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EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

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Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#21

Post by AnthonyMouse »

vmception wrote: post #13
dogwater wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is this scary crime that is supposively happening with money? They didn't need much money to do 9/11 besides some airline tickets and box cutters, I'm sure it wouldn't trip any bank report flag that would have allowed them to stop it from happening. Organized crime, is that even a thing? If no one is even going after obvious ico scams that have defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars a…

To put it more succinctly, no part of the Patriot Act would have flagged the 9/11 terrorists. The Bank Secrecy Act and every expansion of it (like the Patriot Act) is just some data broker's pet project to fill some lucrative government contract.

So much of this feels like someone invented a teleporter and now reactionaries are condemning teleporters because they can be used by smugglers to evade customs enforcement.

But the cat is out of the bag. The smugglers are going to keep using it regardless of what rules you impose on law biding citizens.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#22

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #16
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is traceable, so it is quite solvable until more people use Monero

Bitcoin has a public transaction record but the parties are nameless. All you see is times and amounts. And cryptocurrency mixers make those not very easy to trace. Also, "solving" it by doing anything that would only cause criminals to switch to something else that already exists doesn't really solve anything, does it?

Bitcoin transactions are not nameless in practice because people will nearly always interact with exchanges and merchants. There is so much information from that. Mixers and CoinJoins don't work well enough when used by a small percentage of people, and they will cause redflags in AML analysis systems. Privacy is already being priced out as the transactions fees rise, too. With strong regulations it will enable surveillance on scale greater than anything we have seen before.

Terrorists and such will just use something else, sure. However, lack of liquidity and network effect will be problematic. I would be comfortable saying that stopping them is an excuse rather than the real goal - mass surveillance on citizens. Same with how the government is intent on complaining about end-to-end encryption apps like Signal when the real terrorists will just use PGP.

AML has never been very effective.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#23

Post by vmception »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #21
vmception wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it more succinctly, no part of the Patriot Act would have flagged the 9/11 terrorists. The Bank Secrecy Act and every expansion of it (like the Patriot Act) is just some data broker's pet project to fill some lucrative government contract.

So much of this feels like someone invented a teleporter and now reactionaries are condemning teleporters because they can be used by smugglers to evade customs enforcement. But the cat is out of the bag. The smugglers are going to keep using it regardless of what rules you impose on law biding citizens.

and otherwise law abiding citizens are the only ones ensnared by this.

most of the time its because they are paranoid about triggering government reporting requirements that they don't understand, and avoiding that is a crime too!

its always the people without money trying to act sketchy about $10,000 so they can avoid being seen as sketchy

they really do get thrown in prison for this

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#24

Post by bouncycastle »

brmgb wrote: post #15
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout all of human history people used private forms of money like cash. Why is it that suddenly only now it is a disaster to have financial privacy because of "crime"?

Hard limits to cash transactions exist in most countries around the world. For example, in France, as a business, you can't accept payment in cash above 1000€. Between consumers, you need to produce an invoice. I personally deeply disagree with the EFF regarding FinCEN. From my point of view, the obligation imposed by the regulation strikes a good balance between protecting private life and fighting tax dodging and m…

So if all >1000€ transactions need to be reported, that means that they need to be recorded in an electronic system. That data is recorded for the purpose of sharing with various institutions and agencies, and you do not know who will see that data or how long it will be shared for.

There is basically no privacy for transactions above 1000€.

Worse, that data can be hacked and leaked to the internet. Eg. Criminals will be able to see that last summer you bought an expensive watch, and know that you may be a good target. Such data has often been leaked to the internet before.

There was a recent incident where the sales data for the Ledger cryptocurrency hardware wallet was hacked and leaked to the internet. Including names and addresses of people. I guess this stort of stuff will happen more frequently in the future.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#25

Post by thefounder »

jeofken wrote: post #11
ve55 wrote: post #2

The way I usually phrase this situation is something like "The goals of a strong government are in direct opposition to the goals of most modern cryptocurrencies", and this is yet another subset of those goals where we can see the forces fighting against each other. I find it hard to convince myself cryptocurrency can win out in the long-term, as the more rules they find ways to skirt around via technology and decent…

With cryptocurrency you can travel across a border with a million $ worth, by just keeping a 12-word recovery phrase on you. Cryptocurrencies can never be stopped, and will more likely outlive governments than vice versa. Long live tax evasion! Vive la liberté!

The issue is converting that crypto into cash.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#26

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

alkonaut wrote: post #14
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout all of human history people used private forms of money like cash. Why is it that suddenly only now it is a disaster to have financial privacy because of "crime"?

Because it's cumbersome enough to use cash. My main problem with cryptocurrencies isn't that it's used by organized crime, but that it risks eroding public trust in the tax system. In high tax/high trust systems, that can be disastrous.

It's still easy to use cash for everything in a lot of countries

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#27

Post by dkdk8283 »

TheChaplain wrote: post #3

I believe privacy advocates needs to be more involved in the financial sector for there to be any meaningful change and provide counter proposals to balance. The problem now is that a lot of cryptocurrencies are prime targets for money laundering, financing organized crime and terrorism networks. I often get shat on when mentioning that, especially by loud proponents of cryptocurrencies, but it is a real issue that m…

Capitalism will sort it out. There are perverse incentives for violations of privacy in almost all consumer verticals. When the surveillance stops being profitable we will be free.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#28

Post by dkdk8283 »

alkonaut wrote: post #14
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout all of human history people used private forms of money like cash. Why is it that suddenly only now it is a disaster to have financial privacy because of "crime"?

Because it's cumbersome enough to use cash. My main problem with cryptocurrencies isn't that it's used by organized crime, but that it risks eroding public trust in the tax system. In high tax/high trust systems, that can be disastrous.

Taxes are corrupt. I profited from a publicly funded project in CA and the abuses were atrocious. You should minimize your tax burden as much as possible.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#29

Post by buran77 »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #8
TheChaplain wrote: post #3

I believe privacy advocates needs to be more involved in the financial sector for there to be any meaningful change and provide counter proposals to balance. The problem now is that a lot of cryptocurrencies are prime targets for money laundering, financing organized crime and terrorism networks. I often get shat on when mentioning that, especially by loud proponents of cryptocurrencies, but it is a real issue that m…

Throughout all of human history people used private forms of money like cash. Why is it that suddenly only now it is a disaster to have financial privacy because of "crime"?

While you may not be wrong with your conclusion, you're likely wrong withe the argument behind it. Something being done "like this" in the past is not an argument for or against continuing.

Counterpoint: Throughout all of human history people warred, raped, pillaged, and enslaved.

Re: EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance

#30

Post by karlp »

Nextgrid wrote: post #17
alkonaut wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's cumbersome enough to use cash. My main problem with cryptocurrencies isn't that it's used by organized crime, but that it risks eroding public trust in the tax system. In high tax/high trust systems, that can be disastrous.

Is it a bad thing? Maybe taxes shouldn't be a thing, or should be low enough that it's easier to pay them than to dodge them? One of my problems with taxes is that it's essentially a free, automatically-replenishing pool of money for stupid politicians/government officials to spend recklessly (often prioritizing short-term wins that give them the most political clout) without the "pressure" a typical business in a co…

So we should throw away public spending because people can't be bothered to check on their politicians once in a while?
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