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Whatever your stance on crypto, privacy should be a fundamental right. Remember, the most privacy-preserving way of trade is dealing with cash, yet no one sees
by arberx 4y ago
Whatever your stance on crypto, privacy should be a fundamental right.
Remember, the most privacy-preserving way of trade is dealing with cash, yet no one sees it as "criminal."
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago... and like most rights, it's not an unbounded one.
- concordDance 4y agoAllowing the US state to violate it might be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoThe operation of any well-operating nation state is always going to involve limitations on the right to privacy. It's facile to think otherwise. The police need, within certain guardrails, to be able to search private property for evidence during investigations. Civil suits are going to require some element of discovery. Tax authorities are going to need to perform audits. Your landlord is going to need to come into your apartment to fix a leaking pipe if you're away.
- acdha 4y agoWe don’t need to say “might” - this has been the case for ages, and we can see how that’s gone. This looks like Tornado has had enough volume that the Treasury department cares about applying existing laws to it, but fundamentally this doesn’t seem to be different from Visa requiring foreign transactions to follow the U.S. rules.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- jahewson 4y agoNo, there should be no right to launder money. Just as there is no right to hate speech despite there being a right to speech. Laundering cash is illegal too!
- maerF0x0 4y agoAnd unless treated extremely extremely carefully, BTC does not offer privacy. (pseudonymity at best, but in practice not enough)
- lysergia 4y agoThat’s the double edged sword of cash. Whilst it guarantees privacy, it also enables criminal transactions.
- arberx 4y agoYour legal system defines "criminal" activity. What's legal in the US might not be permitted in Russia.
- jc_811 4y agoPrivacy is a right, absolute privacy is not. The issue is finding the area on the spectrum that works in our modern interconnected world.
- arberx 4y agoAgree.
- throwaway-jim 4y agoWhat's the difference?
- ska 4y ago> What's the difference? There is an idea of balance of interests between the individual and the society. This is why for example your employer has to report salary data directly to the government but there are laws in place that control who else they disclose that too and under what circumstances. See also, for example, sex-offender registries, census gathering, etc. NB: I'm not offering comment on whether or not the balance on those cases (or others) has been made correctly, just pointing out that it is a generally accepted concept in modern "western democracies" at least, and seems to be held by the majority of citizens unless you get pretty deep into the tails.
- jc_811 4y agoAn example would be you have the right of keeping your bank account activity shielded (private) from the government by default. But, if you are participating in human trafficking you lose that right (it's not absolute) and the government can go in to track your activity to prevent further human abuse. Of course, this is an easy example with an obvious right/wrong. In the real world situations are all over the place, so our goal should be to constantly strive to find a more perfect balance.
- kube-system 4y agoIf you attempt to launder transactions on cash ledgers, it is also illegal.
- yunohn 4y agoI’m not sure an expensive and energy wasting laundering solution is the way to solve privacy concerns. This also ignores the fact that it only really offers privacy for simple transfers, not for when you actually pay for a service/product/goods.
- monnies 4y agoFunny you should say that. Let me introduce you to a little thing called civil forfeiture.
- tovej 4y agoCash doesn't tend to bypass international capital regulations quite as easily. It also doesn't waste a ton of useless energy when used.
- whoknew1122 4y agoRights, including the right to privacy, must necessarily have limits. The right to privacy doesn't mean you can facilitate money laundering with impunity. Just like my right to privacy doesn't mean I can blind everyone in a shop if I don't want them to know what I'm buying. > Remember, the most privacy-preserving way of trade is dealing with cash, yet no one sees it as "criminal." Try to buy a one-way airline ticket with cash and see if you don't have suspicion fall upon you.
- yokem55 4y agoSure, rights do have limits. But those limitations should have to go through due process before being applied. A few folks in the treasury department making a list of addresses without any kind of process for proving that the humans involved have engaged in wrongdoing is not compatible with the idea of limited government in a free society.
- boredumb 4y agoImagine a world where when you so much as board an airplane - "Sir are you carrying more than .5 bitcoins in a physical wallet on your persons, 10,000$ in cash, illegal drugs or cigarettes?"
- shakezula 4y agoI don't need to imagine. I was searched at Berlin Tegel (RIP) and they specifically asked me if the devices I was carrying (2 laptops, a work and a personal one) contained cryptocurrency wallet information. This happened in 2018.
- jjulius 4y ago>Remember, the most privacy-preserving way of trade is dealing with cash, yet no one sees it as "criminal." Except for, ya know, when you launder that cash, kinda like what Tornado does...
- bpodgursky 4y agoI don't think that's true. "Laundering" cash means making declaring fraudulent income from a business to make the cash income look legitimate. From the perspective of the tax authorities, it doesn't matter whether you have the "same" 100 ETH you had on Thursday, the question still remains whether you have undeclared income. This is more like... depositing hundred dollar bills at a bank, and then withdrawing different ones from an ATM.
- jjulius 4y agoLaundering isn't specific to just declaring fraudulent business income to make your income look real, it's broadly about masking the origin of illegally-obtained money, whatever that may look like. Mixers such as Tornado mask the origin of one's money.
- eric_cc 4y agoWhat if you buy ETH on coinbase and use tornado cash to simply stop coinbase from spying on your funds?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jjulius 4y ago... what if? I'm not seeing the relevance to my point.
- jeroenhd 4y agoPrivacy is a fundamental right, so using cryptocurrency that happen to post your transactions publicly is highly questionable when assuming all rights are absolute. However, your right to privacy ends where money laundering and fraud begin. These are real problems that get in the way of catching criminals, and not just simple fraudsters and other non-violent liars. Every paper bill has a unique serial number that gets tracked by banks to trace stolen money. I don't know about any dedicated privacy companies that will take your money and exchange it for random bills of equal value, but if they exist I'd expect the police to have an interest in them, and for good reason. Sure, you could use "privacy" as a reason to visit them regularly but I doubt you'll convince anyone.
- collegeburner 4y agoMy right to privacy ends when i start engaging in money laundering or fraud not when somebody else does. Otherwise this is a stupid argument because there will always be somebody engaging in money laundering or fraud so there will never be privacy. There's no justification to say "oh well it's possible you're engaging in one of those so we have to remove your privacy so we know. But it's to keep everybody safe/for the children/insert bullshit excuse here so what do you have to hide!" And bills probably shouldn't be serialized for that exact reason. My right to privacy is more important than anybody's right to feel "safe" from the evil bad guys. The correct answer to stopping crime is to stop crime, not to weaponize our financial system and remove civil liberties.
- nprz 4y ago> However, your right to privacy ends where money laundering and fraud begin. These are real problems that get in the way of catching criminals, and not just simple fraudsters and other non-violent liars. Should gov also scan every photo on your phone for criminal activity? Install cameras in your home? If your right to privacy ends when there is potential for crime then you'll have no privacy at all.
- wmeredith 4y ago> yet no one sees it as "criminal." The government seizes cash all the time for no other reason than the cash itself existing. Between 2000 and 2016, CBP and other DHS agencies conducted at least 30,574 currency seizures at airports, taking over $2 billion in total. Over two-thirds of all cases involving currency seized at airports were not accompanied by an arrest. Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/homeland-security-seized-2-billion-from-travelers-but-most-were-never-charged-with-a-crime-report-says/2020/07/30/001c3f90-cd05-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/hom..., https://ij.org/report/jetway-robbery/ https://ij.org/report/jetway-robbery/
- janandonly 4y agoI did not know this. Thanks for sharing. The #waroncash is real then?
- tepitoperrito 4y agoYeah, it just hasn't moved fully west. I remember India proposing phasing out cash for "reasons". How soon till we start seeing serious pushes remains to be seen.
- arberx 4y agoSeizing cash is different than blanket banning privacy services. Of course, there is a large spectrum of cases here with many outliers.
- bhawks 4y agoDoesn't anyone find property seizures without due process a bit concerning? I am sure there were a few mistakes made across those 16 years and 2 billion dollars. Civil asset forfeiture needs some reform. Even if you go to court you need to prove your innocence - a much higher bar then traditional court cases.
- jjoonathan 4y agoPRISM makes a mockery of the "search" part of the 4th Amendment, Civil Asset Forfeiture makes a mockery of the "seizure" part.
- jayd16 4y agoThere are indeed oversight laws around cash and no one is saying cash has to go away. You would need to make the follow up argument that crypto should be treated like cash for some reason.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- emkoemko 4y agoin US of A your cash is criminal police will take it and then you have to go to court and prove that it not criminal.
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoYou have the right to privacy. Privacy is not, has never been, and will never be, equivalent to full perfect anonymity.
- eric_cc 4y agoI’m not sure what your point is by saying that perfect privacy does not exist. > privacy - noun - the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people. We have the right to privacy and this is what privacy means.
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoIt is difficult for me to explain because I very rarely deal with in absolutes and have found that most people want online discourse to be in absolute terms. One thing I've done when talking to cryptobros and other privacy extremists is ask them to think back to a time (and we all know they've all done it) when they railed non-stop against the "banksters" and consider how much more power and influence they would have if the rules they themselves want regarding privacy are applied evenly to all circumstances. There are a few people, and I'm inclined to believe them, who say "yeah Capital One and Deutsche Bank have the right to mask their cartel money laundering activities under the concept of absolute anonymity and any attempts at know-your-customer or records-keeping requirements for banks are antithetical to freedom" but they are very rare. Again, I believe those people are being earnest because I know extremists exist for every position. But most people just shout "THAT'S DIFFERENT", get angry, and call me a boot-licker or something like that. edit: another scenario I use is: Privacy-conscious business owner: Hello yes, I would like to start a business selling car seatbelts whose webbing is impregnated with a fire retardant that we know will cause fatal cancer. Evil Government: Ok, please fill out this paperwork to get a business license and provide points of contact so people can sue you when they get cancer from their seatbelts. Privacy-conscious business owner: No. That is a violation of my rights. I have the right to perfect anonymity. Evil Government: I suppose you've got us there! Have a nice day.
- rvz 4y ago
- rich_sasha 4y agoI just finished reading "Billion Dollar Whale", about Jho Low and 1MDB scam. In a nutshell, enabled by corrupt politicians and bankers, one guy and his entourage embezzled multiple billions (not a typo) from Malaysian budget, effectively stealing from Malaysian people. They get eventually caught, and substantial assets are recovered - real estate, jewelry, art, luxury yachts. Not all. But in a world of fully anonymous crypto, these guys would either never get caught, or would vanish into thin air with their Ledgers, and that's that. I used to think, haha, crypto, buy some drugs with it, but this really scared me. I'm not anti crypto, and I quite like the technology, but this kind of "mine and no one else's business" attitude terrifies me.
- stagas 4y agoAnd government transparency should be constitutional. Yet the opposite is true, governments are opaque and citizens must be transparent.