Privacy Means Having Space to Be Yourself // Aisling Connolly (Taceo)

Hi, my name is Ashling. I work at Tatoo. We're building a network for private compute. Privacy for me is I mean it depends if you're asking me uh technically in in this uh world that we live in in ETC or in crypto generally or if you ask me personally but I guess we we talk personally here a little bit. For me it means yeah having some space to live to think to learn to grow to have some place to make mistakes without being judged.

Um yeah this is it in terms of technically in the digital world it's a very different thing. Uh we talk about cryptography we talk about privacy uh we talk a lot about a lot of tools that we can use. Um but ultimately for me it these tools either in my work or my private life uh should just allow us to live uh an interesting life where we can learn and grow without judgment. Some sort of freedom I think is a word that is thrown around a lot but yeah somewhere I can live and grow in peace. So at Tetsio we are building as I said a network for private computation.

It's based on MPC. Um this is the sort of you know cryptography the sort of privacy notion that is somewhere kind of between the all or nothing. So I wouldn't say it's you know the full-on cipher punk vision but it's not sort of the full transparency that you see today um in the blockchain world. And so for me, this is kind of one of those tools, techniques that uh allows to have this sort of world where you can live and breathe and move uh and do stuff. It's not completely restricting in a way.

Um but at least you have some semblance of privacy where you have uh space to make mistakes where maybe not everything is seen all the time. I see it a bit like a home. Like inside your home, you can do stuff and maybe people will know what is going on or you can reveal it to people if you like, but it doesn't mean that you're out on the street in public all the time. And uh yeah, so I see it a bit like um I think yeah, being a neoipher punk is maybe a little bit different to what it meant in the past. Of course, I guess this is why you have the neo prefix to me.

I guess in the past it was a very technical thing. It was very geeky. It was very kind of Yeah. uh being at the forefront of the internet. Now I think it's a bit more it's a different world and like our exposure to technology has changed.

I think in the past it was very much about growth and being like yeah knowledgeable and now I think the general mentality is to kind of shield away from knowledge to kind of step back from it to get lost in the kind of feed and the doom scrolling and things like this. So for me it's the sort of revolution against that to actually take back this right to learn information not just be to seek information to grow and to sort of change your mind and to be open instead of just kind of taking what you're uh seeing and to yeah question reality a bit. Um yeah, in terms as I said before a little bit, in order to do that, to get this knowledge to grow and to change and to make mistakes and to kind of experiment with life, you very much need privacy. And so this is how I see it evolving today. Uh I think we can attract more people in this neoccer punk movement by just being a bit open, being very inclusionary, not being so extreme on one like accepting ideas and accepting uh yeah a spectrum of kind of profiles and um I think you guys at web3 privacy now have been doing this very well but I don't see it everywhere in the industry.

I see that some of the mentalities are very strict and unless you kind of go all in on you know the real cipher punk values and you know sometimes I think this can be a bit exclusionary um but I think it's also great to give people ideas about how they can you know get involved how they can kind of open their minds to these new ideas um how they can experiment how how fun and nice and kind of bright it can be as well as um yeah how counterculture it can be. Oh, my feeling about this neo cipher punk space today, I think a lot of people are still afraid of it. I think uh it still seems like one of these things that's a little bit taboo. Um there are still conversations about, you know, people who maybe get arrested for building and using privacy tools. I think there's still some mentality that this is associated with criminal activity and things like this.

So I think it's important that we show that it's not you know that there are many other aspects to it as well. Um I think in the previous days in cryptography and looking at the kind of previous cipher punk uh communities there was a lot of examples of where it's not criminal and like there was kind of a lot of arguments of that completely like you know blow any kind of criminal arguments out of the water and so I think maybe it's good to be a bit more like this now as well just to say like no it will um not to be defensive but a bit more offensive on this and Yeah, at least for me

I think there are not that many women in the space because there are I don't think it's necessarily particularly in the neoiper punk space. I think in cryptography and technology in general there are still a lot of problems. I think uh a lot of women fear that it's very technical that they don't have the capabilities to participate and to yeah contribute very well. I think women have this sense of a need to help a lot and if they don't feel like they have the skills to help then they hold themselves back. But I think it is still very male-dominated.

I think the space is very competitive. I think it's quite egotistic. I'm afraid to say these things because now all the men will come out. No, we're not. We're fine.

We're fine. But I do think it is quite competitive and these people are very smart. So perhaps there's some reason to have like a big ego. But I think this puts a lot of people off. I think it's not very welcoming.

Uh I think it's not very open. I think it's, you know, it uh it slows us down. And I think there's a lot of room for women. I think in privacy, in the cipher punk space, there's a lot of space for care. There's a lot of space for helping.

Um yeah, as I said, openness, growth, um experimentation, learning, making mistakes. Uh I think there's all the space for women that you know there are some great women in the space and I think they show how it can be nice. Um but yeah I think there's a lot of men who who keep it closed. So uh yeah it makes it difficult. Uh I have to fight a lot uh with to get in the conversation to be taken seriously.

Um at some point as you get a bit older you stop fighting and you just talk to the people that you know will respect you. So yeah, it keeps it closed a little bit, but I hope that uh I think women are also becoming a bit stronger in their mentality and caring a little bit less about egotistic men. So uh yeah, I hope to see many more in the space and I think there are a few trailblazing women who are doing great things. So yeah, hopefully they attract more into the space. I think like you see a lot of women who look at let's say the social or the political or the activist side at human rights the lawyers I mean there are so many I mean in all areas of business and tech and the world and whatever like bringing any sort of new thing into global society there are many aspects to it and so I don't see it being any different in technology I don't see it being any different in privacy.

I think particularly with privacy, it's a lot about people and the way that we live and engage with the world. So there's a huge scope of jobs and things to do. Um yeah, just I think yeah, talking about the profession specifically, legal, societal, political, yeah, human rights, all of this kind of stuff. But even on like even just not in career stuff, even in thinking about how we live, how we build a digital world like translating our IRL communities into digital ones. I think women have a lot of role to play there.

Uh just in thinking like how do we socialize online and how do we uh engage with each other, how do we talk, how do we help, how do we engage um I think there's everything to do. So I think the time that it takes in cryptography to get from research to development, it depends very much like now with AI tools and things like this, it can obviously get a lot faster. But I think a lot of what we need in the world like what we need in terms of development and technology exists in research since years since decades even. So um I would say that like it can be very very fast given that what we need in terms of research already exists and can just be implemented and deployed very fast but even still I see that you know there are a lot of people like cryptographers working on new research from scratch and there I think again there's just so much to do that it can go from like very short-term problems like immediately within a year from like starting a research project coming up with the questions coming up with the definitions coming up with security proofs to then going to implementation and testing and deployment and auditing. I think it can be if you go from scratch to deployed in production.

I think it can be I don't know you don't want to put numbers on these things but it can be done in a year can be done much shorter. I one thing I don't see so often and I wonder why is a little bit this super long-term questions like I think we don't really think enough about how to build for super long future. So how will the world look in 50 years and what kind of tools do we need for that? Now I think because tech moves so fast we always think in the very very short term quantum computers are coming you know AI is coming how can we like tackle this like immediately because we need to protect the systems that exist but yeah so in that sense very short term but I would also love to see people thinking about the much longer term the much longer questions and I think like in computer science let's say in the 70s or around the start of the internet I think the mentality was much bigger and much broader And you saw these like 30, 40, 50 year long projects. Even Donald can talking about the art of computer programming.

It he expected that this would take him 50 years to complete. And I've always found it amazing that someone would think like, okay, I need to sit down for 50 years now to work on this. And I would love to see more of it. But yeah, in answer to the question really, I think uh the pathway from research to engineering can be quick, but we shouldn't li it to that. So, thinking about the utopian private future, I mean, for me, I wouldn't be one of the most extreme uh cipher punk people, let's say.

I don't want everything. I don't want to control everything. I don't want everything to be completely private. I like sharing stuff. I like being vulnerable in front of people.

I like people knowing some stuff about PE, but I like having the choice. I like having the freedom to choose what I show when I show things. And I don't like if somebody learns something about me without me knowing. And so in that sense, my kind of vision of the idealistic utopian cipher punk happy privacy future is one where I'm in control of my information where I can choose what to share. And also if something is known about me, if there's some data leakage or if somehow I lose my privacy, at least this is known.

And so again, I think it's also something that's not really discussed in the privacy space is about transparency. It's like for me, they're heavily linked. Privacy is always so much it's about hiding. It's about hiding you. It's about not seeing things.

It's about what you don't see. But for me, it's also about what you do see. It's if somebody decrypts my information. If somebody uses a viewing key, if there is mass surveillance, at least it should be known. There should be a trace of especially with technology and cryptography these things can be done very easily they just need to be integrated into the systems and so yeah for me it's very important that we have traceability um within the system so whatever is done with our data is known to us um and we can see if we if we lose some privacy but ultimately yeah I want some sort of flexible privacy with traceability with transparency where it's needed for the institutions or governments um but with control to the users My favorite privacy tool is probably not a privacy tool at all.

I mean, for me, privacy, as I said, is about getting information. It's about learning and growing and being able to think freely and, you know, form opinions to learn and to grow. And in that sense, I like to read books. I think I mean it seems silly if I would say that physical books are my favorite privacy tool but still to me to this day this seems the best way to actually have my privacy to have my mind to be able to read and yeah learn something and grow and change and keep like updating myself like to me this is what it means to flourish as a human let's say um and I don't see a way to do that in the digital world yet so I mean uh Yeah, I guess my short answer would be to read more books. This is the best way.

These are the best privacy tools that I can uh can give you. They no one can track you. No one can extract from you this way. But ultimately, I mean, of course, there are ways that we talk online. There are ways that we communicate, transact, whatever.

Um, and I'm sure you'll have 10 million people telling you that use signal, the internet has TLS. I mean, you know, these are, but for me, I would really stress use books as your privacy tools. Grow more, learn more. Yeah. Push push yourself to uh be able to build this digital world that sort of allows the same freedoms we have in the physical world.

How do we solve the dilemma between money and human rights and what we work on? I'm not the person to answer this. Like I walk on the street, you see people are ill and you're in K, there's like Ethereum things, there's like tourists, there are people trying to change the world and yet still like there are diseases that have been around for hundreds of years. And it's like what are we doing here? Like why are we okay?

It's cool to build Ethereum. It's cool to build private tools, privacy tools. It's cool to work in this space. we get to travel but like ultimately uh we you know there are always topics that you can work on. There are always things that we can be doing.

There are better things that we should be doing can be doing. Caring about medicine, caring about climate, caring about whatever instead of just chasing after new technologies. So yeah, I don't feel qualified to answer that, but I at least in myself try to make choices that given where I am in the world and given the privileges that I have, given the education that I have, given the knowledge that I have, what is the best thing that I can do with it that can help the world go at least one step in the right direction. Um, this is how I rationalize it. I try to see if things align um with the general future that I would like to live in.

Um and I try to work towards that. Refuse things that don't align with that. Try to go towards things that do align with that. And yeah for me it's important to as again to read to to get knowledge to try and understand to try and form these opinions at least so that at least given where you are in the world right now ignoring all the other problems that we really should be working on how can we take a step in the right direction and for me this is the best that I can do I don't feel it's enough by any means but uh right now and here that's what I do for me privacy is the feeling of being home, the feeling of being calm, having space to yeah be myself without fear of judgment, of repercussions. Um the space to learn and grow.