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Coinbase is reportedly selling geolocation data to ICE
- husamia 4y agoin the name of regulation everything can be justified. Coinbase has to work with regulators. Surprised!
- Imnimo 4y ago"Why can't Coinbase just respect my privacy and let me put all of my personal financial transactions on a public ledger in peace!"
- T3RMINATED 4y ago
- aeturnum 4y agoThis is the problem with "no politics at work": work has political salience. Politics concerns regulation of the world and work happens in the world. Whenever an executive starts complaining[1] about how politics is impacting their workplace I see management incompetence. Politics exists. It exists for everyone. If your company is having an unusually difficult time getting work done in a given political environment, the conditions that are causing that probably have more to do with the company environment than politics writ large. Prohibition is always a largely ineffective policy. People have feelings about the world. If you can't find a way to make space for those feelings somehow they will make their own space, often at the least convenient moment. [1] Most recently this was Kraken CEO Jesse Powell
- jakelazaroff 4y agoParticularly notable here since Coinbase is famously a "mission-focused" company [1]: > Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world. Selling geolocation data to ICE definitely detracts from that mission. Whoops! [1] https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company-af882df8804 https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...
- greenie_beans 4y agoTo me, that's a very political mission.
- tessierashpool 4y agoit is a very, very intensely political mission. it's phrased almost entirely in political terms.
- tomc1985 4y agoHah, does anyone actually believe a company's "mission statement"?
- tmp_anon_22 4y ago> We act as #OneCoinbase, putting the company’s goals ahead of any particular team or individual goals. The thing I hate about this fake corporate mission is there is absolutely no need for the lie. Just be honest, hey we started this company, the founders will have disproportionate returns because we were first and control the equity power structure, you will work for us and make less money - even in the event of an exit. Sometimes we will fire you. We will make mistakes. Lets be adults. Instead its: "In our supreme nobility we sacrifice everything at the alter of the almighty cause, and so should you. Follow in our virtuous foot steps. Ask not what your company can do for you, but what you can do for your company!" ...
- tomc1985 4y agoThe only honest mission statement is, "we exist to make as much money as possible" And until shareholder supremacy is no longer a thing, anything else is a lie Support your favorite B-corp, folks
- eshack94 4y agoExactly this. I don't understand why companies that exist to make money feel the need to be dishonest about their desire to make money.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoWhen I see that it always seems to me that the real issue is the CEO has made a conscious choice to pick profit over doing the right thing, and wants employees who dislike this choice to leave. Which is essentially bad for society and why I think most firms in our economy should be co-operatively managed.
- aeturnum 4y agoI think you're giving them a bit too much credit. I suspect that is what they think they are doing - but IMO they're just being ineffectual. The real villains manage this like any other aspect of company culture. Exxon doesn't ban talking about politics and it hasn't crippled their operations!
- skwirl 4y ago>Exxon doesn't ban talking about politics and it hasn't crippled their operations! Probably because it's not happening there to nearly the extent it happens at big tech companies, partly due to the culture of older companies and partly due to the company attracting a certain type of morally agnostic person. Exxon did not release a statement following Friday's supreme court decision like most tech companies did and did not respond to comment when asked about it.
- Veelox 4y ago> When I see that it always seems to me that the real issue is the CEO has made a conscious choice to pick profit over doing the right thing Just going to toss my hat in the ring and say that I think selling data to ICE falls on the right half of the right/wrong spectrum. Not everyone agrees with your specific take on right and wrong. Sometimes those discussions shouldn't happen in the workplace.
- camdat 4y agoCan you expand on why you think this is a good thing?
- dubswithus 4y agoIt's not really political at all. The government is going to get the data one way or another. Or shut down Coinbase and be done with it. It's the survival instinct of a company playing a very dangerous game.
- madeofpalk 4y agoWhy is it dangerous?
- tomc1985 4y agoWhile you are correct, this is the logic that is used to guilt-slash-shame folks who do not want to get involved into getting involved. It is one of the many sources of intense polarization that we suffer from today, and it forces people to take uninformed stances on things that makes them little more than mindless footsoldiers for causes that need a nuanced touch.
- tomlockwood 4y agoEither way, the Coinbase employees are now involved with this. They helped build this, they are in this. The discussions may be silenced but "politics" isn't. It's not possible to not be political. This is a great demonstration of that.
- aeturnum 4y ago> it forces people to take uninformed stances on things There are lots of ways to unproductively engage with politics - and I agree that we live in an age of highly visible unproductive engagement. However, banning engagement makes it official company policy that every interaction with politics be uninformed. "It was hard so we gave up" is just not a good sign for your leadership.
- lmm 4y ago> I agree that we live in an age of highly visible unproductive engagement. However, banning engagement makes it official company policy that every interaction with politics be uninformed. Not necessarily - I don't think engagement is particularly informative. A ban, even a widely flouted one, gives people permission to disengage, and might be valuable for that reason alone (in the same way that e.g. people have argued that monasteries and convents created a good place for asexuals in society, even when their rules were widely flouted).
- chmod600 4y agoIt seems more like an ethical concern (mishandling customer data) than a political concern. Ethical concerns should be raised at work, but I believe politics at work should be avoided. There's no such thing as a group of people who agree about politics. They only think they agree until enough details start coming out. The question is whether these differences are handled respectfully and people learn from each other, or whether they see it as a moral battle and end up hating each other. In the current cultural climate, the latter seems more likely. And I see no benefit from carrying that into the workplace.
- Phlarp 4y agoHow can you possibly claim to separate ethics from politics in a work context? The two are hopelessly intertwined.
- chmod600 4y agoEthics in the workplace is about your behavior while carrying out your job duties. For instance: lying to a customer to make a sale and hit your quota is unethical. Politics and ethics can intersect, for instance, if you are writing some graphics software and someone realizes it would make a great missle guidance system. Some people might feel that's perfectly patriotic and be happy to provide it to the DoD; others might never want to work on a weapon. Political opinions lead to divergent ethical codes. But here with Coinbase it doesn't seem to be an intersection at all. It's unethical regardless of political persuasion.
- chris123 4y agoCan you translate that? You're saying leave politics out of work, leave your politics at home, right? Or are you saying the opposite, just bring your personal politics so the workplace?
- xionon 4y agoThey're saying neither; they're saying that politics is inextricable from life, and that work is part of life. You can't extract politics from work any more than you can extract personal life from work. People aren't robots.
- midislack 4y agoThis is why it's critical to boycott companies whose politics don't match yours.
- ehnto 4y agoYes one of the main responsibilities of government is to govern the interaction between different entities within the community. If you move then to law, and consider law an arm of government and politics, the vast, vast, vast majority of law is about industry and commercial concerns. By contrast, individuals are actually the governments least concern, and that bias often shows very clearly and even proudly in policymaking.
- MrWiffles 4y agoClosing the coinbase account has been on my TODO list for a while now, and this article/headline was the little push I needed to get off my ass and do it. Thanks OP.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoRelevant quote from the article that headline readers may miss: > Coinbase spokesperson Natasha LaBranche directed The Intercept to a disclaimer on its website stating “Coinbase Tracer sources its information from public sources and does not make use of Coinbase user data.”
- chris123 4y agoCoinbase is just an s-coin casino. I don't their business with them.
- cato_the_elder 4y agoSo they are helping a legitimate enforcement agency to uphold the immigration laws of the US.
- ryanmarsh 4y agoThe contract also provides, provocatively, “Historical geo tracking data,” though it’s unclear what exactly this data consists of or from where it’s sourced I bet it’s source IP address geo location for transactions.
- nikolay 4y agoWell, I personally expect literally anything from a craptocurrency establishment. Selling customers' data is probably the least offense!
- mrbuttons454 4y agoAny recommendations for a trustworthy exchange?
- xiphias2 4y agoKraken had proof of reserves at least in January.
- skybrian 4y agoIt sounds like a contract to analyze blockchains? If so, switching exchanges won't help much, for the immediate issue anyway.
- cowtools 4y agoYou could take your crypto to a non-KYC exchange like TradeOgre or Bisq, trade it for a privacy coin like Monero/Zcash/Firo, churn the coins, then trade it back. Boom, ownership chain broken.
- madeofpalk 4y agoDepends on what your objection is. Whether it's "they're selling my data" or "they're selling data to ICE".
- lostmsu 4y agoWhat is the dependency here?
- kranke155 4y agoKraken
- rvz 4y agoKraken.
- gowld 4y agoNo, because Coinbase Tracer can see your public transactions regardless of what exchange you use.
- dpratt 4y agoThanks for pointing this out, I didn’t even know about the existence of these deals. I’ve had a Coinbase account for a while, but based on this I’ll be moving everything to a private wallet and closing my account ASAP. I have no desire to do business with a company that would do this.
- gowld 4y agoCoinbase is a cryptocurrency company. This just one of dozens of contrversial associations that everyone in cryptocurrency has.
- kache_ 4y agocoinbase bad
- forgetfulness 4y agoIt would appear so, yes.
- aaomidi 4y agoSo much for “less state control over finance”.
- upupandup 4y ago
- dewey 4y agoI'm not a Coinbase fan but I feel these points are very unfair. > Coinbase due to wilful negligience, incompetence What did Coinbase do that made people lose money? > They literally got rich by having people transfer over their savings How is it different than any stock broker, insurance broker or bank clerk selling risky or expensive investments to people who don't know better?
- chinathrow 4y ago> What did Coinbase do that made people lose money An easy one: Facilitate access to the cryptocurrency scams of the century, mainly shitcoins.
- ptero 4y agoFacilitating access to various investment options, including direct speculation, is what stockbrokers do. Why is your grief falling specifically on the Coinbase? For example, in my Fidelity account I can, if I am so inclined, day trade GBTC, buy low volume penny stocks of sketchy miners and do a lot of other things that are not recommended by the mainstream financial analysts.
- chinathrow 4y ago> Why is your grief falling specifically on the Coinbase There is simply no underlying value within any of these coins. Why would a sane person invest in them? With regular stocks, you have at least some sort of insight on how an underlying is performing.
- dewey 4y agoThere's many regular investment vehicles that you can invest in where this also applies. This is not a crypto or Coinbase problem.
- api 4y agoI guess "not your keys not your coins" applies to other aspects like privacy too.
- this_user 4y agoBlockchains are a public database of all transactions. Law enforcement don't even need a warrant to get access to literally everything that has ever happened. Why anyone would think that a system like that offers any actual privacy is beyond me.
- plsbenice34 4y agoMonero exists
- uoaei 4y agoCoinbase's service is a paid service, which uses analytics to distill that information for LE. So, while true that the "information" is publicly available, the signal-to-noise ratio is abysmal, and Coinbase offers a valuable service that LE would otherwise have to implement themselves. Ergo, Coinbase is effectively in the "police and surveillance technologies" space while they operate this service.
- gowld 4y agoCoinbase's service uses public data that is MORE exposed if you use your own keys, instead of hiding inside an exchange.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- londons_explore 4y ago> “All Coinbase Tracer features use data that is fully sourced from online, publicly available data, and do not include any personally identifiable information for anyone, or any proprietary Coinbase user data,” the spokesperson told CoinDesk. If true, then all they're doing is analysis of data from the public blockchain. That sounds fine to me - the feds could have done it themselves.
- akudha 4y agothe feds could have done it themselves Let them do it themselves then. Usually “if I don’t do it, someone else will” is an ethically dubious excuse, though it is a good way to make money I suppose
- ryanmcbride 4y agoThat's my main question, if it's all public why would they buy this info from Coinbase?
- Dma54rhs 4y agoCheaper than hiring in house expertees?
- 0des 4y agoexpertise
- ceeplusplus 4y agoLikely, yes. A decent data engineer is probably six figures minimum, whereas data is cheap.
- LegitShady 4y agoI'm assuming that somehow coinbase is correlating it to wallets somehow, and tht might be the valuable part
- 4y ago
- kwertyoowiyop 4y agoAt this point, making fun of the crypto industry is like shooting fish in a barrel.
- max51 4y agoif it was that easy, writers wouldn't have to rely on misleading headlines like this one. They are not selling their data, they are selling a tool that process publicly available data. title: "Coinbase is reportedly selling geolocation data to ICE" content: "All Coinbase Tracer features use data that is fully sourced from online, publicly available data, and do not include any personally identifiable information for anyone, or any proprietary Coinbase user data."
- testplzignore 4y agoThat is offensive to guns, fish, and barrels :)
- modeless 4y ago"All Coinbase Tracer features use data that is fully sourced from online, publicly available data, and do not include any personally identifiable information for anyone, or any proprietary Coinbase user data." Misleading headline. This is a public blockchain analytics service that has nothing to do with Coinbase's other services.
- NelsonMinar 4y agoThat begs the question; why would Coinbase build this service?
- thedracle 4y agoI would guess just having a lot of blockchain experts on staff, and since the blockchain is pretty much an open, unencrypted, public ledger; analyzing it is a pretty natural and not entirely unethical thing to do. I think the issue is really just working with ICE, and the ethical concerns that brings up.
- anbotero 4y agoYes, to me this would be a better addition to the article, explain the tool real goal. Now... you need metrics and analytics over what’s going on with your products. This sounds like something that helps address that somehow, staying anonymous from what it looks like (it says it has no identifiable information linked to people), but even the contract linked makes it hard to understand.
- spamizbad 4y agoI'm guessing this started in good faith as a way to track down money launderers and other nefarious users and naturally ICE caught wind and demanded access as well. Coinbase is proudly apolitical so it has no reason to refuse compliance with an alphabet agency.
- sneak 4y agoFirst, begs the question does not mean raises the question. You mean to use the latter. Second, because laws and enforcement thereof in the USA are arbitrary and wielded as a weapon. Coinbase is a crypto company who would get absolutely obliterated by regulation and legal hassle if they don't play ball with the federal government - on the latter's terms, of course. The US federal government expects complete and total dragnet suspicionless surveillance of all electronic payments in the USA. Anyone doing payments in the USA is expected to cooperate fully or face destruction. The idea that you're free to do anything in the US that isn't illegal is an illusion. Get big or important enough and what you are doing will be made illegal (or existing laws will be reinterpreted to apply to you) if you don't play ball with TPTB. See also: FISA section 702. The same sort of pressure is applied to Apple, which is why they maintain a backdoor in the end to end crypto of iMessage for the FBI. No amount of money or commercial success allows you to bypass these power structures.
- derekdahmer 4y agoThis article is light on details. Given that they are saying all the info is derived from public sources, what is “historical geo tracking data”? The transaction history is obviously from the blockchain (by design) but did IPs tied to transactions maybe leak at some point?
- nextstepguy 4y agoAll your coinbase are belong to us
- animex 4y agoWow, these folks are the Uber of Crypto.
- wpietri 4y agoThe hilarious thing to me is their goal was surely to be "the Uber of Crypto" given when Coinbase got started.
- capableweb 4y agoWhen Coinbase was created/founded, Uber had just launched in Chicago, didn't have UberX and wasn't the brand it is today. Looking at Google Trends data (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Uber https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Uber), the peaks of interest happened in 2016 and in 2019. So no, the goal of Coinbase before/at launch was unlikely to have been "The Uber of Crypto".
- wpietri 4y agoI didn't say it was their goal "before/at launch". The notion of "Uber for X" was already such a cliche by 2014 that people were joking about it in general-audience publications: https://qz.com/311217/poem-theres-an-uber-for-x/ https://qz.com/311217/poem-theres-an-uber-for-x/ That poem was published between Coinbase's B and C rounds. By that point Uber had done a series E with a post-money valuation north of $40 billion. If Coinbase wasn't looking at that with envy and trying at points to cast their story in the Uber mold for investors, I'd be amazed, because most other startups of the time were.
- capableweb 4y ago> I didn't say it was their goal "before/at launch". That's true, you did say "when Coinbase got started", which I took to mean before the official launch, which must have been sometime before 2012. But, seems I misunderstood, so my bad.
- gowld 4y ago
- jollybean 4y agoOf course they are! This is such a sweet headline!
- boringg 4y agoThis reminds me of what my chief legal council told me when I was negotiate a deal with another company for data services who we were really friendly with at the time. The gist: "Even if it is your best friend, you need to have very firm legal boundaries on what you are giving them access to as you don't know who will run the company or what their pressure points will be in the future and how they might use your data against your wishes".
- im3w1l 4y agoI don't trust legal solutions. They can only provide redress when someone is caught, but it's just so easy to snoop without being caught. Only possibilities are keeping the data on machines you control, or using encryption.
- ryanmcbride 4y agoCrypto's biggest friction point imo has been that people are used to interacting [primarily with centralized services. Average people don't want to manage their own crypto wallet because they aren't used to being the sole person responsible for managing things like that. They don't want all their money to be tied to a single computer, or QR code, or device, they want it tied to an account held by a big company, where all they have to do is prove who they are to access their stuff. Because of this habit it feels like decentralized services will always end up as a collection of siloed centralized services. And with centralized services you get things like this data selling. Unless there's a paradigm shift in how non-technical people interact with decentralized services things like this are going to keep happening. That said, they're saying they're only providing publicly available data to ICE, but if it's publicly available and non-identifiable, why does ICE even need it, and why wouldn't they be able to get it themselves? (I'm actually asking, if you know I'd love to hear).
- cortesoft 4y agoI think you are wrong to say this is just because of a ‘habit’ people have around managing their money; I would say it is more of a preference. It isn’t that people are just USED to those things, they actually want them.
- tomc1985 4y agoWhy must we in software constantly cater to "average people"? Screw them. The everyman ruined crypto just like the everyman ruined software.
- bombcar 4y agoPeople are used to "manage it myself money" - it's called cash and most people do not want to carry large amounts of it around or have it at home. And cash has significant security advantages over crypto in that it's very hard to remotely steal the dollars from someone's physical wallet or mattress; even if it is relatively easy to just walk up and take them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- oefrha 4y agoThe link should be changed to https://theintercept.com/2022/06/29/crypto-coinbase-tracer-ice/ https://theintercept.com/2022/06/29/crypto-coinbase-tracer-i.... Current Coindesk article is a poor rehash of the Intercept article, which is a lot more clear. The key question remains unanswered, but the original article at least points that out: > The contract also provides, provocatively, “Historical geo tracking data,” though it’s unclear what exactly this data consists of or from where it’s sourced. No idea how geo tracking data can be “fully sourced from online, publicly available data”.
- bertil 4y agoPhoto and video files used to have lat-long in the meta-data; they still do, but most image hosts strip it now. Twitter used to give the ability to include the poster’s approximate location with each update.
- oefrha 4y agoYeah, but in this context they should be linked to crypto transactions somehow.
- kube-system 4y agoWell, one can put bitcoin addresses in photos or tweets.
- patricklorio 4y agoIt can be done by seeing which crypto nodes propagate the transaction first.
- dang 4y agoOk, changed from https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/06/29/coinbase-is-reportedly-selling-geo-location-data-to-ice/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/06/29/coinbase-is-rep.... Thanks!
- jaywalk 4y agoMy imagination can get pretty wild, but I can't even begin to imagine how they could do that without severely bending the definitions of "Coinbase user data" and "public sources" to the point of breaking.
- missedthecue 4y agoDon't you need a social security number to use Coinbase? Why would ICE buy Coinbase geolocation data?
- finiteseries 4y agoHSI's mission is to investigate, disrupt and dismantle terrorist, transnational and other criminal organizations that threaten or seek to exploit the customs and immigration laws of the United States. This isn’t the deportation agency, it’s the investigative arm of the DHS (and that they hate the deportation agency & confusion between the two is putting it lightly).
- superkuh 4y agoAll these comments are about how this effects cryptocurrency in this or that way but the truth is, this story is not about cryptocurrency. It is about banking company doing bad things like all banks do regularly. It has almost nothing to do with cryptocurrency. The finance bros at the edge of the ecosystem are often mistaken for cryptocurrency by the speculator class.
- 2c2c2c 4y agois the implicit assumption here that coinbase is selling data to ICE leading to the deportation of poor immigrant families, who you are presuming are On The Blockchain? Or are they selling data that likely helps better understand drug/human traficking networks? Is selling data that helps with the latter considered bad??
- cphoover 4y agoMuch more likely to be the case, however sensationalism always makes a more viral story.
- cphoover 4y agoFYI ICE does a lot of good work too like fighting child sex trafficking in other countries. ICE does a lot more than just immigration enforcement within the US borders.
- golergka 4y agoAs someone from outside of US I'm still completely baffled that there's many americans that see immigration enforcement as something bad.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- finiteseries 4y agoICE HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) = transnational crime ICE ERO (Enforcement Removal Operations) = brownshirts, entirely immigration Two separate agencies with two separate missions, and this is about HSI.
- nobody9999 4y ago>ICE HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) = transnational crime >ICE ERO (Enforcement Removal Operations) = brownshirts, entirely immigration >Two separate agencies with two separate missions, and this is about HSI. Folks keep mentioning these separate groups within ICE. Which makes a great deal of sense if you actually say the words that make up ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ERO == Immigration (the issues surrounding folks coming into the country) HSI == Customs (the issues surrounding stuff coming into the country Broadly related but distinct areas of enforcement. Edit: Fixed formatting.
- jjulius 4y agoThis suggests that HSI only focuses on transnational crime, while ERO is "entirely immigration". In actuality, HSI also works on immigration. From an article linked to in the Coinbase article that this thread is about: >According to ICE, HSI agents “encountered 97 individuals who are subject to removal from the United States” during its execution of a federal criminal search warrant at the meatpacking plant. https://theintercept.com/2018/04/10/ice-raids-tennessee-meatpacking-plant/ https://theintercept.com/2018/04/10/ice-raids-tennessee-meat...
- paul7986 4y agoOnce Coinbase legally noted if they go bankrupt their customers would go bankrupt the crypto craze took a nosedive. When markets went down during COVID so did crypto but it shot up pretty quickly. So far not seeing that and personally after being reminded I could lose all my money if they went bankrupt Im less then thrilled to jump back in.
- jeffwask 4y ago"Our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world. Everyone deserves access to financial services that can help empower them to create a better life for themselves and their families." If you didn't thing corporate missions statements were total bullshit before...
- jeffwask 4y agoAll things considered this one is pretty good too... Mission first Our mission is ambitious and important. We don’t engage in social or political activism that is unrelated to our mission while at work. We seek to make the workplace a refuge from division, so we can stay focused on making progress toward the mission. ...or... Customer focus We are deeply focused on solving our customers' problems with technology, by enabling them to acquire, store and use crypto. We strive to be the easiest to use, most trusted and most secure platform. In every decision we make, we ask, "How does this create more value for our customers?"
- Ekaros 4y agoWhy do they have geolocation data in first place? For what and how do they use it?
- nobody9999 4y ago>Why do they have geolocation data in first place? For what and how do they use it? Having set up a Coinbase account (although I haven't actually used it...yet), they required me to provide documentation about who I am, where I live and prove it with a government issued ID (in my case, a driver's license). As such, any transactions I process through my Coinbase account can be tied (and presumably information about them provided to law "enforcement") are tied to the identity details I provided when creating such an account. I always use TOR when connecting to Coinbase, so their IP logs don't have any Geo-location information about me. That said, once I actually purchase some crypto and use it to purchase stuff (cannabis) that's actually legal in my state, but transportation across state lines is illegal. As such, if the recipient of crypto (even if -- and I will -- I move Coinbase purchased crypto to my own private wallet) is investigated/arrested and the wallet used to accept my crypto, the purchase side of that transaction can absolutely be traced back to me, from the "drug dealer's" wallet, to my private wallet and back to Coinbase. Presumably that can be foiled through "mixers," but I'm not sure if that could obfuscate a single transaction as I describe -- perhaps someone more knowledgeable could comment on that. That's (IIUC) how the blockchain is supposed to work -- all transactions are public. Assuming that some government entity wanted to prosecute the customers of the above hypothetical "drug dealer," obtaining court orders for Coinbase crypto accounts wouldn't be hard at all -- as the argument would be that there were illegal transactions and we need to identity of those involved in such a transaction. IIRC, there was an article[0] (this isn't the one I read, but has the relevant info) a while back about HSI finding purveyors of CSAM[1], and those who paid them with crypto were traced through the public blockchain -- and arrested/charged. Presumably, there are limits to how much manpower would be applied to a few packages of "Dope Rope"[2] or an ounce of "OG Kush"[3], but if you purchase crypto from a legal entity, they can (and under the right circumstances, will) be compelled to provide information about you when presented with a warrant/court order. The upshot is that unless there's some way to obfuscate blockchain transactions (Mixers? See above), there's nothing to stop government entities from forcing legal exchanges from giving up their customers' PII, which they already have -- no special tools required. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/child-porn-bitcoin-arrests-us-jong-woo-son-a9159146.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/child-porn... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse_material https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse_material [2] https://bigbearmountainorganics.com/product/dope-rope-thc-infused-edible-600-mg/ https://bigbearmountainorganics.com/product/dope-rope-thc-in... [3] https://www.leafly.com/strains/og-kush https://www.leafly.com/strains/og-kush
- bitwize 4y agoFirst they fucked over DEI and now this. Looks like Coinbase has stealth fascists in its leadership.
- gkoberger 4y agoTwo things. First, Coinbase has a no-politics rule. I wonder where this falls. Since it's something business-related, I imagine it's fine to discuss internally, but this is an example where (if I was at Coinbase) I'd feel the no-politics-rule does the company a disservice. I'd be pretty mad if my company was selling to ICE and I wasn't allowed to say anything about it. Second, it always amazes me how little these ICE contracts are, and how quick big companies (like Github) are willing to burn their credibility over such a relatively small amount of money.
- rchaud 4y agoThe initial contracts are cheap for a reason. It's all about the after-work that results from the initial deal. Today, it's ICE. Next year, it can expand to include the ATF, and perhaps after that, the FBI.
- gkoberger 4y agoCoinbase made $1.17bn last year. A $1.36M contract from each of ICE, ATF and the FBI doesn't even come close to covering their Superbowl ad budget. On average, people have varying levels of appreciation/distaste for government agencies... but I think regardless of your stance, it's an easy argument to say ICE falls high on the list of disliked government agencies. Sources: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/10/coinbase-coin-earnings-q1-2022.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/10/coinbase-coin-earnings-q1-20... https://www.marketplace.org/2022/02/14/how-much-did-cryptocurrency-companies-shell-out-sundays-super-bowl-ads/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/02/14/how-much-did-cryptocu...
- oceanplexian 4y agoBeing on good terms with Uncle Sam often isn’t about the money.
- Consultant32452 4y agoGovernment: plato o plomo?
- 4y ago
- pyuser583 4y ago> “Coinbase Tracer sources its information from public sources and does not make use of Coinbase user data.” That’s seems pretty important. If it’s public, it’s public.
- hhgdsd 4y ago
- ordiel 4y agoIf you trully care about privacy, and maintaining the govenment and other entities on a leash, cash is your friend.... your only friend