A government at best wants to protect the well-being of some certain group of people. At worst, it's a threat to that group and even those outside it.

The preferred tool to maintain power for the worst and the best governments seems to be the same: surveillance. The problem with implementing a system of mass surveillance is it creates an imbalance of power in the hands of a few people. The efforts by a "best" government can be coopted by a "worst" government as the government changes character or hands, or the honey pot of secrets is stolen or leaked.

I hope to shed some light on why these efforts aren't effective--even in the hands of "best" governments--and what is effective instead.

Weak money

A government's excuse for mass identification and surveillance of its citizens is often to cover up a problem it created by issuing weak money. Weak money has no inherent protection against theft and fraud, so when illicit monetary activities get out of hand, a government's go-to solution is to implement something like Aadhar, which fingerprinted and eye-scanned 1 billion people, and made it practically impossible to get a cell phone, apartment, or even food without it.

Instead, we need money that has built-in provisions to combat crime.

Crime doesn't pay with programmable money and assets

Let's talk about some specific anti-crime solutions we can build with programmable money and assets. Many more examples are left to your imagination.

Spending limits

At a very basic level, I can allow myself to spend a fixed amount of money every day, every month or every week (without further approval: See below). If an attacker steals my account, it's more like stealing my wallet than stealing my bank vault. It buys me time to try to fix the situation.

Organizations can program spending limits, too.

Shared approval

I can program a system where large expenditures require the approval of a quorum of people I trust. I can carefully decide how many constitute a quorum, and who should belong, keeping in mind what might happen if a friendship turns sour or if someone is able to attack more than one of my friends at the same time.

I can give one share to my best friend in France, another to my father in India, and keep one for myself and require two of the shares to vote on any large expenditures.

My father and friend know to investigate the situation before turning over large funds. If someone is extorting me to ask my father or friend to approve a house purchase that would really go into an attacker's account, they would investigate that purchase thoroughly. If houses were bought through programmable loans and escrow instead of weak systems like personal bank accounts, it would be easy to tell that they should not transfer a large sum into a personal bank account, especially not for buying a house.

I might make a 3 of 4 multi-signature account where at most any 2 of the 4 people have close ties, to prevent targeting via a ransom attack of a mutual friend.

Provenance

When ownership rights over my assets are tokenized, I can program restrictions on them as well. Holding my car without holding its token makes it look like you stole it. (If you borrow it, I'll issue you a self-expiring "just borrowing" token instead.)

I can make the ownership token recoverable, using a multi-signature scheme as in the shared approval example, in case the token is stolen, not the car. Our quorum can remove its recover privilege if there's a legitimate sale or transfer.

The car token can show the provenance of who has held it. A previous owner can file a dispute on the car token, which will be visible to everyone. They might do this if the transfer wasn't authorized.

Tokenization of assets can (and should) be extended to land, buildings, guns, and any other possessions we wouldn't give away on a whim.

People shouldn't accept a stolen car in the same way they shouldn't buy stolen oil or weapons. (We'll address this more in the section on violent governments.)

Corporations and segue into violence

Governments aren't the only ones overstepping their bounds. When corporations like Sony demand more personal information than they need (Do they need any? If I want to pay for a game, why can't I do so anonymously with programmable money?), they create a giant honey pot for the same attackers behind bank heists and ransomware.

What's ultimately at stake here? Assuming the North Korean government's nuclear weapons program has a goal not to burn down the world, but to perpetuate and spread the influence of that government, then what's at stake is the well-being of 24 million people and the safety of 8 billion more.

Violence

Taking this further into the realm of violent, physical attacks, what creates a honeypot for violent governments? It's quite similar to what allures criminals.

Violent governments

If Ukraine knows it can take land, oil, and other resources from its own citizens (e.g. eminent domain), Russia knows that by defeating Ukraine, it can acquire these abilities over the same people. This is a honey pot.

If governments know that no threats, no guns, can result in their "legitimate" acquisition of personal effects, business holdings, or society-owned natural resources, then violent expansion of influence completely loses its appeal.

Societal eminence

Every weapon from a hand gun to a nuclear submarine can bear societal approval or disapproval on its tokenized form. Every natural resource, such as oil, is the ultimately the domain of society, not government.

We treat governments the same way we treat thieves: we shun any assets they've taken by force. The U.S. with its mass surveillance doesn't seem to be able to achieve this with North Korea (the wrong people end up in jail), but with programmable money and assets we can.