The true power rests not with presidents, prime ministers, parliaments, queens, or kings, but with the wealthy who use them as tools to rob and oppress others. The Rothschilds and similar money-lenders do not support honest industry but finance governments that violently enforce their control over those with less wealth. These accomplices of governments are allowed to monopolize the mechanisms of oppression, misleadingly labeled as "capitalists," "bankers", "financiers", or "lobbyists." In reality, they are simply robbers and murderers, and their rewards come from perpetuating the cycle of robbery and enslavement. Money-lenders are the absolute rulers, dictating government policy while politicians execute it, support wars, and manage government resources on their behalf. If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it. For his money, the government hires guns to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and imprison or kill him if he resists. The government has no more right to take a person's property, liberty, or life than a highwayman would for personal gain. Taxation without consent is robbery. The only security men can have for their political liberty consists in keeping their money in their own pockets. Monero means money in your pocket. Earn it. Buy it. Use it. Resist robbery.

We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Anyone hating this is a spook, or a useful idiot to spooks. Think long and hard about why any "cypherpunk" would hate decentralized, permissionless, private, open source privacy tech going viral.

That's why the law should limit what data can be retained, irrespective of consent.

This is a very astute observation, and we're observing this split in the privacy community as well. The same people keep saying two contradictory things: 1) that privacy is not a crime, and it is wrong to say that only criminals need privacy. 2) that they disregard laws, and they will break them, because laws are oppressive, and they expect technology providers they use to commit to doing the same - or they walk. This is an illogical contradiction, because an open disregard and not following laws that involve criminal liability is a definition of criminality. By making such statements (and even expecting commercial companies to make similar statements) members of privacy and Monero communities reinforce the point 1 - that only criminals need privacy. But we strongly believe that ordinary people, who follow applicable laws, need privacy and security more than ever. So our position is very firm: - we put conscious efforts into making sure that a fewer number of laws apply to our operations and designs. Community Voucher system design is effectively driven by the objective to reduce regulatory oversight. - we comply with laws that apply to us. - we see our privacy policy as a binding contract, and we would rather shut down our operation than do anything that would contradict it. Bear in mind that law changes don't nullify contracts under the UK law, so any emerging contradictions will have to be transparently resolved. Any changes in how servers operate will remain transparent to the users - it's an ironclad and legally binding promise. This firm position and commitment to law protects us, and protects our users. Statements from some members of Monero and privacy community declaring an open disregard to laws only undermine our natural and lawful right to privacy - these people are either immature, or hired manipulators waging an information war to undermine our lawful right to privacy. A longer blog post about it is incoming.

And it's not only about privacy - it's protects users from fraudsters who approach them in other apps. It may slow down growth, but we don't want to grow at the cost of users' safety.

literally every "good" law that passes: statists: 🎉 cheers, law and order! criminals: meh, who cares? ancaps: what's the point? literally every "bad" law that passes: statists: 😭boos, muh freedom! criminals: meh, who cares? ancaps: what's the point?

Not a mesh, ANNE is not a dense/redundant network but sparse/random, like any other chain, driven by gossip and distributed consensus. My post describes one "small" use case (compared to the whole). The data protocol enforces semantic/conceptual encoding. Such data are peer-to-peer distributed across the network (shared resources in the public domain), so are the "cash" data (standard crypto stuff - as a minority subset). Unlike files, apps, or network services. For example, node operators can opt in to file sharing via an antor protocol, which leverages the peer-to-peer distribution without bloating the whole network - creating a network segment through which "stuff" is accessible throughout the whole network. Similarly, they opt in for specific alt-data networks (custom data tables). This again leverages the peer-to-peer distribution without bloating the whole network. Or provide decentralized domain resolution services (e.g., pointing DNS to an ADNS service annode), which will relay traffic to your annode behind a firewall/VPN, e.g., one can host a website from home over a VPN. Or the user can download apps locally via antor. None of the add-ons is part of the consensus protocol.

Since A.N.N.E. is getting a fair share of attention, thank you, it's only fair that I give you a heads up on what the future holds. ANNE is as close to my heart as Monero. While Monero offers us unparalleled financial privacy, ANNE offers us the chance to change the online world - it must be said, it's not yet another crypto chain. It's a distributed data protocol unlike any other seen with a web server running on Layer 1. It enables shared resources through open-source collaboration and true decentralization of the Web. A new way to develop/use web applications that no longer rely on servers, centralized databases, or domain resolution. As a user, think of it like this. You run your annode just as you run your Monero node. Once up and running, you access its web server in your web browser. http://localhost:9116 Visualize any app that fits your imagination. Social media, music, movies, file sharing, a marketplace, a donation website, you name it. You get a directory listing of those d-apps. You download any app directly from the developer's annode to your local annode and run it. As a developer, think of it like this. You develop or port your app directly in your annode directory. You specify dependencies and register your app via a transaction, announcing its existence to the network. Too simple? Yes. I barely scratched the surface. GN.

We'll be up and about. Get ready for the blast. 🔜

Waiting for Big Tech to respect my #privacy. Happy #Halloween everyone! 🎃👻💀

Laws are set by oligarchs. We are all McAfee. You either don't understand this or don't care.

I really need to learn more about @annemedia_web Anne.network

Never trust “privacy tech and services” that don’t embrace Monero

People should learn to recognize following the laws as strength, not as weakness. Study law, understand what it is, use it to defend yourself, and change it for the better. Because laws are the code that governs our society. And this code must be as helpful and as unbreakable as cryptography we use.