5 ms·
While I understand that this law was created with good intent and I am pleased that money laundering and corruption have been made more difficult, it angers me
by OminousWeapons 6y ago
While I understand that this law was created with good intent and I am pleased that money laundering and corruption have been made more difficult, it angers me that one of the few tools available to afford the average person real privacy has been stripped away. There are many people who have legitimate need to hide where they live (by buying assets under a shell): victims of stalking or domestic violence; members of minority groups such as LBGT in very religious areas; reporters; public figures who are being targeted by political enemies; whistle blowers; famous people; corporate executives; high net worth individuals; anyone who angers law enforcement with legal activity; etc. In the age of public record aggregation, it is trivially easy for anyone to locate the average person, let alone someone with the privilege level of law enforcement who can do so with effectively no oversight. I don't think this is a good thing.
I don't view these tools as being much different from VPNs. There are people that have legitimate uses for VPNs to hide ownership of traffic; there are people that have legitimate uses for shell companies to hide ownership of stuff. There are people that abuse VPNs; there are people that abuse shells. The vast majority of legitimate VPN users would be trivially unmasked by having a subpoena dropped on the provider. The vast majority of legitimate shell company users would be trivially unmasked by having a subpoena dropped on the registered agent. VPN users only become "anonymous" with great opsec and layering. Shell company users only become anonymous with great opsec and layering. The purpose of VPNs is to hide from every day people and to force law enforcement to put in work. The purpose of shell companies is to hide from everyday people and to force law enforcement to put in work. The fact that this community of all communities doesn't see these parallels is honestly fairly surprising to me.
- morelisp 6y agoBe honest: Do you really have any evidence of victims of domestic violence or LGBT people worried about discrimination using using, specifically, anonymous economically inactive shell companies to deal with those issues?
- OminousWeapons 6y agoI have anecdata about victims of domestic violence using these tools. There are even entire guides for how to do so (eg Michael Bazzell's Extreme Privacy). It's hard to tell how many people are doing this when the entire purpose of doing it is to obfuscate who you are.
- closeparen 6y agoI know a mildly famous family that got some attention from stalkers in the past and now owns their house under a shell company.
- morelisp 6y agoUnless the stalkers had access to law enforcement resources that doesn’t seem relevant.
- tftp7 6y agoStalkers can _BE_ law enforcement. Just google "cop stalking ex".
- morelisp 6y agoYeah I already said exactly this in another thread. But again, unless anonymous shell companies are the way people are avoiding that, it's not relevant for this discussion, and much more effectively addressed in other ways.
- closeparen 6y agoThey are using, specifically, an economically inactive shell company to protect themselves from people who wish them harm. As far as I know there is nothing special in the corporate structure that would make it difficult for law enforcement to find, the point is to stay out of public records.
- morelisp 6y agoSo it's not relevant - this law doesn't make the shell company information public.
- wmf 6y agoThis beneficial owner information isn't intended to be public record; it's only for law enforcement.
- morelisp 6y agoCops are substantially over-represented among domestic abusers so if this is an effective tool for victims then this would still be a concern. Whether or not it's effective should be pretty easy to check since this is already legal in some states but not others. Or it should be much easier for abuse victims in the US compared to e.g. Nordic countries where corporate ownership information is fully public. Since I find no evidence of such a difference it would seem this is just the usual case of rich people using actually disadvantaged people as a cover for their bullshit. (Though I feel like there's maybe a more direct solution to this aspect, maybe something with a nice slogan you can chant at marches...)
- wmf 6y agoYeah, innocent people hiding from the police isn't the right solution.
- tftp7 6y agoAs if there aren't legitimate, legal reasons to hide things from the government. Have they earned any kind of trust? Have they not been breached by hackers hundreds of times? Has law enforcement in the USA specifically proven themselves trustworthy?
- nullc 6y agoI can't find anything in the law which restricts disclosure of the information in any way, much less makes disclosing it a crime (as it is for tax returns, for example). Is there some thing I'm missing?
- wmf 6y agoI guess the answer is in here somewhere but I'm not qualified to interpret it: https://www.fincen.gov/foia-and-privacy-act-guidance https://www.fincen.gov/foia-and-privacy-act-guidance https://www.fincen.gov/foia-exemptions-and-exclusions https://www.fincen.gov/foia-exemptions-and-exclusions