Andrea O’Sullivan writes:
Governments often tell their subjects that they must submit to surveillance programs to stay safe. Whether the boogeyman is terrorism, hate, or even health, government snooping on private data often violates our rights to privacy.
But surveillance programs are unsafe on their own. Securing major sets of sensitive personal data is a tall order that few can fulfill. What do you know: Government agencies that want more access to your data all too often get hacked and risk exposing your private information to the world.
A case in point: on the same week that we learned the Treasury Department succumbed to a huge hack, it proposed a major expansion of their quiet yet pervasive financial surveillance programs to so-called “self-hosted wallet” (AKA privately controlled) cryptocurrency transactions.
Read more on Reason.