From this week's news, US prosecutors are subpoenaing a list of every person who attended a gay drag show—under a law ostensibly written to effectively enforce age limits for "adult, sexualized" content[0,1].
You cannot separate the social context from the technical problem; or pretend that if you've designed a cryptographic protocol in some Platonic model reality, you've also solved some real problem in the real world. These things are privacy footguns because people want them to be privacy footguns—they're constructed that way, intentionally. The lack of privacy, the deterrent potential of public shaming, is a desired feature for many of the people pushing these things.
The error is in assuming that privacy is a common, shared value people agree on—a starting point for building technical solutions to. It isn't. It's an ideological dividing line.
> "Just like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and other bills with misleading names, this isn’t about protecting children. It’s about using the power of the state to intimidate people government officials disagree with, and to censor speech that is both lawful and fundamental to American democracy... EFF has long warned about this kind of mission creep: where a law or policy supposedly aimed at public safety is turned into a tool for political retaliation or mass surveillance. Going to a drag show should not mean you forfeit your anonymity. It should not open you up to surveillance. And it absolutely should not land your name in a government database."
You cannot separate the social context from the technical problem; or pretend that if you've designed a cryptographic protocol in some Platonic model reality, you've also solved some real problem in the real world. These things are privacy footguns because people want them to be privacy footguns—they're constructed that way, intentionally. The lack of privacy, the deterrent potential of public shaming, is a desired feature for many of the people pushing these things.
The error is in assuming that privacy is a common, shared value people agree on—a starting point for building technical solutions to. It isn't. It's an ideological dividing line.
[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/you-went-drag-show-now... ("You Went to a Drag Show—Now the State of Florida Wants Your Name ")
[1] https://apnews.com/article/florida-drag-show-law-vero-beach-... ("Florida’s attorney general targets a restaurant over an LGBTQ Pride event")
> "Just like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and other bills with misleading names, this isn’t about protecting children. It’s about using the power of the state to intimidate people government officials disagree with, and to censor speech that is both lawful and fundamental to American democracy... EFF has long warned about this kind of mission creep: where a law or policy supposedly aimed at public safety is turned into a tool for political retaliation or mass surveillance. Going to a drag show should not mean you forfeit your anonymity. It should not open you up to surveillance. And it absolutely should not land your name in a government database."