6 ms·

At the end of the day, assuming someone has to know about scammers in order to stop then, there's only two ways to make it happen: One model is that the author

At the end of the day, assuming someone has to know about scammers in order to stop then, there's only two ways to make it happen: One model is that the authorities get all the info from Western Union and then do the filtering on their side. Then you need to trust the authorities to have all transaction data and use it responsibly. This is the model for, say, license plate reader data. Another model is that filtering happens at Western Union's end, and only suspicious transaction data get reported. I infinitely prefer the latter model, even if my bank ends up doing outsourced police work on the side, because at least it's my bank that has the data and not the cops.

cm2187 10y ago
That's akin to saying that someone has to scan all emails for potential crimes. So either gmail does it or the FBI does it. Well, I think there is still a third option!
- vageli 10y ago
  What might that option look like?
  - cm2187 10y ago
    What I am discussing about with my correspondent is none of the business of the FBI or my email service provider, and if they want to read my conversation they need a warrant, exactly like they do for physical mail.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Couple of points: - Someone is still scanning e-mails, except now it's a judge and/or lawyers rather than cops or business - Moving things to the legal system imposes potentially very high friction costs, since your bank/email provider presumably has context about their relationship with you that the judge (or law enforcement) doesn't have. As we all know, context switches are inherently expensive. - Emails aren't exactly the same as transmitting money, because reading emails tends to violate more of your privacy than the metadata about who you send money to. Also it's illegal to, say, send money to finance terrorists, so some checking has to happen at some level no matter what. You can say 'get a warrant', but if cops don't have access to data, and banks can't look at who you send money to, then how can cops have sufficient data to find probable cause under which to ask for a warrant? You're putting law enforcement in a situation where it's impossible to lawfully fulfill their duties to the public, unless your model is literally that judges always get all data without a warrant, and a court decides what's suspicious. You might think that the incremental improvement in liberty is worth the friction cost of having lawyers and judges run everything, but I'm not sure everyone would agree.
      - cm2187 10y ago
        > Someone is still scanning e-mails, except now it's a judge and/or lawyers rather than cops or business You are still starting from the assertion that every email has to be scanned for crime, that every financial transaction has to be investigated for fraud. I disagree with that. And where is the limit? Should the bank also check that the product you are trying to sell is compliant with the latest health & safety regulations and that you didn't violate environmental protection laws? The bank is potentially facilitating a crime if it isn't. > Also it's illegal to, say, send money to finance terrorists But it is not illegal to conspire to commit a terrorist attack by email or phone or mail? > banks can't look at who you send money to Banks always know who you send money to. Phone companies always know who you call. What banks do not need to know is why I am sending this money. What phone companies do not need to know is what I am discussing about. > You're putting law enforcement in a situation where it's impossible to lawfully fulfill their duties to the public Was it impossible to do their work before the internet when law enforcement had to get a warrant to open mail and tap phone lines? > You might think that the incremental improvement in liberty is worth the friction cost of having lawyers and judges run everything Again you are still stuck in the logic of either my phone company listens to my calls or the police listens to my calls. Well, neither unless they get a warrant. Same for my emails. Same for my mail. Same for my financial transactions. The content of my calls is none of the business of the phone company. The content of my emails is none of the business of my email provider. The reason for my transaction is none of the business of my bank.
        smallnamespace 10y ago
        Yes, I think it's fundamentally impossible to effectively prevent or prosecute certain types of crime without scanning financial metadata, such as funding of terrorist groups or cross-border fraud. The model of 'wait until someone complains, then get a warrant, then use that data to prosecute' simply doesn't work in practice, and the article notes exactly why. For criminal networks, by the time the judicial gears have started running, the criminals are long gone with their ill-gotten profits. For terrorist enterprises, it's easy and cheap to create puppet companies or non-profits to take donations, and prosecuting terrorists after they've used the money to commit violence is not acceptable to society. > Should the bank also check that the product you are trying to sell is compliant with the latest health & safety regulations and that you didn't violate environmental protection laws? No, because you can effectively punish companies that violate health and safety regulations after the financial transaction takes place. For scammers, that's not true. You might think that having these crimes is simply the price of liberty, but I think many people would disagree. I don't think the rhetorical strategy of denying there is a problem, and claiming that policing strategies from 30 years ago will fix all the problems, is a reasonable one. > Was it impossible to do their work before the internet when law enforcement had to get a warrant to open mail and tap phone lines? Yes, because now criminals aren't communicating with mail and phone lines, they're using the internet, which is a completely different beast. You can't run a business like you did 30 years ago and succeed. You can't make a movie like you did 30 years ago and expect to succeed. What makes you so confident and sure that wiretap laws from 30 years ago can be perfectly and successfully applied to the internet today?
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Investigating individual complaints of fraud as they come in in the old-fashioned way.
    - jandrese 10y ago
      AKA the system that didn't work? By the time the report comes in the money is gone and so are the perps.
      - cm2187 10y ago
        When your transaction is being investigated, your funds are usually blocked until the bank is satisfied you are compliant.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        So try something else that's less intrusive. Get photos/fingerprints of people who pick up, educate WU employees in how scams work and train them to warm would-be transfer originators, require them to tell customers what percentage of transactions turn out to be fraudulent and that they have had to pay millions in fines for abetting them before they take anyone's money. It's not hard to come up with other ideas.
        jandrese 10y ago
        You want to put the onus of enforcement on Nigerian Western Union operators and police? It's not like they let the money sit around in the branch. Once it appears they send in the street rat to pick it up and run. These scams aren't just two bit crooks, they were straight up organized crime. It is an industry, one of the most productive in some areas.
      - problems 10y ago
        Yes, sometimes the best you can do without violating everyone's privacy is just the best you can do. You work with it. You lose sometimes, maybe you pay a percent or two extra for insurance to pay out in such cases of fraud, but you accept that it's better than the blatant privacy violation of the other systems. To put it another way, just because terrorists could use unencrypted email to communicate doesn't mean we have to go and scan everyone's email for threats.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Gmail do scan all emails for certain crimes. But I digress, sorry.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    By "certain" you mean child porn, right? I can't think of any other crime that meets the two criteria that 1) it can be done over email and 2) detection can be reliably automated.
- petre 10y ago
  This already sounds like Minority Report.
modeless 10y ago
> there's only two ways How about a third way: rather than surveilling all of everyone's private data constantly, law enforcement gets warrants authorizing them to access private data in a limited manner for specific investigations.
mabbo 10y ago
> Then you need to trust the authorities to have all transaction data and use it responsibly. They do have that data. Most Western nations have financial intelligence agencies that require all bank transactions or money wires (if they're over $10,000) to be reported to them. I forget the American equivalent, but Canada has FINTRAC, where I interned a decade ago. They have all the data. When you move any large sum of money anywhere, they get a report with your name, driver's license number, everything the bank knows about you basically. They can (and do) keep it for up to five years. Ever bought a house or car? A report is in their database, being scrutinized by analysts. It's been like that for nearly two decades now. FINTRAC at least has seen some success and did major damage to the Montreal Mafia. From the article, "wiring the money in smaller increments to avoid federal reporting requirements" means they knew why the customers were wiring $9999 twenty times rather then $200,000. They didn't care. That's why they're paying the fine.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  Obviously, this is not "all transaction data"....
  - mabbo 10y ago
    It's all the large quantities. You can't move more than 3.65 million per year without it being noticed.
valuearb 10y ago
Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither.

cm2187 10y ago

That's akin to saying that someone has to scan all emails for potential crimes. So either gmail does it or the FBI does it. Well, I think there is still a third option!

vageli 10y ago
What might that option look like?
- cm2187 10y ago
  What I am discussing about with my correspondent is none of the business of the FBI or my email service provider, and if they want to read my conversation they need a warrant, exactly like they do for physical mail.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Couple of points: - Someone is still scanning e-mails, except now it's a judge and/or lawyers rather than cops or business - Moving things to the legal system imposes potentially very high friction costs, since your bank/email provider presumably has context about their relationship with you that the judge (or law enforcement) doesn't have. As we all know, context switches are inherently expensive. - Emails aren't exactly the same as transmitting money, because reading emails tends to violate more of your privacy than the metadata about who you send money to. Also it's illegal to, say, send money to finance terrorists, so some checking has to happen at some level no matter what. You can say 'get a warrant', but if cops don't have access to data, and banks can't look at who you send money to, then how can cops have sufficient data to find probable cause under which to ask for a warrant? You're putting law enforcement in a situation where it's impossible to lawfully fulfill their duties to the public, unless your model is literally that judges always get all data without a warrant, and a court decides what's suspicious. You might think that the incremental improvement in liberty is worth the friction cost of having lawyers and judges run everything, but I'm not sure everyone would agree.
    - cm2187 10y ago
      > Someone is still scanning e-mails, except now it's a judge and/or lawyers rather than cops or business You are still starting from the assertion that every email has to be scanned for crime, that every financial transaction has to be investigated for fraud. I disagree with that. And where is the limit? Should the bank also check that the product you are trying to sell is compliant with the latest health & safety regulations and that you didn't violate environmental protection laws? The bank is potentially facilitating a crime if it isn't. > Also it's illegal to, say, send money to finance terrorists But it is not illegal to conspire to commit a terrorist attack by email or phone or mail? > banks can't look at who you send money to Banks always know who you send money to. Phone companies always know who you call. What banks do not need to know is why I am sending this money. What phone companies do not need to know is what I am discussing about. > You're putting law enforcement in a situation where it's impossible to lawfully fulfill their duties to the public Was it impossible to do their work before the internet when law enforcement had to get a warrant to open mail and tap phone lines? > You might think that the incremental improvement in liberty is worth the friction cost of having lawyers and judges run everything Again you are still stuck in the logic of either my phone company listens to my calls or the police listens to my calls. Well, neither unless they get a warrant. Same for my emails. Same for my mail. Same for my financial transactions. The content of my calls is none of the business of the phone company. The content of my emails is none of the business of my email provider. The reason for my transaction is none of the business of my bank.
      - smallnamespace 10y ago
        Yes, I think it's fundamentally impossible to effectively prevent or prosecute certain types of crime without scanning financial metadata, such as funding of terrorist groups or cross-border fraud. The model of 'wait until someone complains, then get a warrant, then use that data to prosecute' simply doesn't work in practice, and the article notes exactly why. For criminal networks, by the time the judicial gears have started running, the criminals are long gone with their ill-gotten profits. For terrorist enterprises, it's easy and cheap to create puppet companies or non-profits to take donations, and prosecuting terrorists after they've used the money to commit violence is not acceptable to society. > Should the bank also check that the product you are trying to sell is compliant with the latest health & safety regulations and that you didn't violate environmental protection laws? No, because you can effectively punish companies that violate health and safety regulations after the financial transaction takes place. For scammers, that's not true. You might think that having these crimes is simply the price of liberty, but I think many people would disagree. I don't think the rhetorical strategy of denying there is a problem, and claiming that policing strategies from 30 years ago will fix all the problems, is a reasonable one. > Was it impossible to do their work before the internet when law enforcement had to get a warrant to open mail and tap phone lines? Yes, because now criminals aren't communicating with mail and phone lines, they're using the internet, which is a completely different beast. You can't run a business like you did 30 years ago and succeed. You can't make a movie like you did 30 years ago and expect to succeed. What makes you so confident and sure that wiretap laws from 30 years ago can be perfectly and successfully applied to the internet today?
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Investigating individual complaints of fraud as they come in in the old-fashioned way.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    AKA the system that didn't work? By the time the report comes in the money is gone and so are the perps.
    - cm2187 10y ago
      When your transaction is being investigated, your funds are usually blocked until the bank is satisfied you are compliant.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      So try something else that's less intrusive. Get photos/fingerprints of people who pick up, educate WU employees in how scams work and train them to warm would-be transfer originators, require them to tell customers what percentage of transactions turn out to be fraudulent and that they have had to pay millions in fines for abetting them before they take anyone's money. It's not hard to come up with other ideas.
      - jandrese 10y ago
        You want to put the onus of enforcement on Nigerian Western Union operators and police? It's not like they let the money sit around in the branch. Once it appears they send in the street rat to pick it up and run. These scams aren't just two bit crooks, they were straight up organized crime. It is an industry, one of the most productive in some areas.
    - problems 10y ago
      Yes, sometimes the best you can do without violating everyone's privacy is just the best you can do. You work with it. You lose sometimes, maybe you pay a percent or two extra for insurance to pay out in such cases of fraud, but you accept that it's better than the blatant privacy violation of the other systems. To put it another way, just because terrorists could use unencrypted email to communicate doesn't mean we have to go and scan everyone's email for threats.
bbcbasic 10y ago
Gmail do scan all emails for certain crimes. But I digress, sorry.
- zeroer 10y ago
  By "certain" you mean child porn, right? I can't think of any other crime that meets the two criteria that 1) it can be done over email and 2) detection can be reliably automated.
petre 10y ago
This already sounds like Minority Report.

modeless 10y ago

> there's only two ways How about a third way: rather than surveilling all of everyone's private data constantly, law enforcement gets warrants authorizing them to access private data in a limited manner for specific investigations.

mabbo 10y ago

> Then you need to trust the authorities to have all transaction data and use it responsibly. They do have that data. Most Western nations have financial intelligence agencies that require all bank transactions or money wires (if they're over $10,000) to be reported to them. I forget the American equivalent, but Canada has FINTRAC, where I interned a decade ago. They have all the data. When you move any large sum of money anywhere, they get a report with your name, driver's license number, everything the bank knows about you basically. They can (and do) keep it for up to five years. Ever bought a house or car? A report is in their database, being scrutinized by analysts. It's been like that for nearly two decades now. FINTRAC at least has seen some success and did major damage to the Montreal Mafia. From the article, "wiring the money in smaller increments to avoid federal reporting requirements" means they knew why the customers were wiring $9999 twenty times rather then $200,000. They didn't care. That's why they're paying the fine.

throwaway91111 10y ago
Obviously, this is not "all transaction data"....
- mabbo 10y ago
  It's all the large quantities. You can't move more than 3.65 million per year without it being noticed.

valuearb 10y ago

Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither.