Monero Village - Perspectives of Privacy
Renwick, Robin
This talk presents the methodology, findings and conclusions of a boundary theory based Information Systems research project completed at University College Cork, Ireland. Perspectives of privacy have been analyzed from five key social worlds within the blockchain industry (users, regulators, cryptographic researchers, corporate architects, and protocol developers) through semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2018. The study attempts to distinguish the similarities and differences that exist between interdependent groups of agents. Communicating benign and internecine perspectives, ideologies, and approaches to the development of privacy enhancing technologies is viewed as method through which conflict and division may be mitigated against as the industry evolves further into the 21st century.
 This is Dr. Robin Renwick. He is a PhD. He has like six PhDs. He is the smartest man on the planet. So if you have any questions about anything, please refer them to him. I'm obviously joking. He does have one PhD. You can ask him about that later. He's going to be talking with us today about perspectives of privacy. So he made the firmware of the badges. So let's give him a snap. Everyone snap. There we go. Robin, what perspectives on privacy do you have for us today? Well, he's going to share them with us right now. You're on the private. Oh, just take the microphone. Okay. Can everyone hear me? Those who control the code control the rules. How different perspectives of privacy have been written into the code of blockchain systems. That's the title of a research paper that is currently up for peer review with the Journal of Information Technology. It was the culmination of about nine months work and it was conducted at University College Cork in Ireland. Minero essentially was a case study. It was probably the best place to start to get informed, rational and educated opinions on the relationship between privacy and blockchain systems. However, that also means that everybody involved in the interview process was essentially a guinea pig. Putting all that aside, the project attempted to obtain opinions and perspectives from an array of participants in the blockchain space. And I wanted to concentrate mainly on Minero as privacy is obviously a very strong thematic concern to the community, but those interviews were actively engaged in building a privacy focused system or ecosystem. What I really wanted to try and do was to understand how notions of privacy informed their interaction with the technology and also how it informed their view of how the technology and industry should develop as a whole. And then I compared these opinions with those drawn from outside of the community. Really the goal was to try and understand the differences, the similarities, the points of contention between all the perspectives. The study was analytically framed by boundary theory, which includes the concept of boundary objects. Now a boundary object can be anything. It can be a physical object, it can be an abstract philosophical concept, it can be even be a linguistic term. The frame is really nothing more than a lens to help understand the way in which people negotiate varied interactions, differences of opinion, differences of perspectives as they engage in a cooperative design process. In the academic literature, a boundary object is described as an abstract for physical artifact existing in the liminal spaces between adjacent communities of people or alternatively as things that exist as junctures where varied social worlds meet in areas of mutual concern. It emerged from the work of two design science researchers about 30 years ago as they studied the design development and construction of a Museum of vertebrate zoology in Berkeley, California. In that instance, the museum was the boundary object and they felt that framing the object as one which crosses between and through boundaries helps understand the object itself, the process, the project as a whole, and the involved entities in better detail. Now since the methodology emerged, there have been a wealth of studies that have used the theoretical framing. For example, resilience, medicine, water, room and space, gender, even musical scores have all been studied through the boundary theory lens as boundary objects. Now in the context of blockchain technology, I imagine there to be various social worlds acting adjacently to each other as they tried to move the technology forward. So I split the blockchain community into five main social worlds and those are users, developers, cryptographic researchers, corporate architects, and then regulators and legislators. I then went about interviewing the social worlds, framing the responses under three main boundary theory related constructs. So these were concepts or ideas, resources or tools, and then finally methods and practices. So the perspectives were then analyzed, grouped and framed and they were understood to be either robust and convergent, so consistent across groups, plastic and complacent, so varied or divergent across groups but harmless, and then plastic and into nesine, which means divergent across groups and harmful. So before I turn to what the outcomes of the findings of the study are or were, it's important to note that really the findings are limited to just this study. It was really just exploratory in nature to uncover some themes to which more deeper or wider studies could then be conducted. So if we're looking at the concepts, constructs, there were three main frames that emerged and they emerged quite organically from the interview and codification process. So these were the right to privacy, which was robust, this idea of a decentralized revolution, which was also robust, and then this idea of the role or the mode of government involvement in this decentralized revolution. And this was plastic and into nesine. All groups agreed with the right to privacy, whether that was financial or informational. All groups also agreed the blockchain was affording a decentralized revolution and it was being created in this era. However, there were some concrete divergences with respect to the role of government in this revolution and their level of involvement in the development of the technology. Now the varying perspectives may be attributed partly to the multi-purpose affordances of blockchain technology. So on the one hand, we know that blockchain offers market-led efficiencies in the creating, the storing, and the securing of data, whether that's financial or otherwise, and on the other, it affords a radically different system of value exchange for which no central authority has control. Now separating the affordances does not actually appear straightforward and neither does it appear to be a priority for many of the individuals participating in the actual development of the technologies. Whatever the outcome, the use of the technology will probably not fulfill the expectations of some social world, i.e. there will always be disagreement about what the technology should or shouldn't do. If we look at it a bit more closely, you can see how the right to privacy and decentralization revolution were both robust frames. However, if you look at the last one, which is the role and the mode of government involvement, you can see that there are divergences of opinion. Now I'm going to paraphrase a lot what has been said. There's a lot more detail in the actual paper, but I'm just going to take quite broad strokes regarding what was said in the interviews. So for example, users do not want government involvement as they might see the decentralized blockchain-based systems as a method for freeing themselves from government control. Developers do not necessarily want government involvement as they see themselves developing cipherpunk-inspired systems that are replacing law with a political code. Corporate architects do not want government involvement as they feel it will stifle innovation and perhaps harm profits. Regulators obviously do want to be involved, but they aren't completely sure how to negotiate their involvement due to the multiple affordances of the systems. If we turn to methods and practices, things become extremely nuanced and a lot more delicately poised. So blockchain systems are seen by all as a method through which ordinary transactions may be overseen. After all, we're talking about open permissionless data silos or ledgers. We all know the inherent characteristics of these systems. They're transparent, they're audible, they're immutable, etc. etc. However, perspective differs with respect to who needs to be overseen, who is watching, and who needs to be kept in check. The source of perceived threats becomes the point of contention rather than any divergence of the technologies affordance. So for example, users may feel that governments need to be kept in check, developers may feel that corporations need to be kept in check, and regulators may feel that both users and corporations need to be kept in check. This brings us on to the idea of extraordinary transactions and whether or not blockchain systems can be a method or can afford a method for overseeing these types of transactions. Obviously, regulators are concerned with some of the privacy affordances of the system and they're keen to be able to access information for quote-unquote dirty or tainted transactions. However, other groups feel that affording this sort of access potentially affects the privacy aspects of the network or system as a whole. Now, whether or not it's possible to create systems that allow for optional transparency that will appease all social worlds is still an unknown. The regulation doesn't exist, so it's difficult to know exactly what is required and from whom. However, regulators do seem to assume the methods are necessary to avoid widespread near effortless money laundering and that these methods will be built into the protocol consensus layer once it becomes law on the legislative or the regulatory layer. They assume the blockchain systems will automatically code in compliance once the legislation is set. Now, we know that changing the consensus layer code is not an easy task, especially if the pressure is coming from outside the community as opposed to from the inside of the community. There's no obvious middle ground presented here and there's no discernible path to reconciliation. If we look at it a bit more closely, you can see the robust agreement on blockchain as a method for overseeing ordinary transactions. You could also see the differences of opinion with respect to the second frame, which is blockchain as a system for overseeing extraordinary transactions. So, the divergence surrounds the idea of tainted or dirty transactions. Now, it's important to note that most of the social worlds would prefer not to see two-tier privacy affordances develop, but they also understand the necessity for privacy technologies to be deployed in order to enact a fungible currency and this is especially pertinent in the case of Monero. They want to protect certain rights or believe in protection from authoritarian regimes, protection from the surveillance state, from surveillance capitalism, believe in civil liberties, etc. Corporate architects understand for the most part that they must comply with whatever the regulations demand, but they also understand the importance of private transactions in their business dealings, along with the obvious need for a fungible currency. And on the other hand, regulators are wary of privacy affordances and wish to have methods for overseeing tainted transactions full stop. There is no convergence of perspectives. Now, we're starting to see regulatory pressure being placed on the economic layer. At some point, in my opinion, it's only a matter of time before that pressure moves down to the network or the consensus layer or the protocol and consensus layer, I should say. So, I'm going to summarize. There's two high level findings that emerge from the study. The first is that significant divergences are apparent with respect to the desired level and mode of government involvement in the development of blockchain systems. The social worlds are in agreement that near term government involvement is undesirable and regulators are operating under the assumption they may join the development at a later stage when necessary restrictions have been identified. The second high level finding relates the idea of a method for overseeing extraordinary transactions. Regulators believe that compliance will be coded in once it's required. However, other social worlds are operating under the assumption that the trade off has already been made regarding privacy affordances to accommodate the essential mechanics of privacy enabling blockchain systems. Okay. That is essentially it. The research paper is in for peer review. It's about a 50 page paper, so it's quite dense. There's a lot of been said by many of the participants. I'm not sure how long it's going to take. Personally, I would like to see an abridged version for the MRL. However, I'm not so sure that a soft science study is in their scope or their reason to etch it. However, the actual interviews, especially ones from the Minera community are an extremely interesting read. And they're actually personally, I think they're quite beautiful. They are wide ranging. They're informed. They're educated. They're wise. They're rational. It's sometimes very, very emotive. And when I was reading them and analyzing them, I often imagined that it would be nice to see a small little book, a perspective of privacy book, as told by the Minera community, which would be interviews surrounding their understanding or their perspectives on the relationship between privacy and blockchain systems and cryptocurrencies. Out of those three things, I'm not sure how many of them will come off. I'm hoping number one is just a matter of going through the peer review process. Number two, it's not really up to me. It's up to MRL. And number three, yeah, could potentially be funded by a CCS. Of course, that would also be up to the people who are interviewed whether or not they'd be willing to publish their interviews in an anonymous fashion. That's pretty much the presentation. So I'll take any questions if you have them. Yeah. Yeah. Yes and no. Some regulators seem to understand that there would be conflict of interest between some jurisdictions. Some just talked to the very broad high level overview. What I did get a sense was that they believed that the legislature was already there. It just needed to be amended and reworked to be able to include some of the technologies that are now developing. The problem with changing legislation is that it takes quite a lot of time. And obviously, there's a process of understanding that needs to be done before that can actually happen. I did get a sense that there was a very wide degree of knowledge difference, depending on who you talk to. And that kind of confused some matters with regards to the analysis of the interviews. Yep. Do you know that there wasn't? A lot of the views were quote unquote quite soft, which was actually quite surprising. I think the people that I talked to, it didn't seem like it was very adversarial because they believed that the rules and regulations were already in place. For arguments sake, in the PSD in Europe, the payment services directive that that's already there and that covers payments between people. Some of the other regulators, depending on their jurisdiction, talked of other published legislation. But there was already in place that covered a lot of the actual interactions that it was dealing with. But I didn't get a sense that it was highly adversarial. I think there was a strong sense that people were willing to learn and educate themselves and then mold the existing rules around what technology was developing. Yep. Yeah. So kind of jurisdictional censorship in such way. Wow. So you would get a number of parallel chains that are each agreeing by the terms within their jurisdiction. Well, in terms of the actual code change, I'm not sure. I'm not a developer. I'm not involved in those decisions. I'm not sure how much code needs to be changed. I'm also not sure the regulations are there. So we don't really know. Do I think it will cause a significant amount of problems? Yeah, I think so. But it also depends where the pressure comes from. The governments may place a lot of pressure on the economic layer and then they might be the ones that are kind of afforded the responsibility of putting the pressure on the protocol and consensus layer, which actually worries me a bit more because a lot of the people operating on the economic layer are intertwined in the space a bit deeper. So it might be harder to distinguish who's a good actor for lack of better terms. Yes? Yeah, this depends on your perspective. It was really difficult to make a classification between one and the other. There was just this idea of, how should I say, transactions that would need to be investigated for some reason. What these reasons are, we kind of know it's money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion. It's pretty much the big three. I didn't want to make a lot of kind of subframes regarding all these different transactions because all three of those have different problems associated with them. So we just used to keep the subframes quite broad and just keep it at extraordinary and ordinary. The distinction between them depends on who is actually viewing the transaction. That's the sense I got. I think it's important to remember that this really was just an exploratory study. So it really just wanted to uncover some themes that would then be really put into a wider, deeper study and to really drill down into what actually is going on. But that would take time and resources. So anybody else? Am I done? Great. Thank you very much.
 This is Dr. Robin Renwick. He is a PhD. He has like six PhDs. He is the smartest man on the  planet. So if you have any questions about anything, please refer them to him. I'm obviously joking.  He does have one PhD. You can ask him about that later. He's going to be talking with us today  about perspectives of privacy. So he made the firmware of the badges. So let's give him a snap.  Everyone snap. There we go. Robin, what perspectives on privacy do you have for us today?  Well, he's going to share them with us right now.  You're on the private.  Oh, just take the microphone.  Okay. Can everyone hear me?  Those who control the code control the rules. How different perspectives of privacy have been  written into the code of blockchain systems. That's the title of a research paper that is  currently up for peer review with the Journal of Information Technology. It was the culmination  of about nine months work and it was conducted at University College Cork in Ireland.  Minero essentially was a case study. It was probably the best place to start to get informed,  rational and educated opinions on the relationship between privacy and blockchain systems.  However, that also means that everybody involved in the interview process was essentially a guinea pig.  Putting all that aside, the project attempted to obtain opinions and perspectives from an array  of participants in the blockchain space. And I wanted to concentrate mainly on Minero as  privacy is obviously a very strong thematic concern to the community, but those interviews  were actively engaged in building a privacy focused system or ecosystem.  What I really wanted to try and do was to understand how notions of privacy informed their  interaction with the technology and also how it informed their view of how the technology and  industry should develop as a whole. And then I compared these opinions with those drawn from  outside of the community. Really the goal was to try and understand the differences, the similarities,  the points of contention between all the perspectives. The study was analytically framed by  boundary theory, which includes the concept of boundary objects. Now a boundary object can be  anything. It can be a physical object, it can be an abstract philosophical concept, it can be even  be a linguistic term. The frame is really nothing more than a lens to help understand the way in  which people negotiate varied interactions, differences of opinion, differences of perspectives  as they engage in a cooperative design process. In the academic literature, a boundary object is  described as an abstract for physical artifact existing in the liminal spaces between adjacent  communities of people or alternatively as things that exist as junctures where varied social worlds  meet in areas of mutual concern. It emerged from the work of two design science researchers about  30 years ago as they studied the design development and construction of a Museum of  vertebrate zoology in Berkeley, California. In that instance, the museum was the boundary object  and they felt that framing the object as one which crosses between and through boundaries helps  understand the object itself, the process, the project as a whole, and the involved entities  in better detail. Now since the methodology emerged, there have been a wealth of studies that have  used the theoretical framing. For example, resilience, medicine, water, room and space, gender,  even musical scores have all been studied through the boundary theory lens as boundary objects.  Now in the context of blockchain technology, I imagine there to be various social worlds  acting adjacently to each other as they tried to move the technology forward. So I split the  blockchain community into five main social worlds and those are users, developers, cryptographic  researchers, corporate architects, and then regulators and legislators. I then went about  interviewing the social worlds, framing the responses under three main boundary theory related  constructs. So these were concepts or ideas, resources or tools, and then finally methods and  practices. So the perspectives were then analyzed, grouped and framed and they were understood to  be either robust and convergent, so consistent across groups, plastic and complacent, so varied  or divergent across groups but harmless, and then plastic and into nesine, which means divergent  across groups and harmful. So before I turn to what the outcomes of the findings of the study  are or were, it's important to note that really the findings are limited to just this study.  It was really just exploratory in nature to uncover some themes to which more deeper or  wider studies could then be conducted. So if we're looking at the concepts, constructs,  there were three main frames that emerged and they emerged quite organically from the interview  and codification process. So these were the right to privacy, which was robust, this idea of a  decentralized revolution, which was also robust, and then this idea of the role or the mode of  government involvement in this decentralized revolution. And this was plastic and into nesine.  All groups agreed with the right to privacy, whether that was financial or informational.  All groups also agreed the blockchain was affording a decentralized revolution and it was  being created in this era. However, there were some concrete divergences with respect to the  role of government in this revolution and their level of involvement in the development of the  technology. Now the varying perspectives may be attributed partly to the multi-purpose affordances  of blockchain technology. So on the one hand, we know that blockchain offers market-led efficiencies  in the creating, the storing, and the securing of data, whether that's financial or otherwise,  and on the other, it affords a radically different system of value exchange for which no central  authority has control. Now separating the affordances does not actually appear straightforward  and neither does it appear to be a priority for many of the individuals participating in the  actual development of the technologies. Whatever the outcome, the use of the technology will probably  not fulfill the expectations of some social world, i.e. there will always be disagreement  about what the technology should or shouldn't do. If we look at it a bit more closely, you can see  how the right to privacy and decentralization revolution were both robust frames. However,  if you look at the last one, which is the role and the mode of government involvement, you can see  that there are divergences of opinion. Now I'm going to paraphrase a lot what has been said.  There's a lot more detail in the actual paper, but I'm just going to take quite broad strokes  regarding what was said in the interviews. So for example, users do not want government  involvement as they might see the decentralized blockchain-based systems as a method for freeing  themselves from government control. Developers do not necessarily want government involvement  as they see themselves developing cipherpunk-inspired systems that are replacing law with a political  code. Corporate architects do not want government involvement as they feel it will stifle innovation  and perhaps harm profits. Regulators obviously do want to be involved, but they aren't completely  sure how to negotiate their involvement due to the multiple affordances of the systems.  If we turn to methods and practices, things become extremely nuanced and a lot more  delicately poised. So blockchain systems are seen by all as a method through which  ordinary transactions may be overseen. After all, we're talking about open permissionless  data silos or ledgers. We all know the inherent characteristics of these systems. They're  transparent, they're audible, they're immutable, etc. etc. However, perspective differs with respect  to who needs to be overseen, who is watching, and who needs to be kept in check. The source of  perceived threats becomes the point of contention rather than any divergence of the technologies  affordance. So for example, users may feel that governments need to be kept in check,  developers may feel that corporations need to be kept in check, and regulators may feel that  both users and corporations need to be kept in check. This brings us on to the idea of  extraordinary transactions and whether or not blockchain systems can be a method or can afford  a method for overseeing these types of transactions. Obviously, regulators are concerned with some of  the privacy affordances of the system and they're keen to be able to access information for  quote-unquote dirty or tainted transactions. However, other groups feel that affording this  sort of access potentially affects the privacy aspects of the network or system as a whole.  Now, whether or not it's possible to create systems that allow for optional transparency that will  appease all social worlds is still an unknown. The regulation doesn't exist, so it's difficult to  know exactly what is required and from whom. However, regulators do seem to assume the methods  are necessary to avoid widespread near effortless money laundering and that these methods will be  built into the protocol consensus layer once it becomes law on the legislative or the regulatory  layer. They assume the blockchain systems will automatically code in compliance once the legislation  is set. Now, we know that changing the consensus layer code is not an easy task, especially if the  pressure is coming from outside the community as opposed to from the inside of the community.  There's no obvious middle ground presented here and there's no discernible path to reconciliation.  If we look at it a bit more closely, you can see the robust agreement on blockchain as a method for  overseeing ordinary transactions. You could also see the differences of opinion with respect to the  second frame, which is blockchain as a system for overseeing extraordinary transactions. So,  the divergence surrounds the idea of tainted or dirty transactions. Now, it's important to note  that most of the social worlds would prefer not to see two-tier privacy affordances develop,  but they also understand the necessity for privacy technologies to be deployed in order to enact a  fungible currency and this is especially pertinent in the case of Monero. They want to protect  certain rights or believe in protection from authoritarian regimes, protection from the  surveillance state, from surveillance capitalism, believe in civil liberties, etc. Corporate architects  understand for the most part that they must comply with whatever the regulations demand,  but they also understand the importance of private transactions in their business dealings,  along with the obvious need for a fungible currency. And on the other hand, regulators are wary of  privacy affordances and wish to have methods for overseeing tainted transactions full stop.  There is no convergence of perspectives. Now, we're starting to see regulatory pressure being  placed on the economic layer. At some point, in my opinion, it's only a matter of time before that  pressure moves down to the network or the consensus layer or the protocol and consensus layer, I should  say. So, I'm going to summarize. There's two high level findings that emerge from the study. The first  is that significant divergences are apparent with respect to the desired level and mode of government  involvement in the development of blockchain systems. The social worlds are in agreement  that near term government involvement is undesirable and regulators are operating under  the assumption they may join the development at a later stage when necessary restrictions  have been identified. The second high level finding relates the idea of a method for overseeing  extraordinary transactions. Regulators believe that compliance will be coded in once it's required.  However, other social worlds are operating under the assumption that the trade off has already been  made regarding privacy affordances to accommodate the essential mechanics of privacy enabling  blockchain systems. Okay. That is essentially it. The research paper is in for peer review. It's  about a 50 page paper, so it's quite dense. There's a lot of been said by many of the participants.  I'm not sure how long it's going to take. Personally, I would like to see an abridged  version for the MRL. However, I'm not so sure that a soft science study is in their scope or  their reason to etch it. However, the actual interviews, especially ones from the Minera  community are an extremely interesting read. And they're actually personally, I think they're  quite beautiful. They are wide ranging. They're informed. They're educated. They're wise. They're  rational. It's sometimes very, very emotive. And when I was reading them and analyzing them,  I often imagined that it would be nice to see a small little book, a perspective of privacy book,  as told by the Minera community, which would be interviews surrounding their understanding or  their perspectives on the relationship between privacy and blockchain systems and cryptocurrencies.  Out of those three things, I'm not sure how many of them will come off. I'm hoping number one is  just a matter of going through the peer review process. Number two, it's not really up to me.  It's up to MRL. And number three, yeah, could potentially be funded by a CCS. Of course, that  would also be up to the people who are interviewed whether or not they'd be willing to publish their  interviews in an anonymous fashion. That's pretty much the presentation. So I'll take any questions  if you have them.  Yeah.  Yeah. Yes and no. Some regulators seem to understand that there would be conflict of  interest between some jurisdictions. Some just talked to the very broad high level overview.  What I did get a sense was that they believed that the legislature was already there. It just  needed to be amended and reworked to be able to include some of the technologies that are now  developing. The problem with changing legislation is that it takes quite a lot of time. And obviously,  there's a process of understanding that needs to be done before that can actually happen.  I did get a sense that there was a very wide degree of knowledge difference,  depending on who you talk to. And that kind of confused some matters with regards to the analysis  of the interviews. Yep.  Do you know that there wasn't? A lot of the views were quote unquote quite soft,  which was actually quite surprising. I think the people that I talked to, it didn't seem like it  was very adversarial because they believed that the rules and regulations were already in place.  For arguments sake, in the PSD in Europe, the payment services directive that that's already  there and that covers payments between people. Some of the other regulators, depending on their  jurisdiction, talked of other published legislation. But there was already in place that covered  a lot of the actual interactions that it was dealing with. But I didn't get a sense that it was  highly adversarial. I think there was a strong sense that people were willing to learn and educate  themselves and then mold the existing rules around what technology was developing. Yep.  Yeah.  So kind of jurisdictional censorship in such way.  Wow. So you would get a number of parallel chains that are each agreeing by the terms  within their jurisdiction.  Well, in terms of the actual code change, I'm not sure. I'm not a developer. I'm not involved  in those decisions. I'm not sure how much code needs to be changed. I'm also not sure the  regulations are there. So we don't really know. Do I think it will cause a significant amount of  problems? Yeah, I think so. But it also depends where the pressure comes from. The governments  may place a lot of pressure on the economic layer and then they might be the ones that are kind of  afforded the responsibility of putting the pressure on the protocol and consensus layer,  which actually worries me a bit more because a lot of the people operating on the economic layer  are intertwined in the space a bit deeper. So it might be harder to distinguish who's a good actor  for lack of better terms. Yes?  Yeah, this depends on your perspective. It was really difficult to make a classification  between one and the other. There was just this idea of, how should I say,  transactions that would need to be investigated for some reason. What these reasons are, we kind  of know it's money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion. It's pretty much the big three.  I didn't want to make a lot of kind of subframes regarding all these different transactions because  all three of those have different problems associated with them. So we just used to keep  the subframes quite broad and just keep it at extraordinary and ordinary.  The distinction between them depends on who is actually viewing the transaction.  That's the sense I got. I think it's important to remember that this really was just an exploratory  study. So it really just wanted to uncover some themes that would then be really put into a  wider, deeper study and to really drill down into what actually is going on. But that would take time  and resources. So anybody else? Am I done? Great. Thank you very much.
Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_0_923.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_924_2087.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_2088_2183.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_2184_2231.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_2232_4883.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_4884_10919.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_10920_12647.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_12648_12695.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_12696_16751.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_16752_20399.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_20400_20447.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_20448_22139.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_22140_22187.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_22188_22799.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_22800_22847.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_22848_25283.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_25284_25415.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_25416_25595.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_25596_25703.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_25704_28151.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_28152_29543.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_29544_30347.png Robin_Renwick_-_Perspective_of_Privacy_Blockchain__ulzOXNsxO3k_30348_30374.png
This is Dr. Robin Renwick. He is a PhD. He has like six PhDs. He is the smartest man on the planet. So if you have any questions about anything, please refer them to him. I'm obviously joking. He does have one PhD. You can ask him about that later. He's going to be talking with us today about perspectives of privacy. So he made the firmware of the badges. So let's give him a snap. Everyone snap. There we go. Robin, what perspectives on privacy do you have for us today? Well, he's going to share them with us right now. You're on the private. Oh, just take the microphone. Okay. Can everyone hear me? Those who control the code control the rules. How different perspectives of privacy have been written into the code of blockchain systems. That's the title of a research paper that is currently up for peer review with the Journal of Information Technology. It was the culmination of about nine months work and it was conducted at University College Cork in Ireland. Minero essentially was a case study. It was probably the best place to start to get informed, rational and educated opinions on the relationship between privacy and blockchain systems. However, that also means that everybody involved in the interview process was essentially a guinea pig. Putting all that aside, the project attempted to obtain opinions and perspectives from an array of participants in the blockchain space. And I wanted to concentrate mainly on Minero as privacy is obviously a very strong thematic concern to the community, but those interviews were actively engaged in building a privacy focused system or ecosystem. What I really wanted to try and do was to understand how notions of privacy informed their interaction with the technology and also how it informed their view of how the technology and industry should develop as a whole. And then I compared these opinions with those drawn from outside of the community. Really the goal was to try and understand the differences, the similarities, the points of contention between all the perspectives. The study was analytically framed by boundary theory, which includes the concept of boundary objects. Now a boundary object can be anything. It can be a physical object, it can be an abstract philosophical concept, it can be even be a linguistic term. The frame is really nothing more than a lens to help understand the way in which people negotiate varied interactions, differences of opinion, differences of perspectives as they engage in a cooperative design process. In the academic literature, a boundary object is described as an abstract for physical artifact existing in the liminal spaces between adjacent communities of people or alternatively as things that exist as junctures where varied social worlds meet in areas of mutual concern. It emerged from the work of two design science researchers about 30 years ago as they studied the design development and construction of a Museum of vertebrate zoology in Berkeley, California. In that instance, the museum was the boundary object and they felt that framing the object as one which crosses between and through boundaries helps understand the object itself, the process, the project as a whole, and the involved entities in better detail. Now since the methodology emerged, there have been a wealth of studies that have used the theoretical framing. For example, resilience, medicine, water, room and space, gender, even musical scores have all been studied through the boundary theory lens as boundary objects. Now in the context of blockchain technology, I imagine there to be various social worlds acting adjacently to each other as they tried to move the technology forward. So I split the blockchain community into five main social worlds and those are users, developers, cryptographic researchers, corporate architects, and then regulators and legislators. I then went about interviewing the social worlds, framing the responses under three main boundary theory related constructs. So these were concepts or ideas, resources or tools, and then finally methods and practices. So the perspectives were then analyzed, grouped and framed and they were understood to be either robust and convergent, so consistent across groups, plastic and complacent, so varied or divergent across groups but harmless, and then plastic and into nesine, which means divergent across groups and harmful. So before I turn to what the outcomes of the findings of the study are or were, it's important to note that really the findings are limited to just this study. It was really just exploratory in nature to uncover some themes to which more deeper or wider studies could then be conducted. So if we're looking at the concepts, constructs, there were three main frames that emerged and they emerged quite organically from the interview and codification process. So these were the right to privacy, which was robust, this idea of a decentralized revolution, which was also robust, and then this idea of the role or the mode of government involvement in this decentralized revolution. And this was plastic and into nesine. All groups agreed with the right to privacy, whether that was financial or informational. All groups also agreed the blockchain was affording a decentralized revolution and it was being created in this era. However, there were some concrete divergences with respect to the role of government in this revolution and their level of involvement in the development of the technology. Now the varying perspectives may be attributed partly to the multi-purpose affordances of blockchain technology. So on the one hand, we know that blockchain offers market-led efficiencies in the creating, the storing, and the securing of data, whether that's financial or otherwise, and on the other, it affords a radically different system of value exchange for which no central authority has control. Now separating the affordances does not actually appear straightforward and neither does it appear to be a priority for many of the individuals participating in the actual development of the technologies. Whatever the outcome, the use of the technology will probably not fulfill the expectations of some social world, i.e. there will always be disagreement about what the technology should or shouldn't do. If we look at it a bit more closely, you can see how the right to privacy and decentralization revolution were both robust frames. However, if you look at the last one, which is the role and the mode of government involvement, you can see that there are divergences of opinion. Now I'm going to paraphrase a lot what has been said. There's a lot more detail in the actual paper, but I'm just going to take quite broad strokes regarding what was said in the interviews. So for example, users do not want government involvement as they might see the decentralized blockchain-based systems as a method for freeing themselves from government control. Developers do not necessarily want government involvement as they see themselves developing cipherpunk-inspired systems that are replacing law with a political code. Corporate architects do not want government involvement as they feel it will stifle innovation and perhaps harm profits. Regulators obviously do want to be involved, but they aren't completely sure how to negotiate their involvement due to the multiple affordances of the systems. If we turn to methods and practices, things become extremely nuanced and a lot more delicately poised. So blockchain systems are seen by all as a method through which ordinary transactions may be overseen. After all, we're talking about open permissionless data silos or ledgers. We all know the inherent characteristics of these systems. They're transparent, they're audible, they're immutable, etc. etc. However, perspective differs with respect to who needs to be overseen, who is watching, and who needs to be kept in check. The source of perceived threats becomes the point of contention rather than any divergence of the technologies affordance. So for example, users may feel that governments need to be kept in check, developers may feel that corporations need to be kept in check, and regulators may feel that both users and corporations need to be kept in check. This brings us on to the idea of extraordinary transactions and whether or not blockchain systems can be a method or can afford a method for overseeing these types of transactions. Obviously, regulators are concerned with some of the privacy affordances of the system and they're keen to be able to access information for quote-unquote dirty or tainted transactions. However, other groups feel that affording this sort of access potentially affects the privacy aspects of the network or system as a whole. Now, whether or not it's possible to create systems that allow for optional transparency that will appease all social worlds is still an unknown. The regulation doesn't exist, so it's difficult to know exactly what is required and from whom. However, regulators do seem to assume the methods are necessary to avoid widespread near effortless money laundering and that these methods will be built into the protocol consensus layer once it becomes law on the legislative or the regulatory layer. They assume the blockchain systems will automatically code in compliance once the legislation is set. Now, we know that changing the consensus layer code is not an easy task, especially if the pressure is coming from outside the community as opposed to from the inside of the community. There's no obvious middle ground presented here and there's no discernible path to reconciliation. If we look at it a bit more closely, you can see the robust agreement on blockchain as a method for overseeing ordinary transactions. You could also see the differences of opinion with respect to the second frame, which is blockchain as a system for overseeing extraordinary transactions. So, the divergence surrounds the idea of tainted or dirty transactions. Now, it's important to note that most of the social worlds would prefer not to see two-tier privacy affordances develop, but they also understand the necessity for privacy technologies to be deployed in order to enact a fungible currency and this is especially pertinent in the case of Monero. They want to protect certain rights or believe in protection from authoritarian regimes, protection from the surveillance state, from surveillance capitalism, believe in civil liberties, etc. Corporate architects understand for the most part that they must comply with whatever the regulations demand, but they also understand the importance of private transactions in their business dealings, along with the obvious need for a fungible currency. And on the other hand, regulators are wary of privacy affordances and wish to have methods for overseeing tainted transactions full stop. There is no convergence of perspectives. Now, we're starting to see regulatory pressure being placed on the economic layer. At some point, in my opinion, it's only a matter of time before that pressure moves down to the network or the consensus layer or the protocol and consensus layer, I should say. So, I'm going to summarize. There's two high level findings that emerge from the study. The first is that significant divergences are apparent with respect to the desired level and mode of government involvement in the development of blockchain systems. The social worlds are in agreement that near term government involvement is undesirable and regulators are operating under the assumption they may join the development at a later stage when necessary restrictions have been identified. The second high level finding relates the idea of a method for overseeing extraordinary transactions. Regulators believe that compliance will be coded in once it's required. However, other social worlds are operating under the assumption that the trade off has already been made regarding privacy affordances to accommodate the essential mechanics of privacy enabling blockchain systems. Okay. That is essentially it. The research paper is in for peer review. It's about a 50 page paper, so it's quite dense. There's a lot of been said by many of the participants. I'm not sure how long it's going to take. Personally, I would like to see an abridged version for the MRL. However, I'm not so sure that a soft science study is in their scope or their reason to etch it. However, the actual interviews, especially ones from the Minera community are an extremely interesting read. And they're actually personally, I think they're quite beautiful. They are wide ranging. They're informed. They're educated. They're wise. They're rational. It's sometimes very, very emotive. And when I was reading them and analyzing them, I often imagined that it would be nice to see a small little book, a perspective of privacy book, as told by the Minera community, which would be interviews surrounding their understanding or their perspectives on the relationship between privacy and blockchain systems and cryptocurrencies. Out of those three things, I'm not sure how many of them will come off. I'm hoping number one is just a matter of going through the peer review process. Number two, it's not really up to me. It's up to MRL. And number three, yeah, could potentially be funded by a CCS. Of course, that would also be up to the people who are interviewed whether or not they'd be willing to publish their interviews in an anonymous fashion. That's pretty much the presentation. So I'll take any questions if you have them. Yeah. Yeah. Yes and no. Some regulators seem to understand that there would be conflict of interest between some jurisdictions. Some just talked to the very broad high level overview. What I did get a sense was that they believed that the legislature was already there. It just needed to be amended and reworked to be able to include some of the technologies that are now developing. The problem with changing legislation is that it takes quite a lot of time. And obviously, there's a process of understanding that needs to be done before that can actually happen. I did get a sense that there was a very wide degree of knowledge difference, depending on who you talk to. And that kind of confused some matters with regards to the analysis of the interviews. Yep. Do you know that there wasn't? A lot of the views were quote unquote quite soft, which was actually quite surprising. I think the people that I talked to, it didn't seem like it was very adversarial because they believed that the rules and regulations were already in place. For arguments sake, in the PSD in Europe, the payment services directive that that's already there and that covers payments between people. Some of the other regulators, depending on their jurisdiction, talked of other published legislation. But there was already in place that covered a lot of the actual interactions that it was dealing with. But I didn't get a sense that it was highly adversarial. I think there was a strong sense that people were willing to learn and educate themselves and then mold the existing rules around what technology was developing. Yep. Yeah. So kind of jurisdictional censorship in such way. Wow. So you would get a number of parallel chains that are each agreeing by the terms within their jurisdiction. Well, in terms of the actual code change, I'm not sure. I'm not a developer. I'm not involved in those decisions. I'm not sure how much code needs to be changed. I'm also not sure the regulations are there. So we don't really know. Do I think it will cause a significant amount of problems? Yeah, I think so. But it also depends where the pressure comes from. The governments may place a lot of pressure on the economic layer and then they might be the ones that are kind of afforded the responsibility of putting the pressure on the protocol and consensus layer, which actually worries me a bit more because a lot of the people operating on the economic layer are intertwined in the space a bit deeper. So it might be harder to distinguish who's a good actor for lack of better terms. Yes? Yeah, this depends on your perspective. It was really difficult to make a classification between one and the other. There was just this idea of, how should I say, transactions that would need to be investigated for some reason. What these reasons are, we kind of know it's money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion. It's pretty much the big three. I didn't want to make a lot of kind of subframes regarding all these different transactions because all three of those have different problems associated with them. So we just used to keep the subframes quite broad and just keep it at extraordinary and ordinary. The distinction between them depends on who is actually viewing the transaction. That's the sense I got. I think it's important to remember that this really was just an exploratory study. So it really just wanted to uncover some themes that would then be really put into a wider, deeper study and to really drill down into what actually is going on. But that would take time and resources. So anybody else? Am I done? Great. Thank you very much.
different perspectives of privacy have been That's the title of a research paper that is University College Cork in Ireland. Minero similarities, the points of contention between all the perspectives. The study was analytically concept of boundary objects. Now a boundary boundary theory lens as boundary objects. Now in community into five main social worlds and those are users, developers, cryptographic researchers, corporate architects, and then regulators and Now the varying perspectives may be attributed systems are seen by all as a method through which in the development of blockchain systems. The interviews, especially ones from the Minera deeper. So it might be harder to distinguish