6 ms·

Yes, individuals are allowed to have a public forum for that. We have freedom of speech after all. However such a forum is going to be of particular interest f

Yes, individuals are allowed to have a public forum for that. We have freedom of speech after all. However such a forum is going to be of particular interest for would-be money launderers. And therefore you should expect it to be monitored by people connected to the financial system. With the result being that active participation in such a forum may itself become grounds for a SAR to be slapped on you. A SAR that, of course, you will never be informed of. Because, as patio11 documents, that is the law.

AmericanChopper 3y ago
Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. With AML you are assumed guilty anytime you possess money, or participate in any financial transactions, or have any assets. If called upon to do so you will have to prove your innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, and if you fail to do so, your assets or money can be permanently seized. All of this occurs without any form of due process. The government actually wouldn’t be able to make these regulations for itself, and the only way it manages to make AML laws work is with a complete governance anti-pattern. Where they simply tell the banks that if they unknowingly allow any “money laundering”, then they will be punished, rather than actually creating some regulations for them to follow. So the institutions just create these kafkaesque nightmares themselves, because they don’t really care about who gets screwed over by them. The worse part is that money laundering is trivially easy for anybody who wants to do it, it just costs money to do the compliance properly. The only people who get thwarted by these laws are immigrants who do a lot of remittance, and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. Two groups that society generally doesn’t care at all about protecting. I personally make a lot of money off the AML compliance industry, so I’m not really complaining for my own sake. But these laws are the intended outcome of “anti-terrorism” and “anti-tax-evasion” policies.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  >and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. They should be fine as long as they show receipts.
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    I really hope this is a joke lol. The amount of paperwork required today is far in excess of anything required pre-GFC. Basically any wealth acquired prior to then is up for confiscation, and this happens all the time. But again, nobody cares, because injustices delivered upon the rich are fine. Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t.
    - ls612 3y ago
      >Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t. Do you have an example of what you mean by this? Like they will say "well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house, go die alone in the gutter"? Because I find that hard to believe. Most people with wealth have an obvious reason for that wealth which is documented in the formal bureaucratic system.
      - AmericanChopper 3y ago
        > well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house Yes this is basically how it works. The only contrived thing about my example is that we’re talking about one house a person inherited, rather than millions of dollars in assets. Here’s a well documented example of this happening in real life https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-ba... > A federal judge ruled Friday that the FBI’s seizure of tens of millions of dollars in cash and valuables from 700 safe-deposit boxes in Beverly Hills did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights. > The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner endorsed law-enforcement tactics that tested the limits of how aggressive federal agents can be in seizing money and property in the absence of any evidence that the owner committed a crime. > The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions. Of course, nobody cares, because those people are rich, so they probably didn’t deserve that money anyway…
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. But they were produced through the democratic process: we have told our elected representatives that we want them to Do Something about things like organized crime and international terrorism, and these laws are part of the Something That Was Done. The laws will not change unless and until we the people change the incentives we give our elected representatives.
  - ElFitz 3y ago
    Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate [1] [2]. It could also be argued that such laws and policies have mainly been enacted by states in order to eliminate threats to their authority, legitimacy, or continued existence, through financial control. Which may or may not be the case. Just pointing out that states, even liberal democracies, may not always be all about expressing the will of their constituents. [1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate If we the people wanted something different, we would be voting differently. The fact that we continue to vote for the same incumbents means they are doing what we want.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        Individual House Representatives usually have high approval ratings from people who voted them in while Congress as a whole has a terrible approval rating. It's not quite as simple as seeing historical election results and saying everybody is necessarily happy with their representation.
novok 3y ago
IMO AML should be abolished because it is ineffective, inefficient and nothing would effectively change if removed. It recovers 100x less than its compliance cost. It’s the TSA of banking, it’s motion without progress. https://content.11fs.com/article/aml-is-the-worlds-most-ineffective-policy-experiment https://content.11fs.com/article/aml-is-the-worlds-most-inef...
- RationalDino 3y ago
  The question isn't how much crime it catches. It is how much crime it prevents in the first place. (No, I'm not suggesting that I have an answer to that question. Just that you're measuring by the wrong measuring stick.)
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    How much crime it catches is directly related to how much crime it could prevent. If the measure is totally ineffective and criminals hardly ever get caught then there is no deterrent.
    - RationalDino 3y ago
      It really isn't so simple. My views on this are informed by https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-aml-compliance/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-..., so you might want to read that. First, there are widely known techniques to beat AML. Criminals use them. Using them imposes costs. So you can reduce the profitability of crime, and therefore its frequency, without catching much crime directly. Secondly, one of the goals of AML regulations is to make it easy to construct a money laundering case against a criminal caught another way. This is kind of like putting Al Capone in jail for tax evasion. Tax evasion isn't why you want him in jail, it is just the thing you can convict him of. Prosecutors see value in these easy convictions. Are they worthwhile? That's above my paygrade. Certainly patio11 makes a case that they might not be. But both of the things that I just mentioned show that the rules are valued for reasons other than routinely catching a lot of crime.
immibis 3y ago
> We have freedom of speech after all. You don't, though.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  The US does. Most countries don't.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    All democracies do, one way or the other.
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      Plenty of democracies with weak or highly overridable constitutions. Most of Canada’s is like that. Basically governments can suspend all of your “fundamental freedoms” for 5 year periods, renewed as often as they like.
      - immibis 3y ago
        Every country is like that, including the USA.
        refurb 3y ago
        No it's not, as evidence by the numerous laws struck down by the Supreme Court.
        immibis 3y ago
        The laws don't mean anything if you get arrested anyway.
        refurb 3y ago
        Sure they do because you’re released.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
I think it's pretty clear by now that "anti money laundering" is just the financial arm of warrantless global mass surveillance. Money laundering may be a crime but it does not justify this. "Monitoring" people and punishing them because they "might" be some money launderer or terrorist is completely backwards and should be a violation of basic rights.

AmericanChopper 3y ago

Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. With AML you are assumed guilty anytime you possess money, or participate in any financial transactions, or have any assets. If called upon to do so you will have to prove your innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, and if you fail to do so, your assets or money can be permanently seized. All of this occurs without any form of due process. The government actually wouldn’t be able to make these regulations for itself, and the only way it manages to make AML laws work is with a complete governance anti-pattern. Where they simply tell the banks that if they unknowingly allow any “money laundering”, then they will be punished, rather than actually creating some regulations for them to follow. So the institutions just create these kafkaesque nightmares themselves, because they don’t really care about who gets screwed over by them. The worse part is that money laundering is trivially easy for anybody who wants to do it, it just costs money to do the compliance properly. The only people who get thwarted by these laws are immigrants who do a lot of remittance, and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. Two groups that society generally doesn’t care at all about protecting. I personally make a lot of money off the AML compliance industry, so I’m not really complaining for my own sake. But these laws are the intended outcome of “anti-terrorism” and “anti-tax-evasion” policies.

lawlessone 3y ago
>and law-abiding wealthy people who naively think they’re entitled to possess their own money. They should be fine as long as they show receipts.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  I really hope this is a joke lol. The amount of paperwork required today is far in excess of anything required pre-GFC. Basically any wealth acquired prior to then is up for confiscation, and this happens all the time. But again, nobody cares, because injustices delivered upon the rich are fine. Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t.
  - ls612 3y ago
    >Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t. Do you have an example of what you mean by this? Like they will say "well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house, go die alone in the gutter"? Because I find that hard to believe. Most people with wealth have an obvious reason for that wealth which is documented in the formal bureaucratic system.
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      > well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house Yes this is basically how it works. The only contrived thing about my example is that we’re talking about one house a person inherited, rather than millions of dollars in assets. Here’s a well documented example of this happening in real life https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-ba... > A federal judge ruled Friday that the FBI’s seizure of tens of millions of dollars in cash and valuables from 700 safe-deposit boxes in Beverly Hills did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights. > The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner endorsed law-enforcement tactics that tested the limits of how aggressive federal agents can be in seizing money and property in the absence of any evidence that the owner committed a crime. > The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions. Of course, nobody cares, because those people are rich, so they probably didn’t deserve that money anyway…
pdonis 3y ago
> Anti-Money Laundering laws are a complete anti-democratic tyranny. But they were produced through the democratic process: we have told our elected representatives that we want them to Do Something about things like organized crime and international terrorism, and these laws are part of the Something That Was Done. The laws will not change unless and until we the people change the incentives we give our elected representatives.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate [1] [2]. It could also be argued that such laws and policies have mainly been enacted by states in order to eliminate threats to their authority, legitimacy, or continued existence, through financial control. Which may or may not be the case. Just pointing out that states, even liberal democracies, may not always be all about expressing the will of their constituents. [1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... [2]: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Wether or not laws and policies have, in practice, anything to do with what people want, is still up for debate If we the people wanted something different, we would be voting differently. The fact that we continue to vote for the same incumbents means they are doing what we want.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      Individual House Representatives usually have high approval ratings from people who voted them in while Congress as a whole has a terrible approval rating. It's not quite as simple as seeing historical election results and saying everybody is necessarily happy with their representation.

novok 3y ago

IMO AML should be abolished because it is ineffective, inefficient and nothing would effectively change if removed. It recovers 100x less than its compliance cost. It’s the TSA of banking, it’s motion without progress. https://content.11fs.com/article/aml-is-the-worlds-most-ineffective-policy-experiment https://content.11fs.com/article/aml-is-the-worlds-most-inef...

RationalDino 3y ago
The question isn't how much crime it catches. It is how much crime it prevents in the first place. (No, I'm not suggesting that I have an answer to that question. Just that you're measuring by the wrong measuring stick.)
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  How much crime it catches is directly related to how much crime it could prevent. If the measure is totally ineffective and criminals hardly ever get caught then there is no deterrent.
  - RationalDino 3y ago
    It really isn't so simple. My views on this are informed by https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-aml-compliance/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-..., so you might want to read that. First, there are widely known techniques to beat AML. Criminals use them. Using them imposes costs. So you can reduce the profitability of crime, and therefore its frequency, without catching much crime directly. Secondly, one of the goals of AML regulations is to make it easy to construct a money laundering case against a criminal caught another way. This is kind of like putting Al Capone in jail for tax evasion. Tax evasion isn't why you want him in jail, it is just the thing you can convict him of. Prosecutors see value in these easy convictions. Are they worthwhile? That's above my paygrade. Certainly patio11 makes a case that they might not be. But both of the things that I just mentioned show that the rules are valued for reasons other than routinely catching a lot of crime.

immibis 3y ago

> We have freedom of speech after all. You don't, though.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
The US does. Most countries don't.
- hef19898 3y ago
  All democracies do, one way or the other.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Plenty of democracies with weak or highly overridable constitutions. Most of Canada’s is like that. Basically governments can suspend all of your “fundamental freedoms” for 5 year periods, renewed as often as they like.
    - immibis 3y ago
      Every country is like that, including the USA.
      - refurb 3y ago
        No it's not, as evidence by the numerous laws struck down by the Supreme Court.
        immibis 3y ago
        The laws don't mean anything if you get arrested anyway.
        refurb 3y ago
        Sure they do because you’re released.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

I think it's pretty clear by now that "anti money laundering" is just the financial arm of warrantless global mass surveillance. Money laundering may be a crime but it does not justify this. "Monitoring" people and punishing them because they "might" be some money launderer or terrorist is completely backwards and should be a violation of basic rights.