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>It seems strange to me that so many people are onboard with privacy most of the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want the gover

>It seems strange to me that so many people are onboard with privacy most of the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want the government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain. This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous. That said, you may be right that some innocents may get wrapped up in this, but I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed. To be honest the biggest problem I have is that we've become so normalized to this kind of shit that hardly anything happens from the revelations. Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account. Combine that with things like Epstein's lack of prosecution and later assassination and what I see is the overton window moving to normalize corruption as a required pragmatic approach to power such that most people will openly admit the rule of law simply doesn't apply to the elite. This, therefor, is hacktivism of the finest kind imho. The people standing up for themselves when even their own governments won't. Any potential fallout relating to innocents I would place at the feet of those governments who failed to do their job, and not the hacktivists who reveal the truth because of that failure. For those of you interested in the topic of offshore funny money, check out the following excellent documentary. The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous. This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records. Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business. > I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed. I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior. > Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  > This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records. Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that indicated this was a gov operation. > Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business. Again, straw men. One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial data. Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways. Just as banks have to do suspicious activity reports if you deposit more than 10k or deposit large sums in a structured way that indicates suspicion, but them looking at your purchase data is at the same time considered a privacy violation. Don't get me wrong I'm against massive surveillance of the genpop, but that is not even close to what is going on here. > I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior. I'm not sure how much you know about the offshore world but that simply doesn't match everything I know about it (which is admittedly little, but some is first hand). Don't get too hung up on the one particular demographic I focused on. There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the oligarchs". Your attempt to whitewash being an oligarch of the particular Russian type because Putin doesn't like them is laughable. > It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected. You are partially correct, in that the rule of law doesn't seem to apply to the uber-wealthy, but that doesn't mean the people don't deserve to know who the shady cats are even if the gov does nothing. All of the reasons you state are obvious and exactly why this was done via hacktivism and not via some international banking regulation ala Switzerland when they changed their laws.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous. This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records. Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business. > I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed. I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior. > Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.

arminiusreturns 6y ago
> This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records. Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that indicated this was a gov operation. > Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business. Again, straw men. One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial data. Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways. Just as banks have to do suspicious activity reports if you deposit more than 10k or deposit large sums in a structured way that indicates suspicion, but them looking at your purchase data is at the same time considered a privacy violation. Don't get me wrong I'm against massive surveillance of the genpop, but that is not even close to what is going on here. > I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior. I'm not sure how much you know about the offshore world but that simply doesn't match everything I know about it (which is admittedly little, but some is first hand). Don't get too hung up on the one particular demographic I focused on. There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the oligarchs". Your attempt to whitewash being an oligarch of the particular Russian type because Putin doesn't like them is laughable. > It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected. You are partially correct, in that the rule of law doesn't seem to apply to the uber-wealthy, but that doesn't mean the people don't deserve to know who the shady cats are even if the gov does nothing. All of the reasons you state are obvious and exactly why this was done via hacktivism and not via some international banking regulation ala Switzerland when they changed their laws.