It’s hard to gain traction with “Privacy” features in the modern world because most people think that it’s not important if other people can see their data. But the disconnect comes because Privacy is just a tool, one intended to serve a greater good: coercion resistance.
Coercion Resistance is built on the precept that people should be able to make their own choices and take their own actions without control imposed by another entity. Privacy largely helps to support this end.
Most of Blockchain Commons’ technologies are built to support protection against coercion in a variety of ways.
Coercion, Censorship, and Privacy
The concepts of coercion resistance, censorship resistance, and privacy are somewhat closely related architectural philosophies, but they can all three be explained under the rubric of the first.
- Coercion Resistance is the big tent. It says what’s desired (protecting individuals from force by other entities) and it encompasses the other two.
- Censorship Reistance is a subset of coercion resistance: it protects individuals from entities who might use force to disallow them from communicating. But it doesn’t speak to many other ways that force can be leveraged against individuals.
- Privacy is a set of design patterns whose main goal is Coercion Resistance. By protecting who you are and what you’re doing, by using pseudonyms and encrypting conversations, by minimizing data and disclosing selectively, you’re making it harder for other entities to coerce and censor you, but it’s ultimately a tool, not a goal: coercion resistance is the goal.
Censorship Resistance in Action
The philosophy of Censorship Resistance is threaded throughout Blockchain Commons’ technology.
Censorship-Resistant Identity
When we first proposed self-sovereign identity in 2016, the goal was to give users real control of their identity, so that it couldn’t be revoked by a centralized entity like Facebook or Google. It didn’t work out that way, as the DID specification that emerged left too much power in the hands of Issuers, who can coerce a user to only share in certain ways or even to act in certain ways so that their phone-home identity doesn’t get revoked.
Our XIDs offer a new solution that is truly self-sovereign—but by self-sovereign, we really mean “designed to be proof against coercion.”
- For more, see XIDs
Coercion Resistant Identity Publication
Having an identity may not be enough. You need to be able to broadcast that identity so that people can look it up and consider its validating information. You also need to be able to publish updates to your identity as it evolves over time. If your publication methods are controlled by a third party, then they can coerce you even if your identity is your own.
Unfortunately, this is a very common situation, as you may be lodging an identity you own at a third-party site (e.g., a Mastodon server or Bluesky) or you may be publishing it through an open web site (e.g., GitHub). Thosse resources may seem good now, but there’s no guarantee that they will continue to be available in the future.
Blockchain Commons’ answer is Garner, which publishes identity files over Tor using a public key as its address.
- For more see Garner
Coercion Resistant Assets
Blockchain Commons’ first published works were Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line and Smart Custody, both of which focused on the use of Bitcoins. This wasn’t due to allure of Bitcoin (or blockchains generally): it was because we recognized blockchain-based digital currencies as coercion resistant.
Bitmark, one of our earliest patrons, offered blockchain control of more types of digital (and even real-world) assets—an area that has unfortunately been neglected since they were forced to shut down. We’ve worked to offer some of our own possibilities for recording control of digital assets with provenance marks.
Generally, pseudonymous digital assets combined with provenance chains of control, offer two major sorts of coercion resistance:
Coercion-Resistance Assets. With the exception of the ‘ole “wrench attack” (which is why privacy is an important coercion-resistance tool), your assets can’t be taken from you.
Coercion-Resistance Commerce. In addition, unless the whole community decided to block the usage of specific bitcoins, your ability to purchase can’t be blocked.
- For more, see Learning Bitcoin
- For more, see Smart Custody.
Coercion Resistant Communication
Though Garner offers a specific solution for the coercion-resistant communication of identity files, the general concept of communication remains prone to coercion. Not only could your email or IP traffic be blocked, but you could also be punished for what you say (ranging from losing your job to being killed, depending on what you said and where you live).
This demonstrates the strong need for coercion resistant communication, where you can protect what you say and the fact that it’s you saying it. Gordian Clubs is Blockchain Commons’ most general method of protecting communication, because it wraps it in an autonomous cryptographic object. Hubert can also be used for communication, though its particular focus is algorithmic communication (e.g., censorship resistant access to protocols like FROST).
- For more, see Gordian Clubs.
- For more, see Hubert.
Coercion Resistant Data
The question of communication can be viewed through another lens: data. Can you move your data (including identity, assets, and everything else) from one place to another? Or, is it locked in by a proprietary format, or just a refusal to open software up to export in standardized formats?
This is why some of Blockchain Commons’ earliest specification work was on developing standard ways to exchange information, including URs, animated QRs, dCBOR, and ultimately Gordian Envelope. These are ways to store and transmit data in standardized, self-identifying ways that make intetoperability a snap.
- For more, see dCBOR.
- For more, see Uniform Resources.
- For more, see Animated QRs.
- For more, see Gordian Envelope.
Coercion Resistant Apps
One of the hardest methods of coercion to deal with is baked into applications you use. They’re usually written to force you to do certain things in certain ways. We’re increasingly familiar with “dark patterns,” where for example social media companies use infinite scroll to encourage addictive usage and where they juice their algorithms to encourage conflict to keep people coming back. But the mere fact of what’s on a home page and what’s buried three levels deep on a Settings page will also force users to use applications in certain ways.
The answer to this is likely not a specification and not a particularly technology, but rather training users to recognize coercive app designs and encouraging developers not to create them.