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Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank

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

#341

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

glofish wrote: post #18
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regrettably the media needs to publish what gets the most clicks; unfortunately what gets the most clicks these days is partisan stories that gets readers riled up. That Panama leak story was also quickly "forgotten" by the MSM.

Are you blaming the media for getting people what they want? As long as people demand the click-bait only the ones that provide such content will survive. Let's thank our luck that it is not Infowars style clickbait, so some resemblance of sanity still remains. FWIW the Panama papers have had a noticeable impact, especially where it matters most, clawing money back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

I've never met anyone that said they want more clickbait. Clickbait is what advertisers want and pay for. The articles are irrelevant, all advertisers care about is brand perception and conversions. Baity headlines exist to get people to click links and then the advertisements take over the job of coercing their ignorant victims into buying useless cheap junk they don't need or want.

The headlines themselves are advertisements:

'potus said -shocking thing-' (click here so 'you' have something to say to reinforce 'your' shallow self delusions that 'you're' a savvy, worldly, knowledgeable person instead of talking about what actually matters: [poverty, addiction, gas prices, unemployment, stagnant wage growth, unionization, corruption, health care costs, etc]).

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

#342

Post by bboygravity »

thinkloop wrote: post #107
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.…

> forcing foreign financial institutions to tell the US government about any American-owned assets on their books This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland? It cannot be understated how much power, control and ownership the US has of the world financial system. If Swi…

> This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland?

Two reasons come to mind:

1. Switzerland (like EU countries) depends a 100 % on the US for defense, in the sense it would basically turn into Russia / China overnight if the US wasn't a military power protecting them. This alone gives the US pretty much unlimited political leverage.

2. The US has the number 1 world wide spying agency, which acts as the leader to other "Western" spying agencies (see point 1). This means the US knows everything about everybody and thus has unlimited political leverage over anybody. Again this reason alone gives them quite a bit of political leverage over even a country like Switzerland (hands down the most democratic country in the world). Even though Switzerland has political safeguards in place that no other country has (direct democracy); in this case I guess Swiss people didn't mind (or didn't care about) sharing banking info with the US. After all: this helps tax evasion, so why vote against that...

You give some other answers yourself :P

There's no reason for the US to compromise on anything with any country in the Western world. And they don't. See for example: leaked cables on Wikileaks for tons of examples of good deals for the US and shitty deals for all counterparts.

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

#343

Post by simonh »

gumby wrote: post #334
karambahh wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For most people no, which is why people’s tax records for example are generally not available to the public.

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

#344

Post by Nextgrid »

I’ve read the Pastebin and I wonder, where did they send the 200k to be able to cash them out without getting in trouble? I’ve always assumed that diverting electronic money is relatively easy, the hard part is to convert it to a physical or untraceable form without getting caught; I assume the receiving bank would have kept a record of the incoming transfer and what happened with that money afterwards.

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

#345

Post by wahern »

mola wrote: post #331
maximente wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

> Israel isn't expanding, all lands it conquered were in wars it didn't initiate.

That's not strictly true. You're forgetting the 1947–1949 Palestine war, the first part of which was effectively a civil war where there's ample evidence of Jewish militias, with premeditation, taking part in land grabs every bit as much as the Arab militias.

In the West and especially in America this aspect is overlooked and even denied, as it doesn't fit the narrative of Israel as the underdog. Conversely, in the Muslim world this is pretty much the only aspect they want to discuss, for similarly self-serving reasons.

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

#346

Post by Bombthecat »

daveguy wrote: post #301
dmix wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this activist has somehow profited from his “hacktivism” and he wants to spread his wealth to other activists?

Or possibly someone who became wealthy in the software/opsec industry who believes what they do is for the good of humanity. To a person with a net worth of 100MM+ 100k would not be significant. The funds didn't necessarily come from the hacktivism. Edit: Given the bounty is paid in bitcoin, somewhat more likely the funds are donations/fees from hacking. Not likely it came from funds deposited to an exchange (traceab…

Or he bought bitcoin / etherum early on.

On a side note: hope the identity of him stays a secret. Publishing stuff like that gets you killed..

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

#347

Post by Taniwha »

synchronise wrote: post #296
darawk wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design tax policy so that it doesn't force the government to be involved in every single transaction people engage in. Something like a land value tax, perhaps.

They have something similar in Aus called the Capital Gains Tax and it is something that is inherrently political, unfortunately you can't uncouple the government from as they provide the public service that maintain and collect taxes. Honestly the public service should be answerable to parliament, not government. Not to mention CGT been tweaked to ineffectiveness by previous governments by excluding assets from its…

The US has a CGT, capital gains are taxed at your normal marginal income tax rate unless you hold them for a minimum time in which case you pay a slightly lower rate. Though they do provide some exemptions for the family home. Not all that political thing.

In fact in many countries CGT is only used to refer to the LOWER version of the tax ... after all you should pay income tax whether you make your income digging ditches, house flipping, or day trading

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

#348

Post by rswail »

throwaway_tech wrote: post #148
thinkloop wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forcing foreign financial institutions to tell the US government about any American-owned assets on their books This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland? It cannot be understated how much power, control and ownership the US has of the world financial system. If Swi…

>Just a quick note that the US is equally powerful in the financial arena as they are militaristically, if not more so. This was the trade off Churchill was forced to agree to, as London was being bombed by the Nazis, if he wanted the US to join the war. Before the War the UK ran the World's finance, after the War it was the US. In short the US financial power was birth directly from its military power.

It was not the UK that ran/runs the world's finance, it's the tax haven of the City of London, with its overseas branches in UK territories that still runs the world's finances.

Current CT: Brexit has to happen before 2020 because otherwise City of London will be subject to EU rules that will cause current anonymities to be revealed.

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

#349

Post by NamTaf »

jonny_eh wrote: post #160
CaymanCruiser wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...unfair, extra-legal competitive advantage. It is not unfair, and it is not extra-legal. Anyone can offshore their company and in some cases it can take less than an day (incorporating an LLP in the UK takes a couple of hours) with virtually zero barriers of entry, all fully compliant with the relevant legislation. If legal regulatory arbitrage (through tax havens) is unfair, then the corollary is that any kind o…

> It is not unfair, and it is not extra-legal Then why are you using a pseudonym?

"If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear" isn't a reasonable position to hold, and your statement basically amounts to it. There's plenty of reasons to want to stay anonymous when talking about business such as this.

To clarify, I don't necessarily agree with his position, but I disagree with your proposition that he is using a pseudonym for that reason.

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

#350

Post by post_below »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #321
Mirioron wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax the corporation when an individual buys goods. Essentially a much bigger VAT.

VAT is regressive - that is it takes a proportionately larger chunk the poorer you are - often considered unfair. For example if I and Warren Buffet buy a car then I have spent a much larger percentage of my overall wealth than he does

Warren Buffet is likely to buy a much more expensive car, or cars.

He's spending more on everything than you are.

That doesn't even things up, of course, but then neither does the current system. It would arguably be closer to even.

The beauty of a universal sales tax (as an alternative to income tax), in addition to the fact that the wealthy consume more of everything, is that a transaction tax is more difficult to lobby loopholes into.

And, of course, it potentially doesn't need as large (read expensive) a bureaucracy to manage and enforce it.

It also removes the burden of record keeping/reporting from consumers and payroll tax from employers.

A lot of people have spent time thinking about the idea. One example: https://fairtax.org/

It's not a problem free solution of course, but neither is the current one. Someday a proposal for a transaction tax might even make it out of committee.

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