Sure they can, but the goal is to raise the cost. Why do we bother to encrypt anything? They can always get a court order and install a backdoor in your computer or bust down the door while things are unlocked - we do it to increase the cost - if they have to dedicate resources to monitoring they have to pick targets that (hopefully) actually have some reason behind them and cannot surveil everyone just for shits and giggles.
Discussion
And, fwiw, none of my credit cards or IDs have my actual address on them :)
They have huge data centers and AI at disposal (Palantir)… they have all the $s they can print so cost is not their problem. People not taking privacy seriously is the problem. Don’t giveaway data if you didn’t have to. Not many do that.
They have lots of money but not a lot of people. Encryption means they need a warrant and to break down a door. They have very limited resources to do that (compared to pervasive surveillance).
Interesting... We should increase the cost even though if the fed really wanted the info they could still get it? Seems a lot like the OP return debate although you argue the opposite in that circumstance. Because filters dont stop all JPEGs we should blow open OP return right? Or maybe filters do work and we should be making it difficult for spammers even though it doesnt always work? I sense some hypocrisy here
If I knew how to materially increase the cost of spamming the chain I totally would advocate for that. I do not.
Fair enough, and I don't pretend to know a technical fix that would immediately fix it either, but supporting a change that is in service to miners needs instead of node choice in mempool policy doesn't seen like the right idea. I don't think everything needs to be fixed at a technical level but can be dealt with at the social. There are only a handful of miners and if we unified as a community to say, "this spam shit is unacceptable" by running nodes that do will not relay it, then I think they will be incentized to stop. This has already been done as I'm sure you know with MARA back in 21 when they were mining OFAC compliant blocks. We can fight this. Power to the nodes
US Postal service --- junk mail delivery revenue $15 billion, with a volume of 57 billion pieces a year. 20% of their total revenue.
Spam/junk is a good business for USPS. Just saying.