
Ask HN: Will privacy and cryptography go the way of communism? - 19eightyfour
In other words, a nice idea in theory but eventually we&#x27;ll all realize we can&#x27;t afford it?<p>Or will it somehow stick around? And maybe somehow find the balance needed to survive?<p>For me this question was prompted by reading https:&#x2F;&#x2F;w2.eff.org&#x2F;Privacy&#x2F;Crypto&#x2F;Crypto_misc&#x2F;cypherpunk.manifesto and thinking, yeah, it&#x27;s a nice piece, but written before terrorism, globally, became a weekly occurrence and before secret message services were widespread, and is blissfully ignorant of the future we inhabit.<p>And also by remembering, I used to like writing cryptography, but now I also have the feeling that I don&#x27;t want to make something that helps people do bad things. I never felt that responsibility before. It was just being creative and making something cool. But I feel that responsibility now. I don&#x27;t want to put a tool in people&#x27;s hands that could help them get away with hurting people illegally. So even tho I want to, I don&#x27;t know if I&#x27;ll write crypto anymore. And even if I do I don&#x27;t know if I&#x27;ll share it. It&#x27;s kind of sad to realise stuff you like doing is going to be abused by some people. And that if you share it with the world, you&#x27;re going to be part of that. And so instead you pick other projects that have less abuse potential.
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CowboyCassanova
The other day a HN reader said it's already to late and we go extinct within 3
decades (global warming). I don't think we need to worry much about privacy.

Worldly things are fleeting. Death always wins.

