
Unknown Fund: Investing and donating to support anonymity - ccamrobertson
https://www.unknown.fund/press-release
======
motohagiography
The use cases for anonymity will drive the tech.

I'd argue there isn't a middle class use case for strong anonymity. There are
tons of use cases for identity and privacy, but anonymity presumes you are
being preyed upon somehow. You need antagonists, and most of those are
government/institution related, but by defining yourself in opposition to
them, you in-effect leave the middle class. E.g. cease to identify as someone
those institutions ostensibly serve, and identify instead as one of those they
target.

To value strong anonymity, you need to be part of either an underclass group,
or have enough wealth that it needs protection internationally, with a big gap
for use cases in between.

There are tons of criminal use cases for anonymity that facilitate the needs
and desperation of people afflicted by poverty, but those are illegal
precisely because the line between relieving and exploiting poverty is so
grey. Lotteries are a great example, as are cash jobs, narco logistics, vice
and sex trade, short term loans, gambling, escrow payments for irregular
immigration. These are all things people do for either survival or relief
where to facilitate them is exploitative. Arguable, but that's the mainstream
view.

On the upper end, moving collateral around to protect the "beneficial owner,"
of an asset like art or property just reduces to variations on tax and
regulatory avoidance, or sometimes evasion. It's almost uniquely both high
risk and boring.

I don't see this fund producing anything interesting.

~~~
m463
> I'd argue there isn't a middle class use case for strong anonymity.

I can think of 1000 use cases for strong anonymity.

Thinking of switching a job, thinking of getting a divorce, becoming a
whistleblower, investigating symptoms of a disease you may have, forming or
joining a union. Or even just showing your irrational spending habits.

These are middle-class, non-criminal things.

Folks will be oppressed on an unprecedented scale, and very cheaply.

Additionally, if we continue without taking action, society will be affected
on an unprecedented scale by dataminers from the future. Data collected now or
a decade ago may be mined by sophisticated algorithms created a decade from
now.

~~~
drngdds
>Thinking of switching a job, thinking of getting a divorce, becoming a
whistleblower, investigating symptoms of a disease you may have, forming or
joining a union. Or even just showing your irrational spending habits.

Almost everything you've listed there is solved by using private browsing and
pseudonyms. That's not strong anonymity. You don't need Tor to unionize.

~~~
heavyset_go
> _You don 't need Tor to unionize._

Labor history is rife with eavesdropping, spying, honey pots and sabotage
against workers at the hands of employers. Computers make all of those things
easier and cheaper than they were in the past.

Nowadays, firms offering those services go by the names of 'union-avoidance
consultancies'[1] among many others. You can Google that term or 'fighting
union' for dozens of companies you can hire towards that end.

Also, the Pinkertons[2] are still in business doing what they did 150 years
ago.

[1] [https://www.epi.org/blog/union-busters-are-more-prevalent-
th...](https://www.epi.org/blog/union-busters-are-more-prevalent-than-they-
seem-and-may-soon-even-be-at-the-nlrb/)

[2] [https://www.pinkerton.com](https://www.pinkerton.com)

------
ukd1
Is there any proof they hold $75mm in BTC? I didn't see any on the site. Why;
I could have put this page up.

~~~
Forbo
That's an excellent point. This could be an elaborate long-con watering hole
attack.

~~~
Deimorz
What would the attack be? Someone applies and they... now have their email
address and business info, which is probably public or easily discovered
anyway?

~~~
michaelt
1\. Say you’ve got an investment fund with $$$$ in assets

2\. Suckers see that as social proof, and assume other investors have done
their due diligence

3\. They invest

4\. The money disappears in suspicious circumstances.

~~~
api
Sounds like some recent failed unicorns that shall remain nameless.

------
otoburb
If Unknown Fund is not a recognized non-profit in at least one (or more?)
countries, would any project that receives funding see their owners having to
pay tax on the grants?

Given the nature, purpose and stated distribution mechanism of the fund on the
website, it's highly unlikely Unknown Fund would register as a formal private
foundation. I'm not sure how that works.

~~~
snitko
How this works? They send btc and people use them. You're thinking in the old
frame of reference: you don't need banks, legal entities or identities even to
produce code. Who cares if it's recognized or not.

~~~
cortesoft
Local tax authorities will care, and will have the resources to track you
down.

~~~
snitko
What? If I'm an open source developer online, I doubt local tax authorities
have the means to track me down. I can be anywhere in any country.

------
vermilingua
Is it not a little ironic that this payout is in bitcoin, that has been
repeatedly shown to be the furthest thing from anonymous? Would they not be
better off exchanging it for a coin with baked in anonymity?

~~~
jascii
Why would funding for products providing a level of anonymity need to be
anonymous? I can see a level of accountability being useful for both parties.

------
kitten_smuggler
Very cool! I'm shocked at how much harder it is to be anonymous online today
than it was only a few years ago. This is much needed.

------
user764743
I salute this initiative but the focus on corporate surveillance is a bit
strange. Snowden demonstrated that corporations either don't have a choice or
are complicit in surveillance, why not target the source of the problem which
seems to be the regulators who have been hijacked from within? I mean the
problem is not technological, it's political.

~~~
xwdv
That is the eventual goal.

------
dandelo1953
I think this "solution" is the exact inverse of what is actually needed:
Strong identity and attribution.

identity need not be just an "individual". It can be a group of individuals
that agree to mutually sign data before dissemination.

Individuals, corporations and your toaster can create as many identities as
necessary.

Right now we are all living seemingly schizoid lifestyle because we are forced
to partition multiple selves into molds that are being provided to us.

The partitioning is necessary for organizing information. But the way it is
partitioned should be flexible enough for the end user to have the ultimate
say in what and how that information is curated. Currently, all we have are
blackbox "algorithms." People are asking for transparency, thinking this will
solve the problem. I think it will only lead to obfuscating the problem even
more so.

Until the individual has unfettered control, we will always be playing this
game.

I really wish conversations would wind back to towards discussing ideas
tangential to the web of trust...

I think that problem was hard to solve for a reason. Being impossible not
being one of them... but an easy position to sell if you feared the
consequences ultimately lead to a loss of control.

~~~
api
You're getting downvoted, but you are at least mostly right.

With video and audio deep fakes we are rapidly approaching a world where
anything can be trivially faked by anyone. As a result, anonymous information
is becoming worthless. Unless the provenance and chain of custody of a piece
of evidence is precisely known, it has a high and growing likelihood of being
bullshit.

I do think there are roles for anonymity, but getting "the truth" out is not
one of them.

What is far more important is selective privacy and the ability for
individuals to define their own envelope of visibility and trust.

~~~
dandelo1953
In case it wasn't clear, I am not suggesting ALL data must be
signed/attributed.

Entertainment, for example, can be safely consumed and have little impact on
your day to day regardless of the source. Provided it's clearly meant for
entertainment purposes.

However once you introduce some dependency of trust into your process
(monetary transactions, health related data exchange, etc), I believe most
people in this crowd would agree that they want crypto identity and
attribution applied to the data at every stage of transformation.

And then there's everything in the middle... which again, I think should be
left to the individual. Norms would eventually develop that would guide best
practices.

Pipe dream stuff I know, but I don't see another way out. Open to other
suggestions. And especially open to criticism about this approach. I don't
want to be the one with the answer.

I just want an answer.

~~~
api
I didn't mean to imply "must," just that anonymous data can't be trusted
unless there is some out of band way to verify it.

~~~
dandelo1953
My comment was really a response to the downvotes more than you. I'm not
downplaying that the tech involved with OP. It just doesn't appear to solve
the problem it's targeting.

------
Forbo
I find the use of a ProtonMail address to be interesting. Don't they require
the use of an existing email address, phone number, or credit card/PayPal
donation to create an account? I just tried creating an account via Tor for
test purposes, and it was immediately disabled "for abuse or fraud".

Couldn't this mean that some entity could submit a legal request to ProtonMail
for said information in the event of an investigation?

Edit: The site is also hosted on Squarespace. Why not something more
anonymous, like an onion service, IPFS, ZeroNet, etc?

~~~
ShorsHammer
The neverending ddos's and online fud against protonmail suggests that it irks
some state level actors, no individual nor private group has such means or
motivation. Make of that what you will.

~~~
RandomBacon
Or they already have access, but want to keep the ruse up so that people use
it. Make of that what you will.

Nothing is impossible with the right resources.

~~~
ShorsHammer
> Nothing is impossible with the right resources.

And yet we still can't manage to put a person on Mars despite having the
resources to do so for over half a century.

Your adversary has a budget too.

~~~
RandomBacon
The people who could make it happen didn't have the resources. Your rebuttal
is a poor one; of course there are enough resources, but that doesn't mean
they are allocated ideally.

~~~
ShorsHammer
I'll play you in chess any day mate.

It's very clear who I am.

~~~
RandomBacon
I looked through your comment history very briefly and only a couple of pages.
You are active on r/space and use a CB radio in your vehicle. You're probably
an interesting/good person to know, but alas I still have no idea who you are.
I wish you the best, and I'm sorry if I was too hostile (reading it later, it
seems that way, and it wasn't my intention).

------
houseboat
I hate to be that guy, but I'm curious what they do with the $5k/year it was a
few years ago. I don't recall hearing that much about the money, as it was
given to them by the government.

~~~
Forbo
Who are you referencing here?

------
iratei
Interesting,

but of dubious merit when presented with the Guy Fawkes' mask, especially in
today's online battlegrounds.

------
badrabbit
Privacy I am all for but universal anonymity not very much. You just need
accountability a lot of times.

That said, I can support anonymous systems with transparent de-anonymization.
For example, if dragnet deanonymization happens all affected will know and act
against the attacker. If Cops deanonymize a suspect, the suspect can enquire
about an associated search warrant

------
pyc0d333
this is good. You can fight for the people by putting money into the right
hands

------
theboywho
How is this going to be legal if you receive the funds ? because:

1) you create an anonymous Bitcoin fund

2) you apply and say you received funds from them

Money laundered.

------
dwoozle
Looks like some of the Bitcoin whales are trying to get more bitcoin out into
the world.

------
rhizome
Sweet, another sink for techdollars that isn't public policy. The money should
go to lobbyists for anonymity-protecting legislation, not a bitcoinz4startup
pipe dream.

This has to be someone's tax shelter.

