You are acting like tracking and advertising are inseparable. They are not, you can advertise without tracking people and you can make money doing so. I do not want to be tracked, and the only technical solution at this point is to block advertisements -- because even loading a static image from an advertiser will be used as a data point to track me.

If a website wants me to view its ads, it should refuse the business of advertisers that create privacy-invading ads. If websites were standing up for their users they would not be at risk of becoming collateral damage in this fight.

DNT is not more challenging for technical reasons. Today's ad blockers remove almost all advertising. The real challenge is politics: the popular browser makers are all in bed with the advertisers.

Why spend the effort on the courts? Ad blockers take under a minute to install.

"Do Not Track" is pretty clear. It means "do not track," without exceptions, without room for debate.

This fiasco has basically proved what everyone knew from the beginning, which is that advertisers do not give a damn about people who do not want to be tracked. Luckily, we have a technical solution to the problem: ad blockers. Much like spam filters and pop-up blockers, ad blockers are the solution to advertisers who have no respect and who cannot be trusted.

DNT had exactly one use: to determine whether or not advertisers respect the wishes of people who do not want their browsing habits tracked. The verdict is in, and to nobody's surprise advertisers have no respect for anyone. Now we know that we are justified in using ad-blocking plugins and building browsers that block ads by default.

Is this a job interview question?

What if those misdeeds include such crimes as participating in a peaceful antiwar rally or blowing the whistle on criminal activity occurring within the government? Just because someone has something to hide does not mean that they are doing something evil.

...so I guess we are in agreement?

Yeah, and as you yourself admitted, that security definition is based on the existence of a central authority. It is not possible to apply such a definition to a system without a central authority, which means that security definition is irrelevant to Bitcoin. This is not just a slight variation, it is a fundamental departure from the definition of security for digital cash. If you think I am wrong, write a proof of security for Bitcoin using the definition of digital cash, or a variant that accounts for the lack of a central bank.

Which is irrelevant to Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is not an encryption system nor is it a signature system. It is also false to claim that there is a security definition for public key cryptography, since the definition for encryption is not the same as the definition of signatures, and there are several definitions for each that cover different notions of security (e.g. chosen plaintext attacks, adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks, etc.).

Bitcoin is not a hash function, so this is irrelevant too.

No, it does not, because it is a subfield of cryptography that encompasses several related classes of protocols and security models. There are notions of security that are generally applicable to all those protocols -- semihonest, malicious, adaptive malicious, universal composability, etc. Again, you can read the background material yourself if you do not believe me, which apparently you don't.

Look, I'll just reiterate my challenge from above. If you think I am wrong, prove rigorously that Bitcoin is secure, the same way that cryptographers prove that other systems are secure. Leave no room for argument or doubt, and then you can call yourself a winner.

Bitcoin is a multiparty computation system. The fact that it does not build on previous work does not change what Bitcoin is, nor how it can be analyzed.

Yeah, and guess what? The security definitions of those systems assume a central bank that issues the money. You do not have to believe me; here, you can read the actual work on it:

http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11889663_20

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.8279

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5443458&tag=1

What exactly do you think it is a compromise of? Bitcoin is not a signature system, nor is it a hash function, nor is it a cipher. Bitcoin is at least a multiparty computation system, which is also cryptography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_multiparty_computation

What is the definition of "security" for Bitcoin? What would it mean to successfully "attack" Bitcoin? In cryptography, we usually define security rigorously, then design systems that meet our definitions.

The fact that a polynomial time algorithm can violate key properties of the system -- enabling double spending, preventing others from spending their money, killing the mining reward -- is fatal, at least from a cryptography standpoint. If it took half the users of Bitcoin to collude, that might be acceptable; but the fact that one user with lots of computing power can do this calls Bitcoin's value as a secure system into question.

Of course, the lack of a security definition for Bitcoin makes this point moot anyway.

That, in fact, was the judicial reasoning on the constitutionality of child pornography laws. At this point, though, I have my doubts that this sort of economic argument is valid; I doubt that the consumers of child pornography are paying for it in any way. After all, we are supposed to believe that the Internet has ruined the MPAA's and RIAA's business, and child pornography is obviously not subject to copyrights.

"Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, it must be done!"

I suspect that mass refusal to enter the body scanners would result in the use of metal detectors. The TSA is not going to punish more than a tiny minority of people, because they know that they are unpopular. They know that libertarian politicians want to ax their entire agency. They know that respected researchers like Bruce Schneier have nothing but bad things to say about their approach to security. They know that they are less popular than the IRS. Their actions now are about public relations, trying to keep the amount of negative press to a minimum.

I had a similar experience. I opted out, and then they noticed the line getting too long -- so they just let people through metal detectors. I was still waiting for my pat-down until I demanded that I be allowed through and accused them of punishing me for exercising my rights.

My experiences with the TSA's airport security have led me to conclude the following:

1. They hire the least intelligent people they can find. People who do not ask questions, because they lack the intelligence needed to do so.
2. They are terrified of any further resentment by the public. They are more concerned about their image than about keeping us safe (but we knew that anyway).