If TC was secure, it may have formed the basis of a trust matrix if this was not subverted by incumbent actors.
If TC is insecure in the face of NSA surveillance tools, which it appears to be, then it provides a wonderful addition to state spying. Perfect user identity assurance in a broad surveillance context. No mismatched records to worry about.
How can any free person want such a thing to succeed?
It is only a good idea if it is secure. If you know it is insecure against the state and yet you require the identity assurance it offers, then you surely are a tool of the NSA's surveillance empire. If you don't know this, then perhaps you may still be a servant of surveillance, just "not wittingly".
If, like me, you had a particular idea about what is worthwhile in the world which is based on the twin pillars of individual liberty and the rule of law, then the whole TC project is flawed by its insecurity against the state. Privacy is an output of both freedom and agreed zones of restriction. You get more privacy via ambiguous identity than by identity assurance in an insecure environment.
My support of TC, I realise, was predicated on the apparently wrongful notion that democracies avoid broad surveillance. Snowden showed how wrong the presumption is that politicians actually understand and care about freedom. How naive that makes a trusting person feel.
The state treats those who believe in the tenets of freedom as gullible buffoons. But without trust, there is no society. And without society, there is anarchy.
Cynicism is inherently unstable. Only trust builds value. The buffoons strike back.
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