[taler-marketing] branch master updated: defang a bit more

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grothoff pushed a commit to branch master
in repository marketing.

The following commit(s) were added to refs/heads/master by this push:
     new fc03d40  defang a bit more
fc03d40 is described below

commit fc03d401da4e7ab8983bf2533513a8692402a944
Author: Christian Grothoff <christian@grothoff.org>
AuthorDate: Thu Feb 17 22:56:31 2022 +0100

    defang a bit more
---
 2022-privacy/privacy.tex | 66 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------
 1 file changed, 36 insertions(+), 30 deletions(-)

diff --git a/2022-privacy/privacy.tex b/2022-privacy/privacy.tex
index 5dbff83..2409edc 100644
--- a/2022-privacy/privacy.tex
+++ b/2022-privacy/privacy.tex
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 \usepackage{enumitem}
 \usepackage{authblk}
 
-\title{Accounts are an Unnecessary Evil \\ A critique of two
+\title{Accounts are Unnecessary and Harmful \\ A critique of two
   papers\footnote{We thank Martin Summer for encouraging us to put our
   critique of the ECB's report in writing.  We thank central bankers for their
   good aspirations, which they should keep up even if we question their
@@ -41,8 +41,8 @@ project to succeed.
 
 Along the same lines, the French National Council for Digitalization published
 a report on ``Notes and Tokens, The New Competition of
-Currencies''~\cite{french2021}.  Here, the authors make similar
-assumptions about inevitable properties of Central Bank Digital Currencies
+Currencies''~\cite{french2021}.  Here, the authors make related incorrect
+claims about inevitable properties of Central Bank Digital Currencies
 (CBDCs), going as far as stating that a CBDC is not possible without an eID
 system.  Our paper sets the record straight.
 
@@ -161,24 +161,29 @@ banks of the Eurosystem, is dominantly privately held and 
listed on the Athen's
 stock exchange~\cite{BG2016}.  Similar constructions with privately owned
 central banks exist outside of the Eurozone, for example with the Swiss
 National Bank~\cite{SNB}.  That all central banks are independent and operate
-in the public interest is currently widely questioned in the popular press in
-the case of Turkey~\cite{tcimer2020}.  With counter-examples inside the
+in the public interest is sometimes questioned in the popular
+press~\cite{tcimer2020}.  With counter-examples inside the
 European System of Central Banks (ECBS) itself and within Europe, it is clear
-that the ECB's is caught in a dangerous self-delusion of central banks being
-politically neutral and public-minded institutions.
-
-This assumption is a dangerous conjecture because it leads to the ECB trusting 
itself with
-information and decisions that it must be entrusted with.  In particular, the
-authors write that the ECB ``may also prefer the (...) the ability to control
-the privacy of payments data''. This is a fundamental misconception of the
-notion of privacy. Citizens will \emph{only} have privacy with a Digital Euro
-if they themselves have control over their payment data. Privacy and the human
-right of informational self-determination requires that each (legally capable)
-citizen is in control of their personal data.  The ECB asserting the ``ability
-to control the privacy'' is thus an oxymoron: once anyone else has control,
-citizens have no privacy.
-Any institution that strives to act in the public interest must acknowledge 
this or
-otherwise risk patronizing its sovereign: the European citizens.
+one needs to be careful to avoid confusing the idealistic view of central
+banks as politically neutral and public-minded institutions with reality.
+To build secure systems, it is best to assume that all parties,
+including the system's designers, implementors and main operators
+themselves, could be malicious.
+
+Central banks thus need to take a different mindset, and idally picture
+themeselves as malicious actors when working on the design of a CBDC.  Only
+this way, they will avoid designs which would entrust them with information
+and decisions that they must not be entrusted with.  For example, the ECB's
+report currently suggests that the ECB ``may also prefer the (...) the ability
+to control the privacy of payments data''. This is a fundamental misconception
+of the notion of privacy. Citizens will \emph{only} have privacy with a
+Digital Euro if they themselves have control over their payment data. Privacy
+and the human right of informational self-determination requires that each
+(legally capable) citizen is in control of their personal data.  A central
+bank asserting the ``ability to control the privacy'' is thus an oxymoron:
+once anyone else has control, citizens have no privacy.  Public institutions
+that act in the public interest must acknowledge this to not patronize their
+sovereign: the citizens.
 
 The French report~\cite{french2021} correctly states that a Digital Euro based
 on accounts poses ``democratic risks''\footnote{risques démocratiques} and 
could allow ``state surveillance of
@@ -240,7 +245,7 @@ CBDC.
 
 \section{Harmful coupling with identity}
 \label{sec:coupling}
-The arguably most dangerous idea emerging from the ECB report is ``combining 
use of
+A harmful idea emerging from the ECB report is ``combining use of
 digital identity and CBDC''. The same idea is echoed in the French report
 which quotes an unpublished report from Catenae (2020) to say that ``it is
 difficult to envisage the creation of a retail CBDC, and more specifically a
@@ -323,15 +328,16 @@ fixed low limit would strangle the utility of the CBDC, 
while a fixed high
 limit may not be effective. They then propose a dynamic limit which they would
 ``calculate in accordance to (...) presumed cash needs''.
 
-Here, the authors fail to learn the hard lessons from the introduction of 
$CO_2$
-emissions certificates, where initial allocations were calculated based on
-``presumed emission needs'' of certain industries, resulting in windfalls for
-shifty polluters that managed to rig the calculations, giving them excess
-certificates that they could then resell.~\cite{carbon}  If CBDC holdings are 
limited and
-financially attractive, there will clearly again be businesses profiting from
-organizing their business data to obtain high account limits.  This kind of
-socially unproductive optimization will happen regardless of the specific
-rules that the ECB will design.  Thus, this is a fundamentally flawed design.
+Here, the authors might want to review some of the hard lessons from the
+introduction of $CO_2$ emissions certificates, where initial allocations were
+calculated based on ``presumed emission needs'' of certain industries,
+resulting in windfalls for shifty polluters that managed to rig the
+calculations, giving them excess certificates that they could then
+resell.~\cite{carbon} If CBDC holdings are limited and financially attractive,
+there will clearly again be businesses profiting from organizing their
+business data to obtain high account limits.  This kind of socially
+unproductive optimization will happen regardless of the specific rules that
+the ECB will design.  Thus, this is a fundamentally flawed design.
 
 
 The ECB's focus on account-based solutions seems to have caused it to ignore a

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