, and Nigeria, this talk will examine these mechanisms of financial surveillance, discuss the latest innovations in government efforts to track even privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, and highlight the debates within our community as to how to approach financial surveillance issues. What is our responsibility, as hackers, technologists, and civil liberties people to maintain the privacy from surveillance of people engaged in disfavored forms and topics of organizing and protest? Can we ensure that systems that permit freedom are able to transact privately? Without that freedom, it will be much harder to organize dissent to, well, anything.

Presenters:

• Alex Marthews
  **Alex Marthews** (**@rebelcinder**) is a U.S.-U.K. dual citizen and father of four living in Massachusetts. He has served as national chair of Restore The Fourth since 2014. His master's degree is in public policy, focusing on discrimination in online blocking and filtering systems. At The Eleventh HOPE, he spoke on "Surveillance Gives Me Chills," and at The Circle of HOPE spoke on a panel titled, "And This Is It? What Went Wrong with Surveillance Reform After Snowden." In his prior career, he was the executive director of nonprofits in the fields of historic preservation, poverty, and girls' education in East Africa.

Links:

• https://scheduler.hope.net/new-hope/talk/PQDH3S/
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/A New HOPE (2022)/A New HOPE (2022) You'll Pay For That Payment Systems, Surveillance, and Dissent.mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/A New HOPE (2022)/A New HOPE (2022) You'll Pay For That Payment Systems, Surveillance, and Dissent.srt (subtitles)

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• DEF CON 17 (2009) / Ask EFF: The Year in Digital Civil Liberties
• 31C3 (2014) / The Invisible Committee Returns with "Fuck Off Google": Cybernetics, Anti-Terrorism, and the ongoing case against the Tarnac 10
• HOPE Number Nine (2012) / Declassifying Government and Undermining a Culture of Insecurity