KYC in the context of internet services stands for "violating the 4th Amendment".
Isn't effectively the majority of what the Snowden leaks covered essentially violating the 4th amendment?
Comparing what one individual did in the past to a formal government policy doxxing away peoples' 4th amendment rights is a strawman argument.
This KYC requirement seems to me, at a glance, as being a small erosion of our digital privacy.
I would say "unconstitutional" (it was on its face legal), but yup.
> and was being done in secret
Do open secrets count? We all knew they were spying.
> and once exposed they had to stop
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This is not obvious to me as my experience has been largely negative post-KYC/9-11 vs pre-KYC/9-11. I am a legal law abiding citizen [and voter!] and it's just added extra hassle on various occasions and then the background anxiety of knowing an institution with crappy security track records hold a photocopy of my ID. And yet all the things KYC was supposed to prevent still continue unabated: money laundering, terrorist financing, identity theft, and financial fraud.
I'm curious to hear why you think it's obviously good and if you were using these services before KYC.
The problem is that there are no checks and balances preventing banks from freezing assets because they want to or the government told them to.
Banking needs to be a right, and unless someone is convicted of a crime involving the bank account's assets, banks and governments should not be able to freeze them. There can be exceptions for fraud like FTX where there will be a significant financial harm to other individuals if the assets aren't frozen, but what we have today is unchecked government financial terrorism against individuals they do not like, and now they want to extend that terrorism to speech.
KYC helped them by deny-listing abusive clients between branches, or by allowing the bank to develop heuristics for things like allowing customers to bypass cheque clearing times.
From an end-user perspective, I've had no hangups personally but I do share your grievances about yet-another-shoddy institution holding a photocopy of my ID. My bank truncates passwords when setting them, and when logging in, without telling the user. It boggles the mind.