Anonymity With Crypto

Communities Science, Engineering, & Security
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I run a small personal mining farm and wish to protect it as best I can. Among that I need to protect my identity and the hardware/software of the devices I use for transactions and wallets. I also have a focused eye on XMR which is targeted by my Government. I am aware that I have already been targeted because I use BTC. (being an open ledger with BTC, I have no issues with this).

How can I best achieve my goals with the technology available today but also be legal? Is it possible to anonymize one’s self to evade 14 eyes, unconstitutional mind you, surveillance?

I have some ideas but wanted to further research:
libre boot
no Intel ME or AMD PSP
no microcode (cpu)
libre OS
hyper trust VPN w/ net neutrality (lol does this even exist now?) and no logging,
non 14 eyes nation vpn server
wireguard

Someone mentioned even using pirated vpn and pirated firefox, but I am not willing to do that. That is a federal crime, and I wish to remain lawful but as secure and private as possible.

I am learning as much as I can and am at a standstill. I have invested in books and hardware that is more secure than most computers, but I am under the impression that is not enough and will not be sufficient in evading surveillance. After reading Intercepts article on how the NSA tracked BTC users, it has made me a lil more paranoid to the effect that if simply by using crypto currency has labelled me a suspect, target, criminal, terrorist, then I want to ensure I learn what I need and am willing to do what it takes to obtain my privacy. I am taking this seriously but need direction and want to hear your thoughts and professional opinions about

Using XMR as a store of value in place of surveillance tokens like BTC.
Is it even worth all the nonsense, in the end being they can see everything you do regardless.
Shouldn’t we ALL be concerned with what is going on, and why aren’t more people supporting privacy from unreasonable searches, etc.

Thanks for your perspective.

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What are your goals??

Make money and not get fisted by the tax man?

So is the question “How to best be legal while making profits with crypto?”

IMHO Just pay the tax on your profits. IF you do this you can claim the expenses on gear used to make money with it, and off-set any losses against future tax bills (YMMV, get financial advice from a local tax agent in your country).

There’s enough profit margin in this shit to not have to go through tax evasion and flag yourself to the IRS/ATO/Tax agency in your country - and still make money.

I’ve been above board / paying taxes / claiming losses on my crypto portfolio since 2017, but I’m in Australia.

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I am not concerned with taxes. I keep a spreadsheet and hodl for long term investing. My focus is on privacy from watchful eyes. Not tax evasion. If I wanted to evade taxes I would simply not pay the man despite the consequences. I said I aim to remain lawful, this means I will be paying my taxes. Hope that clarifies.

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Such as who? The only reason the government will care is if you’re evading tax or involved in terrorism…

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This is a good read. search “The NSA Worked to “Track Down” Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal” because I cannot post links?

To answer your question, you know who. All of them.

I’ve worked for the Government so I know this is not true. That is why I am on this path.

6

I’d say this is something to be concerned about.

You can have all the privacy you like whilst mining, contributing to pools, etc. but as soon as you convert to fiat via a bank account you’re fucked.

So unless you plan on spending it all off-grid via services which accept crypto (at which point you’re then fucked via delivery address, etc. anyway if its used for buying goods) … I’d be assuming the government will track you, given your belief that you’re already targeted.

7

I understand. There are means of using assets without going to fiat and a bank, which will be my path forward. I do not have to use the dollar, I can use a substitute should one exist. and many now do. The whole world is moving away from banks and centralized systems of control. I am simply not wanting to wait 20 more years to have a sense of privacy when I do something they just don’t like or agree with.

And for the record, anyone who is a US citizen who purchased BTC has their name in a database with detailed files relating, as described in the leaked NSA files Snowden presented to the Intercept.

Its not my belief that I am targeted, its my understanding that everyone is targeted. This is the reason for my concern. I am not a terrorist or tax evader, I am a nobody citizen trying to free themselves from a morally bankrupt system of corruption. That makes me a target!

So what do I need to learn, basic / advanced cyber security and privacy in order to setup a system that bypasses all their bs? I don’t mind spending 5 years learning a new skill set to achieve my goal, I just want to be free without feeling like there’s a creep looking over my shoulder. Cameras and mics in samsung tvs, ai facial recog all around the nation especially if in border patrol area, etc… I mean we have judges who say this shit is unconstitutional yet, there seems to be a stigma with one being self aware and asserting him/herself for their god given right to not be a slave.

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The problem is that “we” just don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes and how deep it “might” go depends on how cynical you are.

cellular modems have proprietary, black box firmware in them, so if you’re using any sort of mobile device, it’s entirely possible you’re surveilled via the cell modem irrespective of OS on the device.

Various security protocols in use have potential NSA backdoors in the crypto (e.g., elliptic curve cryptography).

The best you can do I guess is run Linux on an open platform, encrypt all your comms, do not use a cryptocurrency exchange, encrypt everything both at rest and in flight.

It’s a big ask, and any error may result in the whole setup being compromised (e.g., you have a private key leak from your machine via zero day flaw in your machine).

This leads me to my personal pessimistic outlook (after being in IT administration for the past 20 years) that “we’re fucked”. May as well comply and assume you’re compromised; because if you’re trying to hide shit the powers that be want to know about, they’re likely to come down harder on you if you’ve tried to hide it.

My personal belief is that if you think you’re capable of evading the surveillance, you’re kidding yourself (at least long term). Either you’re going to forget something, or have an instance where you slip up and compromise your OPSEC to the point where you get shafted.

When you have the TLAs working on stuff like sniffing encryption keys from CPUs by listening to the ultrasonic noises they make… assuming you can be 100% secure is IMHO unfortunately not realistic.

I mean this shit has been demonstrated… 5 years ago:

http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/acoustic/

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This government of the is the most messed up government in the world.

Jokes aside, most of Africa and Asia are still off grid essentially and fighting tooth and nail to get into the banking system.

In the US or CA or UK, EU, Russia, China etc… if you’re not participating (e.g. unemployed with no active bank accounts benefits tax reports, but e.g. with a passport, cell phone, and drivers license) you stick out.

Best privacy protection you can have is to have multiple personas, that blend in on the surface of things, in secret you’d use these multiple fake personas to do most things.

This kind of thing is risky because if any of these personas is determined to be fake, all your personas, incl. your real one are at risk due to correlation.

It’s also expensive both in cash and in time.

It’s more of a practical question of risk management, what do you need to do, how do you do it.

E.g. you could close all your bank accounts, not carry a phone with you, not have any social media presence, or subscriptions only use Tor for browsing … but then, why? It’ll only make you look fishy?

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IDK after reading this, I get the feel that its pointless

NSA targets the privacy-conscious

by
von J. Appelbaum, A. Gibson, J. Goetz, V. Kabisch, L. Kampf, L. Ryge

why cant I copy paste a link ? so mature

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We disallow new users from posting links to cut down on spam. I’ve bumped your account up to the next trust level, try now.

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Have you considered that posting on a public forum the details of how you plan to evade government surveillance might not be prudent

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This is the typical cognitive dissonance of crypto nuts.

hey guys, I’m evading taxes by using monero!

IRS looks on with glee

Add on to that the fact that this guy is bitching about the NSA on a forum that’s CDN’d by cloudflare, and you’ll short circuit just about anyone wearing tin foil hats.

14

this is rather common knowledge, its just not common to me. And Im not asking how to break the law to provide privacy so I fail to see your reason of concern.

yea, I dont do that. My goal is to renounce my citizenship and leave the nation legally so I am clean and free, ya see. So that would be counter productive to my goal. But please, keep projecting= instead of simply helping out with basic privacy. Seems like none of you feel the sense of it, which make me feel like I wasted my time in the service, where I recall having to fight for my fucking rights. If its suspicious that I want out of the surveillance my country is doing illegally makes me a criminal, then so fucking be it. at least I have the balls to stand up for myself.

15

So as far as crypto anonymity, you’re probably better versed in it than I, given your pfp.

exchanging your coin through a dex is a good start, but hot wallets are a risk, obviously.

There are specific crypto hardware wallet devices, but I don’t know about any, so I can’t speak to their efficacy. I can, however, speak to using a distro like TAILS and storing your wallet on an encrypted disk, which is what I do. This tangent is more loss prevention than anything else though.

As far as libre computers go, I hate to be a meme, but a Thinkpad X200 is the first thing that comes to mind. They’re relatively cheap and (i forget) either come with no ME, or come with a ME that can be completely cleaned.

I’m not particularly convinced that a commercial VPN is the way to go. I think i2p or TOR would be the best way. Yes, they’re both compromised a bit, but with the recent attention on tor node vulnerability, there’s been a lot more nodes popping up lately.

This is a really good question. What I’ve done is attempt hiding in plain sight. I’ve got a Google account that I search recipes and directions to sushi resturants on, I post on my twitter once or twice a month, and occasionally browse reddit.

These things give them a paper trail, because quite frankly, a big fat zero seems to be the biggest red flag.

Yeah, that’s a scary thought, but at the end of the day, we have to work with what we have.

I’ll leave you with this:

If you think the government is going to come after all crypto users at once: Hurricane Katrina.

Most western governments are not organized enough or competent enough to come after all their dissidents. They have neither the resources nor the approval rating. Quite frankly, the NSA is doing some awful stuff, but based on the fact that they didn’t put a bullet in Snowden before he was out of the building, clearly they’re not anywhere near as competent as we give them credit for.

Also, it’s worth noting that only average analysts and techs go to work for the government. If you’re the best, you’re a blackhat. If you’re above average, you work private sector. Only average and below average work for the government, because they’ll hire anyone.

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You complain about the US but there are a lot lot more problematic countries out there. Do I want my country to be like the US? No, God no, not by a long shot. But is the US better than my backwater third world country? Yes. A huge resounding yes.

The taxing situation in your country is a mess. But it can be reformed. Speaking of taxes, what was the saying? “In life only two things are certain: Death and Taxes”. Dont go to cryptocurrency just to make it hard for your government to tax you. It is your duty to pay it right. Even Michael Bazzel claims to be honest (waives his privacy) when it comes to taxes and banking.

17

Yeah, there’s something to be said for maybe just not bothering and becoming part of the background noise.

old, but if you’re not a security nerd, many may not have seen.

This is based on the Snowden leaks, so assume they’re FAR more advanced now. You can have all the crypto you like, but if the government has root on your box and owns your keys… OR has compromised the freaking crypto cipher/algorithm you’re using… you’re fucked.

Starts with low level shit, but keep watching. Malware in your hard drive firmware? Yes please!

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[EDIT: Please. Don’t read if you are a SNOWFLAKE or any other kind of dictartor, you will be offended and cry at the end while you search for the shutdown button. /edit]

Don’t tolerate government oppression my friend! Keep mining. :slight_smile:

Learn all about the DeFi world, → Decentralized Exchanges.
And of course use XMR more than anything else. :wink:

The more of your money you have in crypto the better, because then your friends will start to use crypto too.
Now the benefits of freedom will do it’s work, once you go crypto you stay crypto.
And one day the paper money will be valued at it’s true value: it’s weight in paper.

Bu… buu… buth how are the government going to pay for… [insert anything here]?
You and your friends will be the new government, taking care of yourselves in the best way for yourselves.
In the new government you vote with your own money and community influence.
You will pay for everything that you want and think have value.

Everything you and your freinds don’t want and value as worthless, will have a hard time until it finally cease to exist in the new echo system.

The only way to stop this expression of freedom, is to force a man to become a slave.
So the faster we go full freedom the faster they who want to enslave you and your friends will fail.