Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 491 posts

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#331

Post by mola »

maximente wrote: post #46
Accujack wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth Enlightened self interest. Those "insignificant" islands are generally speaking countries. By showing respect for the rule of law even in situations where they could easily overwhelm with force or economic power smaller nations, the larger ones reinforce that the law matters. The larger countries use as a defense the id…

this doesn't pass the smell test for me. first, we're talking about powerful vs. not so let's not use area as a proxy for power; that's not appropriate. given that, history is rife with examples of powerful nations basically looking the other way when other countries not in their playpen get "bullied". these large international bodies e.g. League of Nations, UN have all failed generally when powerful entities decide…

What about Israel? Israel isn't expanding, all lands it conquered were in wars it didn't initiate. when a chance for peace came, it gave these lands back.

Did you see a map recently? Do you grasp the size of Israel vs it's neighbors? (The Sinai desert, which Israel gave back to Egypt as part of the peace agreement is x3 larger than Israel)

You can't clamp together imperialists like US Germany and China with Israel defense strategy, that's just weird.

Now don't get me wrong, some israeli leaders did/do crappy things, but never at the scale of China US or Germany, or for that matter any colonial country. It's a whole different scale.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#332

Post by newguy1234 »

conanbatt wrote: post #253
jokoon wrote: post #21

After watching The laundromat, I think it's big news. Although I will always be curious why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth, and why they're trusted to do it. This can't be secure or safe. I'm curious about the diplomacy and the political implications of this. What if their office get robbed? What if the island gets attacked? What if one of those shady ban…

Most people don't know the US is the preferred tax haven of the world.

We aren't a tax haven. We are a wealth haven. People buy assets here like real estate. They are more concerned with the strong privacy rules and strong protections for property. In terms of actually earning money, that is better left to tax havens or special economic zones.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#333

Post by noobermin »

jokoon wrote: post #21

After watching The laundromat, I think it's big news. Although I will always be curious why countries are letting those small, insignificant islands and countries manage all this wealth, and why they're trusted to do it. This can't be secure or safe. I'm curious about the diplomacy and the political implications of this. What if their office get robbed? What if the island gets attacked? What if one of those shady ban…

Hanlon's razor. Also, a Michelle Obama quote[0].

[0] https://www.newsweek.com/michelle-obama-tells-secret-i-have-...

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#334

Post by gumby »

karambahh wrote: post #173
bouncycastle wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> place to store anonymously your illicit cash What if I just want a place to anonymously store my legally gained cash? Unfortunately, it seems the normal people lost their privacy nowadays at the expense of the criminals and the "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" argument has taken a stronghold in the financial sector.

Because the social contract of most countries is that your legally gained cash is to be taxed in one form or another and thus has to be known by the tax authorities? You can argue that your assets are to be private to the general public but some countries do not have that assumption (Norway comes to mind).

But apart from the tax authorities need anyone else know?

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#335

Post by dllthomas »

Baneofbatman wrote: post #292
bouncycastle wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly have in mind the KYC strip-tease one must go through nowadays do open an account or purchase anything over $1000. There's no privacy these days.

That's the problem with making zero tolerance the ultimate goal of society. Either we accept there will always be a few bad apples or everyone has to prove they aren't one of them.

Nit, but it's a pet peeve of mine:

The saying is "A few bad apples spoil the barrel", meaning "be vigilant about bad apples and get rid of them ASAP." I'm baffled and frustrated by the tendency to use "a few bad apples" as if the saying were "a few bad apples are no big deal, get rid of them if you happen to notice."

I actually don't think reasoning from vague analogy and folk wisdom is all that great an idea, but reasoning from the reverse is probably worse.

Feel plenty free to make the case that we should tolerate some level of misconduct - I might agree. But please don't refer to those involved as "a few bad apples" while you do it.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#336

Post by dllthomas »

jrumbut wrote: post #323
Mirioron wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And our society seems to have picked the latter because it sounds good when it comes out of the mouth of a politician. This is probably a weakness of democracy.

It's probably a weakness of democracy, sure, but it's not as though "total financial freedom and anonymity" are common properties of non-democratic states. Most of the problems in democracies seem to exist, possibly magnified, in the alternatives.

IIUC, the "problem with democracy" being pointed to is not the outcome in this particular case, but the general tendency for us to make decisions that sound good without thinking too deeply.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#337

Post by CaymanCruiser »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #88
CaymanCruiser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This may be terribly naive, but doesn't that make the business de-facto illegal? What kind of legitimate business deserves to buck paying into the systems that support them? As a default I want to disagree, but I would like to know what business needs to operate outside of these constraints. These constraints that you speak of are entirely arbitrary (geographical delineation) and were designed for a time before the…

I'm sorry but that just sounds absurdly reductive to me. It makes a gross assumption that people are incapable of keeping their government in check. Perhaps, in spite of my own cynicism, I believe people are capable of deciding how they want their societies to run (also in spite of our hiccups here in the Western world). So again: why do such businesses deserve to operate with such impunity? A natural function of bus…

>It makes a gross assumption that people are incapable of keeping their government in check.

There is a difference between keeping a government in check, and ensuring governance stays relevant. Western democracy usually ensures the former, but is not very good on the latter.

>Subverting reasonable social good is an active harm that is reasonable given the circumstances (like an ambulance or fire truck asserting the right of way on a city street), but I fail to see why that should apply to any and all business.

This is more of a political argument than anything else, and I'm not too keen on going into my political views on this matter (although I'm sure it is not too difficult to infer them from my posts). What I will say however is that I think you are conferring an arbitrary civic duty on corporations, with the dutiful obligations of which being up for a significant amount of interpretation across societies and jurisdictions.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#338

Post by wahern »

Concrescator wrote: post #134
magashna wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quite frankly draconian rules that usually places them on US/EU/OECD blacklists Assuming ethics is not a concern

Who's ethics? Really. Who's. Ethics isn't a black and white thing and people feel differently globally about whats ethical. Take copyright. That's a western thing, but personally I think we can do without. I like China's ethics on copyright even though most westerners would disagree.

What ethics? China has nominally had standard, WTO-compatible copyright protections for decades. The problem is inconsistent and often corrupt enforcement.

The sine qua non of any legal system is consistent application of the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law If you don't have the Rule of Law, you don't have much of anything.

Western companies would have you think that China systematically ignores copyright, patent, and trademark protections, sort of like that there's a quasi-legal norm of simply ignoring those protections. But that's a strategically misleading characterization designed for Western audiences.

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#339

Post by tomc1985 »

Mirioron wrote: post #305
Baneofbatman wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with making zero tolerance the ultimate goal of society. Either we accept there will always be a few bad apples or everyone has to prove they aren't one of them.

And our society seems to have picked the latter because it sounds good when it comes out of the mouth of a politician. This is probably a weakness of democracy.

I think it's more of a weakness of societies with resources. The drive to ensure 'goodness' is even stronger among authoritarian governments

Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

#340

Post by simonh »

bouncycastle wrote: post #164
gxqoz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent piece in The Guardian argues that South Dakota and other US states are actually becoming the go-to place to store anonymously your illicit cash and make sure that your heirs can inherit it without taxes forever: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-amer... Partly because the US has compelled other countries to provide more transparency without joining that transparency organization itself.…

> place to store anonymously your illicit cash What if I just want a place to anonymously store my legally gained cash? Unfortunately, it seems the normal people lost their privacy nowadays at the expense of the criminals and the "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" argument has taken a stronghold in the financial sector.

The problem is that our participation in the financial system affects other people. We also get benefits from that system such as auditing and regulation of our banks to protect our rights and interests, so it’s reasonable that we pay the price for this and one of those is some measure of privacy. Not all our privacy, just some of it.
Post reply on HN