Edward Snowden has done it again. He's uncovered more NSA spying, but this time it hits home as the agency appears to have targeted bitcoiners.
"Interestingly, the documents tracking bitcoin users stem from roughly the same period, 2013. They detail bitcoiners all over the world were targeted as powers granted the NSA under the rubric of fighting terrorism expanded, and might have even begun to play a role in early crypto prosecutions such as Ross Ulbricht and Silk Road.
American Civil Liberties Union’s Patrick Toomey, of its National Security Project, explained, “If the government’s criminal investigations secretly relied on NSA spying, that would be a serious concern. Individuals facing criminal prosecution have a right to know how the government came by its evidence, so that they can challenge whether the government’s methods were lawful. That is a basic principle of due process. The government should not be hiding the true sources for its evidence in court by inventing a different trail.”
It appears NSA has been focused on what’s important or novel about bitcoin, and it ain’t blockchain. And since the initial Mr. Snowden revelations of the Agency’s widespread data gathering streams and programs, enthusiasts have long suspected something of the sort was happening in crypto. Document sentences filled with snippets such as “help track down senders and receivers of Bitcoins” will only fuel more speculation.
Information gathered wasn’t just about transactions. In fact, “the tracking may also have involved gathering intimate details of these users’ computers. The NSA collected some Bitcoin users’ password information, internet activity, and a type of unique device identification number known as a MAC address,” Mr. Biddle explains. A MAC address is also known as a media access control address, a unique hardware identifier. A crisper analogy would be to liken a MAC to an American social security number which remains with a person (device) for their entire lives."
We will see if this information contributes to the market growth of tokens like zcash, monero and dash.