I'm all for privacy, anonymity, etc - which is one of the reasons I'm very excited about crypto - but you always have to look at things from multiple angles.
If you send your coins from wallet A to wallet B with CoinJoin, it's not possible for a third party to identify this transaction, but you can disclose the seed of wallet A and sign a transaction from wallet B thus proving ownership of both.
We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in my lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation you didn't have to provide much detail to the tax authorities, and what you did provide was kept strictly separate from other areas of government.
There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis on privacy. Nowadays the government thinks it is entitled to all the data all the time.
I've lived in London for 3 years and don't think I've ever used cash for anything in that time. Trains, buses, taxis, bills (don't even need snail mail for those), restaurants, shops.
Outside of London it's a little different, but it's only a matter of a a few more years.
There are occasions where society's interest in preventing crime outweighs personal privacy, and one way to look at that is that when something (like, say, ransomware) has an effect on other people, it can no longer be reasonably called private. When that happens, as long as there are reasonable checks and balances, I'm fine with banks giving out information, especially when it's organizations that generally respect the privacy of the people involved.
>> but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy when it comes to finance?
>We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in my lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation you didn't have to provide much detail to the tax authorities, and what you did provide was kept strictly separate from other areas of government.
>There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis on privacy. Nowadays the government thinks it is entitled to all the data all the time.
I agree it's valid not to use a bank; one could try to conduct all one's business in cash. But in practice, people doing that are often doing something criminal, so people using cryptocurrency should not be surprised that they end up being treated with the same level of scrutiny as people running around with briefcases of cash. That is to say, their attempts at secrecy may result in a practical loss of privacy.
A reasonable check and balance would be the requirement for the state to get a warrant, issued by a court when probable cause is found, not 'every transaction over $10,000 is reported to the state for its warrantless mass-surveillance system'.
The $10,000 threshold was set in 1970, when factoring in inflation, it was $70,000 of today's money, and when average income was lower, making its application more seldom still.
The dragnet steadily catches more and more transactions from the twin trends of rising real incomes and inflation reducing the real value of the threshold.
We should oppose warrantless mass-surveillance of private financial transactions for the same reasons we oppose mass-surveillance of every one's private communications. The desire to live free from crime does not justify engaging in either.
I think most would agree, and that AML laws are only instituted due to:
1. the complexity of the subject matter obfuscating what these laws do
2. the euphemization of AML laws by the AML industry, like calling them anti-money laundering laws rather than the more descriptive 'financial surveillance laws', and
3. the stigmatization of money, as a result of the public relations efforts of the many who stand to gain from laws restricting people's ability to transact with it.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/comments/de0sys/kyc_is_abs...
[2] https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ugly-side-kyc-aml-...
[3] https://twitter.com/SpencerKSchiff/status/125276128577685913...
What you are describing as a right: the ability to subject others to warrantless mass-surveillance, violates the core liberal principle of Western culture, namely the rights to privacy and the presumption of innocence.
And for good reason. There is no evidence at all that abrogating these core rights makes people safer, either from threats in general, or specifically from crime.
It is not just the proceeds from criminal activities, but also tax evasion (from the rich or companies) and terrorism financing.
ever heard of CRS (Common Reporting Standard)?
Nit: only if you use zcash shielded wallets(very rare & resource hungry) are your assets private. Most wallets use transparent addresses, which is kind of similar to normal ones.
Given current landscape, only monero is defacto private.
I am fairly certain that many citizens would be tempted to become creative in their transparency (or activities) if they knew they would never get caught. Such is human nature.
It relies on reporting and the right to audit, so they may end up with all of the information anyway; it's more that you are making them ask for it rather than providing it proactively.
It was very easy. The American public was hoodwinked into accepting the 16th Amendment (levying an income tax) as a tax the rich scheme. And like all tax the rich schemes it was a cover to tax everyone, especially the middle class. You can't have an income tax without the government prying into everyone's finances.
Before this financial privacy was the norm.
The first American income tax was also introduced in a war - the Civil War.
Unfortunately this is exactly their position, which they have made quite clear - and it isn't limited to financial transactions. Its the same line of "reasoning" they use to decry the use of encryption. They want to eliminate the concept of privacy all together and be privy to all of your transactions, communications and behavior to ensure nobody is "breaking the law". This was the whole idea behind the Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" program that was so obviously antithetical to freedom that the government was forced to change the name (while continuing to develop the program). In my opinion its far better to live in a free society where we are legally entitled to privacy and a few bad actors get away with crimes than the alternative.
Its not. Well, by definition it is but it is paradoxical. Money obfuscation is not illegal, but when the source of the money is illicit then money obfuscation is money laundering, but successful money laundering means nobody can ever distinguish between a licit or illicit source, and it is up the accuser to prove the source was illicit, which should be impossible. (Whether there are records or not, there should be no probable cause to receive or act on those records at the standard needed for a criminal investigation)
So, only unsuccessful money laundering is linked to criminal activity, and deterrence relies on stigmatizing all money obfuscation.
Someone saying "the privacy of someone moving $100M is bad" sounds reasonable to my public ears.
I wonder, recalling the Panama Papers incident, if this has effectively happened already!
They typically launder money via "foundations" or "charities". They acquire power by purchasing media companies. They use the media companies to control public narratives to shift the Overton window of public policies. They also use it to manipulate the truth as it suits them[1]. Their target population for controlling thought narratives are yuppies and the lower classes.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/139733532441...
You would not benefit from it you would loose money
E.G. I trust my medical data to my doctor with some reasonable confidence they are using it responsibly.
Same thing here, I can trust my financial institutions with my data, but I want it to be open to authorities to look for criminal activity. I would ideally like that data to be placed under some legislation a la the GDPR to ensure it's used responsibly.
To be clear, I would much rather my data be sold to some advertisers than for corruption/criminal activity to exist.
I get that's not what you want, but it is what OP wants and I can see why.
All part of the eternal struggle between individual freedom and societal good.
One of my other comments might be useful for you in articulating this in the future:
I honestly get why some countries have capital controls; rapid shifts in capital can be truly devastating to a small economy. And criminals are some of the people most eager to move large sums of money to other legal jurisdictions. But there are definitely cases where money laundering isn't linked to what most people would consider crime.