Source: Cointelegraph Original: "{title}"

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that privacy should be a top priority for developers and warned against being overly optimistic about transparency and good intentions in global politics.

In a blog post on April 14, Buterin argued that privacy is crucial for maintaining personal freedom and protecting against the growing power of governments and corporations. He criticized the view that increased transparency is inherently beneficial, claiming that this idea is based on outdated assumptions about human nature.

"These assumptions include the belief that global political leaders are generally well-intentioned and rational, and that social culture will continue to improve," Buterin wrote. "But both of these points are increasingly proving to be untrue."

Buterin claimed that "no major country can be widely recognized as conforming to the first assumption." Additionally, he noted that cultural inclusivity is "rapidly regressing," a point he claims can be evidenced by searching for "bullying is good" on the X platform.

Buterin expressed that he sometimes feels uneasy about his lack of privacy. He added:

"Every action I take in public has a certain probability of accidentally becoming a story reported by the media."

Secretly taken photo of Vitalik Buterin. Source: Vitalik.eth

While this may seem to imply that privacy only benefits those who operate outside social norms, he emphasized, "You never know when you might become one of them."

Buterin anticipates that as technology continues to develop, the demand for privacy will only increase, with brain-machine interfaces potentially allowing automated systems to directly invade our minds. Another concern is automated price discrimination, where companies charge fees based on their estimated users' ability to pay.

Buterin also strongly opposed the idea of adding government backdoors to privacy protection systems. He stated that while this stance is common, it is fundamentally unstable.

He emphasized that regarding Know Your Customer (KYC) data, "not only the government but also a variety of entities of varying quality" can access private data. This information is actually processed and stored by payment processors, banks, and other intermediaries.

Similarly, telecom companies can locate users and have been found to illegally sell this data. Buterin also raised concerns that individuals who gain access to data will always have motives to misuse it, and databases are always vulnerable to hacking. Finally, a trustworthy government may become untrustworthy in the future, inheriting all sensitive data. He concluded:

"From a personal perspective, if data is collected, they cannot know whether this data will be misused in the future and how it will be misused. So far, the safest way to handle large-scale data is to centralize collection as little as possible from the start."

Buterin raised the issue of governments being able to access any information through search warrants, "because that's how things have always worked." He pointed out that this view ignores a historical fact: the amount of data available through search warrants in the past was much less.

He said that even "if the most powerful forms of internet privacy were widely adopted," traditionally available data would still be accessible. He wrote, "In the 19th century, ordinary conversations would only happen once, through speech, and were never recorded by anyone."

The solutions Buterin proposed are primarily based on zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs), as they allow for "fine control over who can see what information." Zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic protocols that allow one party to prove that a statement is true without revealing any additional information.

One of the systems is a zero-knowledge proof-based identification that can prove you are unique without revealing who you are. These systems rely on documents such as passports or biometric data and pair with decentralized systems.

Another proposed solution is the recently launched privacy pools, which allow for the anonymization of Ethereum (ETH) in compliance with regulatory requirements. Buterin also mentioned device-side anti-fraud scanning, which checks incoming messages and identifies potential misinformation and scams.

These systems are physical source verification services that combine blockchain and zero-knowledge proof technology. They track various attributes of items throughout the manufacturing cycle, ensuring that users can verify their authenticity.

This article follows Buterin's recent release of the Ethereum privacy roadmap. In the roadmap, he emphasized the short-term changes needed in the underlying protocols and ecosystem to ensure better user privacy.

Related: Vitalik Buterin unveils Ethereum privacy roadmap

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