Crypto currency privacy is threat to national security...and American economic privacy.

Dear Editor,

David McIntosh’s belief that we should “let individuals, not government, decide on how and when to invest” (Chinese Communist Crypto policy in America,  Feb 15, 2023) missed the fundamental global reality/truth that individuals also have the choice of ‘where to invest, and how much to invest, and what to invest in’. 

Given the irreversible interconnectedness of the global economy and the capacity to weaponize everything, including words (see Social Media and Chat GBT Feb 13^th headline) our God-given right of freedom also allows us to do as we, please.  But that will never achieve what our government and our Constitution’s preamble intends  -  to keep us citizens free and secure – and thus leave of free of these undesirable unintended consequences of ignoring fundamental truths.

The privacy of Cryptocurrency enables anyone to avoid the scrutiny of US government intelligence agencies in their search for ‘where’ those financial resources are spent, ‘how much’, and ‘what’ it is invested in.   Thus, our government can never ensure both our individual freedoms or our security without violating everyone’s economic privacy.  

And again, the prophetic words of Jen Easterly, the director of CISA, the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018), “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” should be self-evident to all.

Her quote should become the Washington Times equivalent of the Washington Post’s discrete daily headliner “Democracy Dies in the Darkness”.  Her words enlighten us all that ‘everything’ means everything.  And the fundamentals of sustaining our freedoms and our security require our acceptance of this great truth -- that ‘independence’, the current foundation of our federal republic, is an illusion.

Chuck Woolery   chuck@igc.org   240-997-2209

315 Dean Dr., Rockville, MD 20851