Software activist calls for 'truly anonymous' Bitcoins to 'protect democracy'

Richard Stallman warned that Bitcoin was "not anonymous"

  


 Free software advocate Richard Stallman has warned Bitcoin owners who believe they are untraceable that it is, in fact, easy for governments to track users, and called for a for “truly anonymous” crypto-currency to “make democracy safe”.

Speaking at a Bitcoin conference in London, the founder of the GNU Project told Russia Today: “I have to point out that Bitcoin is not anonymous – that’s not part of its design.

“People don’t necessarily give their names when they do Bitcoin transactions, but the government can probably figure out who is doing the transaction. How are you going to get Bitcoins after all, unless you set up a Bitcoin money computer, which is how Bitcoins are made, you are going to get them by buying them from someone. If you are an ordinary person, the way you could do it is by paying with a credit card to a company that will exchange government currency for Bitcoins. The credit card identifies you, so when you get Bitcoins in return, the government can see who you are.”

The well-respected computer programmer, who has long campaigned for the use of free software which comes with the rights to modify, copy and distribute source code, called for a new crypto-currency to replace Bitcoin that is impossible to track.

The way Bitcoin operates means that a log of all transactions, including the sending and receiving “wallets”, or accounts, and amounts transferred are kept permanently and publicly accessible to anyone with a browser and an internet connection.

“I believe that we need on the World Wide Web a system for truly anonymous payment to a website. But it’s the payer that has to be anonymous; it doesn’t have to be anonymous for which website received the payment. So that’s what I advocate setting up. We know the technology; it was developed 20 years ago to do this work. What’s needed is business and the social task of getting it set up, so that lots of people can use it,” he said.
“We must have an anonymous way to pay websites so that they can’t have the excuse that the only way to get any money is by advertising that tracks people. We know that if companies track people, then the NSA or GCHQ is going to look at that data, it’s going to be tracking people through these companies.
“So I almost never use a credit card to buy anything, the only exception is airline tickets, because they do have my name anyway, so I’m not losing anything by paying with a credit card. The point is, we need anonymity to make democracy safe.”
Richard Stallman was talking at the Bitcoin Expo in London over the weekend, which also saw a lecture from bitcoin developer Michael Parsons.