Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#2Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient.
I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded of internet companies?
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#3Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…
All in all because we are "hypocrites".
"I don't like thing" is the essence how one defines himself.
Of course, you need others who does not like something else. And the wheel goes on and on and on and on.
It is perfectly fine for someone not to like how something works and other person to like how it works.
It is dilemma of humanity, how does we cope with it(should we?).
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#4I think that's a bit hard to do when your business model is built around user profiling, even if it is only for purely legal business ends.
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#5Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…
Did you even read the article? We shouldn't demand it because of privacy concerns. Same reason we don't have phone companies screen all of our phonecalls. Because we're not guilty until proven innocent.
Besides, then things like encryption become questionable. If the ISP can't screen your data, what's to stop them from kicking you off their network? Who knows what illegal things you're doing if they can't validate it themselves.
Not to mention that end-user companies don't have all of the keys either. If a screenplay writer googles "how to murder wife" and "how to get away with murder" and "disposal of body", what is google to do? Notify authorities? This is surely the wrong course of action.
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#6Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…
>>I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour.
I don't think most people have this expectation.
Banks to be accountable for customers breaking law? What's an example of this? If I open a bank account in a different country, under an LLC, to illegally avoid paying taxes or to receive kickbacks it's up to the bank to figure that out? I do not expect banks to be responsible for their customers unless something outrageous happens, like a non-corp account suddenly reaching a billion USD balance. And this is ___much___ easier to automate for banks too and will produce almost no false alarms. If Joe-The-Plumber's account is suddenly more than Donald Trump's net worth... something is going on.
Conversely, with Facebook/Apple/Google you'd just get this[1] happening all the time. And have you ever had the joy of XboxLive's in-game audio and messaging? False alarms galore. Blowing up planes and burning down / shooting up schools was a common joke even when I was a kid in the '80s, not even to talk of today's youngsters. 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/long-island-high-school-student-...
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#7It's also impossible. "I'm going to kill some soldiers when I get back" might refer to my super secret terror plot, or my PlayStation-related plans for the evening.
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#8Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…
A couple differences that I believe are relevant:
a) Bank balances are a more controlled system from the beginning. They 'know' how much is in your account and when you transfer it they 'know' how much and to whom. Meanwhile, Google, Facebook and so on are not keeping active track of the nature of your conversations within chat and email in such a tightly controlled way. When I say "Hey, what's up" to a friend in Facebook Messenger it's not treated by FB as a bank would treat my sending the friend $200. (I realize this gets a bit ambiguous because the message is still recorded in a database and parsed for advertising...)
b) The activities we engage in on Facebook, Gmail, WhatsApp and the like overlap with speech and social relationships which are usually given more protection and consideration in society than specific transfers of items or materials (like cash, physical items, and so forth.) Imagine your local police tracking everyone's movement, conversations and social relationships in the neighborhood "just in case"—that'd raise concerns! Meanwhile a store owner keeping inventory of every sale is just seen as expected behavior.
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#9Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…
Or perhaps what we should be discussing is whether we have right to make payments through the standard financial system (without the need to recur to bitcoin et al) with some privacy. Should the bank have access to whatever comment I put on a payment to a friend? If my friend writes "Iran" on the comment, should a random Compliance officer have access to that communication between him and me?
Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else
#10Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…
>>I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. I don't think most people have this expectation. Banks to be accountable for customers breaking law? What's an example of this? If I open a bank account in a different country, under an LLC, to illegally avoid paying taxes or to receive kickbacks it's up to the bank to figure that out? I do not expect ban…
If a bank falls within the remit of the Fed or PRA then yes, KYC rules mean the bank is indeed supposed to figure this out.