Anonymity as a human right and why crypto needs to enforce it even more
The system will stop at nothing to rule over you!
I find it comical that a lot of people out there still look up to a system ruled by a couple of buddies who simply play around with numbers any way they see fit - it's a shit show that just keeps getting bigger applauding audiences, screw up?
Definitely!
Get this - the latest organization on badbitchs' government rant goes to… drum rolls…
"The Central Bank Of Nigeria"
Guess why? In the latest policy directive to financial institutions in the country, the central bank of Nigeria is instructing the banks to demand social media handles of customers as a part of their new "know your customer(KYC)" requirement.
Now you're probably wondering why they would want this.
Well, we asked them and here's what was said:
"The newly introduced requirement as stated by the apex bank is intended to strengthen customers’ due diligence measures and combat money laundering and terrorism financing in the country."
It is nothing new that fraud in Nigeria is insanely high, who's to be blamed? Certainly not the citizens because they simply learn from the best - the government.
You know, sometimes I wonder why this isn't a global norm, because majority of the governmental bodies are fraudulent.
But that aside, is the CBN really only after monetary crimes?
Before we dive into that, let's talk about how this is unlawful and a violation of Nigerians rights.
Right to freedom of expression(speech) and privacy
This is the two rights of Nigerians that are being violated with this new policy. The social media space is where people typically come out to say a lot of things, Nigerians specifically as I know are very jovial people, we may catch them joking about a lot of things online even when things are falling apart at home.
So it is not uncommon to find them making jokes that may make them look like what they are not - eg. A fraudster(popularly called a Yahoo Boy(and Girl) - it happens a lot.
So with a policy of this nature, they'd be forced to refrain from freely expressing themselves online, a right being violated because an eye/eyes are watching their every statement to use against them.
Secondly, this is a violation of right to privacy of these individuals. A social media account may contain a variety of data that doesn't need to be logged on a banking file, sure, it sounds funny that they are already made public in the first place but you'd quickly debunk that thought when you figure that many individuals tend to use a different name on their social handles than on their freaking bank accounts.
So if a bank supposedly needs you to give away your active social handle, what could go wrong?
This policy would also force people who aren't even on social networks to have to join one, how pathetic right?
The list goes on…
That said, it's clear this has more to do with watching over how much value flows through individuals because the social space is now incredibly tied to finance - this is part of the motives of the CBN.
Anonymity as a human right
When I talk about anonymity, I'm not necessarily referring to being anonymous on social media, but mostly about having your social life and personal informations detangled from your financial operations.
The current system is too bent on the idea of having total coverage of every damn person's life, its appalling.
Crypto brought about a sense of anonymity with its no-KYC design of money structures and transactions therein.
This, amongst many other things needs to be held up and most furiously built upon.
Institutions and organisations have way too much data of individuals, that nonsense has to stop because as far as any body that cares to open their eyes and see for himself what reality is - this whole money laundering and terrorism financing are things mostly the people in the governance system do, no average Joe can afford to pay for an attack on a neighbourhood country or state.
We need to cancel these obnoxious data mines by building upon crypto, blockchain and web3.