Doing Things Peer to Peer

By Natalie Smolenski, Bitcoin Policy Summit, 2024

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The following is a transcription of Natalie Smolenski’s stupendous talk at the Bitcoin Policy Summit 2024, in Washington DC, this past April 9th.

We took the liberty to add a few [easter eggs] in our transcription.

Enjoy!

PEER TO PEER IS A HUMAN RIGHT

— Natalie Smolenski

Today I want to talk to you about peer to peer, and what that means.

The best way to do that is to start small.

Let’s start from you, and me, choosing to do something together. It could be anything. Have a conversation, take a walk, share a lunch, make a purchase, watch a movie, play a game, start a company. It doesn’t matter. What matters is it’s you, and me, together, doing something we both want to do, simply because we want to do it.

You and me, peer to peer.

Every great project, every great institution, every great discovery, every great company, every great country begins with a “you” and a “me.”

There is no one we forgot to ask. There is no one who can give us permission. There is no ID required. There is no third party.

There’s just you, and me.

You and me, “we”, are the basis for what is called civil society. The network of countless “you’s” and “me’s” out there, just doing their own thing. Sometimes growing into bigger “we’s.”

It is civil society that forms the backbone of the people. The people who give their consent to be governed by any particular government.

As the founding fathers of the United States reminded the world, that, consent, can be revoked. All power belongs to the people, not some of the power, some of the time, but all of the power, all of the time.

The people may choose to temporarily delegate some of these powers to a government they consent to, but they can just as easily revoke that consent. The government has no inherent powers, no inherent rights, and certainly no inherent money. All of it comes from the people.

And the people can take it back.

By doing things peer to peer, you and me, just because we want to, we realize one day that, “hey, we have power.” Not because we made a plan to have it, not because we were trying to have it, not because someone gave it to us, but just because we used it. And this is where we arrive at our principle, that peer to peer is a human right.

Communicating and transacting without a third party in the middle is not an anomaly, it’s not suspicious, and it’s certainly not a crime. It is the way that human beings have always done things from time immemorial. It’s only because of the acceleration of information technologies today that we can even imagine governments, companies, and other third parties trying to get in the middle of every message and every [sat] that is sent between you’s and me’s around the world.

The founding fathers themselves could not have imagined as such a technological future but they did articulate the principle of peer to peer in the Fourth amendment. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO BE SECURE IN THEIR PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS, AND EFFECTS, AGAINST UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED, AND NO WARRANTS SHALL ISSUE BUT UPON PROBABLE CAUSE, SUPPORTED BY OATH OR AFFIRMATION, AND PARTICULARLY DESCRIBING THE PLACE TO BE SEARCHED AND THE PERSONS OR THINGS TO BE SEIZED.

— U.S. CONSTITUTION, AMENDMENT FOUR, 1791

But something happened in the 1970’s. The US Congress, the elected legislative representatives of the people, tried to outlaw the fourth Amendment.

Starting with the Bank Secrecy Act in 1970, and continuing through with the Orwellian, Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, congress attempted to make it legal for banks and other third parties to search and seize without a warrant. The Supreme Court helped them with its 1976 ruling in United States v Miller which defined third party doctrine legally that people who willingly give information to a third party like a bank or a phone company have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Think about that. Imagine that.

Imagine today living without a bank, a phone company, or an internet service provider.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that any person interacting with any of these entities at any time has forfeited their constitutional right to privacy.

That is the opposite of what the founders of the United States believed.

The U.S. Post Office was founded in 1775 on the eve of the American Revolution, in large part to enable revolutionaries to securely communicate. This is because the British postal system was fully governmental surveilled. To this day opening mail that is not addressed to you, or preventing its delivery to the intended recipient, is a federal crime in the United States.

But in only one short decade, during the 20th century, precisely as Silicon Valley was gearing up to birth the global software industry, two branches of the U.S. federal government decided that these protections would not apply to the new information technology revolution.

Where was the separation of powers here?

Where was judicial review?

Where were the checks and balances?

Well, they were all there, all working together to grant the state more power. Different branches of the government colluding with each other thinking they could get away with it. After all, who noticed?

That’s always the move.

Apologists for these laws and rulings, and for the many dozens of other laws, rulings, and international treaties that have been made since, will say that they had to do this because of [muh] crime.

Now, crime is a legal category. It is what the state says is prohibited. The Constitution puts limits on what the state is able to prohibit and the methods it may use to investigate and sanction violations of what is legally prohibited. Those limits on the power of the state are what create the possibility of freedom. Proponents of the surveillance state say that your constitution had to be made into an origami hat because the people had too much freedom.

Think about that.

That is their genuine actual point of view.

Not only is such a proposition absurd on its face, but in a prior age would have been called treasonous. Let me make very clear the sociological reality that is the inevitable result of the kind of surveillance that these anti-crime [midwit] warriors are working to bring about.

A society with no crime would be a fully totalitarian society. A fully militarized homeland, with total information awareness. Black ops against the civilian population.

A free people will occasionally commit crimes.

It is the obligation of law enforcement to prosecute crimes, but only after they have been committed, and then only within the boundaries established by the Constitution.

Having a constitution, having any legally meaningful concept of inherent human rights means that some crimes will go unsolved and unpunished. Certainly unprevented. And that is an acceptable, indeed, desirable price to pay for human freedom. This principle applies internationally as well as domestically.

In an era of accelerating communication technologies. It should be crystal clear that it is impossible to restrict your enemy’s freedom without also restricting your own.

There is no way to ensure that only the good guys can speak, or economically transact. Mostly because every good guy is a bad guy to someone, and every bad guy is a good guy to someone. So who will decide, and for how long?

Today we have the great privilege of hearing from activists putting their lives on the line for freedom in some of the most hostile places on Earth.

Lyudmyla Kozlovska, president of the [Open Dialogue Foundation], Anna Chekhovich, Financial Director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Roger Wang, author and activist, Jorge Jraissati, President of the Organization for Economic Inclusion, Fadi Elsalameen, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and Roya Mahboob, founder of Citadel Software. But as we celebrate each of these people it should be apparent that the only reason they can use peer to peer technologies for liberation is because their oppressors can use it as well.

Any truly peer to peer technology is a technology for enemies.

It is only by making it impossible to decide who is good enough to use the network that it can be an engine for freedom at all.

We are living through an era of fashionable authoritarianism everywhere. Every government, and most political parties across the ideological spectrum believe that they have not only the right but the obligation to police speech and economic activity for the greater good, but the only true greater good that there is or can be, emerges from your good and my good as we go about freely pursuing happiness together.

No one can tell us what that looks like.

No one can predict what it will look like in the future.

As our “we” gets bigger, our good can involve more people but that happens bottom up, not top down.

The joy and the struggle of being human is that we get to figure out who we are, and actualize our own potential by doing things together in the world, by risking things and by taking responsibility for the conditions and outcomes of what we choose to do.

This is impossible in the fully owned safety internet that the crime preventers are building.

It should go without saying that there is no guarantee of safety, either in a free or an unfree world, but in an unfree world the exits have been cut off and there are snipers watching your every move. Let’s hope you built a sufficient peer to peer [Bitcoin] network, because it will become your underground railroad.

Thank you.

[Cheers!]