Agreed. Bitcoin provides anonymity and people that use it for political or convenience reasons are sometimes looked at suspiciously. But, if I go into Walmart and pay for $150 in groceries in cash, no biggie.
Services like SpiderOak that include anonymity as a feature to a small extent do a disservice so the otherwise laudable principle of "can't I be anonymous sometimes without being a criminal?" Maybe zero-knowledge features would be looked upon less suspiciously if they were just included as a feature, without being advertised as a feature? Well, I think you get my gist?
Without Zerocoin, Bitcoin is NOT anonymous. And acquiring bitcoin anonymously is rather difficult. Local meetup for cash? Person can take audio/video or track you. Deposit at bank? Precise datetime and camera video is recorded. Mailing cash might work, if you're cautious about DNA, fingerprints, printer fingerprint, etc.
But mailing cash reveals your general location and in less populated places might be enough to find your identity. And in larger areas, if you mail cash often, you can probably be correlated from video with sufficient technology.
With Zerocoin the problem is mostly solved, from what I can tell (so long there's sufficient volume).
Services like SpiderOak that include anonymity as a feature to a small extent do a disservice so the otherwise laudable principle of "can't I be anonymous sometimes without being a criminal?" Maybe zero-knowledge features would be looked upon less suspiciously if they were just included as a feature, without being advertised as a feature? Well, I think you get my gist?