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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

#71

Post by Nextgrid »

vkou wrote: post #55
Nextgrid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stolen goods seem like an efficient enough way, and I can't see theft going away even if you eliminate the "elephant in the room" which is drugs (by either decriminalizing them or hypothetically winning the war on drugs)?

If criminals are the only people using cryptocurrencies, it becomes socially trivial to criminalize the possession of software that interacts with cryptocurrencies.

A law is only good if it can be enforced. Technically piracy is illegal and yet pirated content exists and keeps being consumed because there's no way (for now) to control what people run on their computers and even more so when there's a direct financial incentive which could even fund building dedicated hardware if general-purpose computers can no longer do the job.

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

#72

Post by refurb »

thefounder wrote: post #25
jeofken wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what I don’t get. Great, you can transfer Bitcoin to anyone for cheap, anywhere in the world.

But that Bitcoin is useless to you or whoever you give it to unless it’s converted to currency. That’s where the gov’t puts it’s grip.

Move as much Bitcoin wherever you want. Who cares. Want to convert to dollars or Euros or Yen? That’s where the gov’t steps in and say fine - prove who you are for this transaction. With the public Bitcoin ledger they can now connect you back to the source of the money.

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

#73

Post by codethief »

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…

> You can spend a decade developing a provably-anonymous cryptocurrency (which we have indeed now done)

Looks like I've been out of the loop. Which cryptocurrency are you referring to?

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

#74

Post by sildur »

logifail wrote: post #70
CryptoPunk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviet economy had a substantial black market, especially if you include the Blat system of favor-trading [1]. New York today is seeing growth of ostensibly illegal, unlicensed street vendors, in reaction to lockdown restrictions [2]. Government is not efficient, and cannot effectively enforce rules, so cryptocurrency will undoubtedly survive. [1] https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/rees-577-fall2016/2016/... [2…

> Government [..] cannot effectively enforce rules Counter-example: pick any one of the (new) rules that are currently being enforced due to C19? Government may not be efficient, but from time to time may just be efficient enough to catch you and/or punish you. Shameless movie quote: "You've got to ask yourself a question: 'do I feel lucky?'"

Paraphrasing another movie quote: "with everyone criminal, no one will be".

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

#75

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #69
erk__ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pull up a list of countries by tax rates and some quality of life index they seem to be pretty corrolated so I would not say it is an outlier, where as the outliers are those with low tax and high QOL for example UAE, Oman and Qtar, but all those have a pretty significant income in another way compared to most countries.

I think you have the causation backward. The poorer the country the less of a cut the government can take without bringing everything crashing down. These places are low tax because they cannot afford to be high tax. If you look at local taxes and fees between US cities the same pattern emerges.

I think this is exactly right. Low tax jurisdictions are also often desperate to attract business. Mobile people are willing to pay high tax only when they get something else like stability and high quality of life

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

#76

Post by avianlyric »

nmlnn wrote: post #67
avianlyric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve seen the real harm that caused in the world by money laundering, you would be less inclined to condemn its prevention. I’ve personally seen cases of money laundering where the money comes from sexual exploitation, human trafficking, modern day slavery, organ trafficking, high value thefts (petrol, or digits bank robberies), standard social engineering scams etc These aren’t special one of events, this happe…

> sexual exploitation, human trafficking, modern day slavery, organ trafficking, high value thefts (petrol, or digits bank robberies), standard social engineering scams etc That kind of logic can be used to justify putting government cameras and microphones inside everyone's homes too.

You’re not wrong. There’s clearly a balance to be made, but financial institutions are good choke point for detecting and preventing a great number of different crimes. After all few engage in criminal behaviour just for fun, without the profit motive most serious crimes just wouldn’t be worth it.

I don’t advocate for wholesale financial surveillance, and I certainly think the rules advocated by FinCEN here are both naive and an overreach.

But I do think banks should have an obligation to detect, prevent and report financial crime, if only to make sure banks don’t become complicit. Providing financial services to criminals is incredibly lucrative, far more than providing services to ordinary consumers.

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

#77

Post by el-salvador »

bouncycastle wrote: post #24
brmgb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

It's similar where I live, but with a lower limit... Most transactions over US$100 are required to be linked to your ID number.

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

#78

Post by x87678r »

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…

> Cryptocurrencies is the future

No they aren't. especially when:

> Our old-fashioned bank system is far from perfect but it is harder to do illegal things unnoticed, banks report thousands of cases to authorities every year.

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

#79

Post by dannyw »

codethief wrote: post #73
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…

> You can spend a decade developing a provably-anonymous cryptocurrency (which we have indeed now done) Looks like I've been out of the loop. Which cryptocurrency are you referring to?

Monero.

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

#80

Post by dannyw »

volta87 wrote: post #32
jeofken wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 problem isn't tax evasion per-se, but rather logic inconsistencies. For example, I've met quite a bit of people that don't want to pay any taxes. Yet they all want for them and their goods to be able to use roads for free, roads that are built and maintained with taxes. That's actually ok: two incompatible goals just means you have to make a trade-off; welcome to engineering. The problem is that none of them unde…

Most of your taxes don’t go to things like roads or education.

They go towards bombing brown people in the Middle East, and a smaller portion goes to programs like Medicare.

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