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Are EU banks just mass surveillance devices?
A recent encounter with my bank (in Denmark) it made my realize that banks became mass surveillance devices for the different states disguised by fighting anti money-laundering.
It might just be me and my situation but as a customer I can't refuse to provide information about any of my transactions because the bank will cancel my accounts as required by our local law. I find this quite insane.
Is this a common EU behaviour for banks for all of EU? How did it become like this and why is no one protesting laws like this?
Is your implementation of this law (Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD)) different from the Danish one? Are you allowed to refuse to provide details about transactions without consequences?
- toyg 3y agoSimple: organised crime and tax evasion.
- lwhalen 3y agoYou forgot to add 'for the children'. There is no reason any government needs to be THIS far up a private citizen's colon without a warrant.
- pjkundert 3y agoHow quaint! If only organized crime and industrial scale money laundering (billions through NGOs and international “military” operations) were affected by this — at all. No, this is about Total Informational Awareness and control of the peasants.
- toyg 3y ago> If only organized crime [...] were affected by this They are. That's why they continue to invest in the development of cryptocurrencies. Without any bank tracking, the likes of Monero wouldn't exist. > this is about Total Informational Awareness and control of the peasants. What are they going to do, with the list of my direct debits...? There is nothing to be gained by knowing what 90% of people do with their little pile of money. It's the 10% that matters - the ones who are most likely to be engaged in crimes and tax evasion.
- sschueller 3y agoA lot of tax evation going on right in the open so I don't see how much this prevents other than some small time crooks.
- wedernoch 3y agoIf it's more than a million, it is "optimisation" not evasion. And it is mostly legal
- toenail 3y agoThat's one of the reasons I'm in bitcoin. I also like to pay with cash.
- ksjskskskkk 3y ago"banks are annoying asking me questions, so i will just pay a $1000 fee per transaction and publish every single transaction i make in the open under a pen name that i hope nobody notices is me" good luck buddy
- wojciii 3y agoI kind of agree. Bitcoin sucks for every day use. I would like to use crypto when it works as well as credit/debit cards.
- toenail 3y agoIf you bought bitcoin 10 years ago you should have had enough time to figure out that you can simply get credit/debit cards that convert your bitcoin into fiat, if that's what you want?
- toenail 3y agoWhy the condescending tone? Please read the commenting guidelines. And maybe you should also read the post again, or did you miss this entirely? > because the bank will cancel my accounts Good luck cancelling my censorship resistant payments.
- I_am_tiberius 3y agoThere is something like the Lightning Network now (already for 6 years but only usable for about on year now in my view). It's like a wrapper around bitcoin. Using it you make transactions which are very cheap and only put a transaction on the blockchain at the beginning and very end. Everything in between in done on the Lightning Network.
- moooo99 3y ago
- jjgreen 3y agoIf you use an ATM and make transactions in cash, then your bank does not know about your transactions (so cannot demand information on them).
- wojciii 3y agoThis is not the point here. I'm wondering how it became the norm the your own bank requires to know everything about you and you are not allowed to say no any more. It doesn't feel good. :) Actually I feel violated..
- lwhalen 3y agoYou should. Surveillance is crazy these days. Can you realistically move your business over to in-person cash transactions, or alternate forms of money - precious metals, BTC or similar, etc?
- wojciii 3y agoI was told by my bank not to use crypto currency or else ..
- lwhalen 3y agoSounds like you, sir or madam, need to get plugged into your local, not-online, crypto exchange community. Some googling should sort you out on that, at least. Inconvenient, cash-based, but FAR less intrusive to your lower GI tract than your local bank, apparently.
- eep_social 3y agoViolation is the societal norm these days — e.g. recent discussions about what modern cars are recording and sharing, geofence warrants, app location data sales, etc.. the list is endless and of course local laws vary so some parts might not be applicable to a dane but in general the panopticon is reality.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
- PaulRobinson 3y agoThere isn't a bank in the World that will not comply with local laws. The AMLD is not secret. You can read it here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32015L0849 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A... The AMLD is not dissimilar to any other anti-money laundering regulation in the World, including the USA, Switzerland and others. If you have large cash flows, you will be asked by banks to explain the nature of them to ensure they are not illicit. If you are not prepared to explain that, the bank is not under any duty to do business with you, and depending on the nature of your transactions may be required to report them to law enforcement. If you do not answer to law enforcement, they will likely start an investigation to ensure you're not involved in organised crime. Once your bank or law enforcement are happy you're not involved in organised crime, they'll leave you alone. That's it. If you are not involved in organised crime, but not prepared to explain that, yes, law enforcement are going to be interested and banks may not be prepared to do business with you. This has been the case for hundreds of years, it's only now there are more strict guidelines and rules around when suspicions should be raised and reported, and how they should be investigated. I really don't see what the paranoia here is actually about.
- wojciii 3y agoI'm not talking about large cash flows here. I'm talking about any use of cash or transfers between family and friends. Everyone is guilty until proved otherwise. I'm supposed to explain everything upon request and I can't say no. I don't find that reasonable. About larger sums I don't have a problem with explaining where a certain transaction originated from, but it seems like banks want to trace money from their origin to destination. I don't find this reasonable. I would expect this to be something that law enforcement would do.
- wedernoch 3y agoWhat is your actual problem? You send 10€ to your mother and your bank asks your where you got them from and why you send them to your mum?
- 3y ago
- nxm 3y agoUltimately these banks are acting on government regulations (as you note, for example, AML laws) and governments for sure want to track and monitor how money is being exchanged
- slau 3y agoIs it DB? Have you been using crypto (did you get a payment from an FTX in the past year?)? Are you also using Lunar? DB regularly goes into scaremongering whenever a client does something they don't like/understand. Using some "modern" banks (Lunar, Revolut, etc), crypto, or anything of the like triggers alarm bells--undoubtedly physical ones considering how ancient their processes are. If you're a foreigner, you can double the amount of transactions they will question, and if you don't speak Danish, quadruple. Banksters are sadly very racist in Denmark. Edit: Remember that DB just got finished dealing with the fallout of their money laundering scanal in Estonia. They "oopsied" away billions, and got less than a slap on the wrist for it. They have massively increased the size of their Financial Crime divisions (hundreds or thousands of people), and all of these people need to "show" their usefulness. Edit: I'm a DB customer, shareholder, and my gf is a DB employee. Feel free to explain the downvotes.
- wojciii 3y agoThis is Nykredit. I'm a citizen and have been a customer for 10 years or so but this of course has no meaning any more. I recently sold some bitcoin and was told not to do it again by the bank. I have been communicating about this for two months now and wrote two complaints.. one to the bank and another to a government agency. The issue is thay I bought the bitcoin anonymously 10 years ago and kept it in cold storage. They don't understand that. It's has been a shit show, really. I was also told to prove that the bitcoin belonged to me when I sold it, but they refuse to tell me exactly how they want to get this proof and I refuse to guess what they want and this is a stalemate for now. I'm being helpful and await their precise instructions about what kind of proof they want .. Clearly the bank doesn't know anything about crypto currencies. Edit: I paid taxes and can prove everything. Just to make sure that this is not something illegal going on. :)
- not_a_dane 3y agoI can't really imagine crypto and denmark in the same context. Crypto is about wealth transfer...If you are wealthy already like Denmark, you wouldn't want crypto ;)
- TheBlight 3y agoThey're also being weaponized as offensive tools now too. I don't know about the EU specifically, but if you supported the trucker protest in Ottawa, the full force of the state was used to lock your financial accounts and shut down all of your economic activity.
- ummzokbro 3y agoUnfortunate you are being downvoted - this is _exactly_ what happened. Ordinary people who funded, in small amounts, a grassroots non-violent protest that the ruling political party disagreed with and found inconvenient had their bank accounts frozen. They could not access their legally obtained funds, nor have additional legally obtained funds deposited. There is no precedent for an action like this. It is a good reminder of exactly what can and will happen with digital money - much like cloud video games, movies and music it is not actually yours - it can and will be revoked at any time by the platform for any reason.
- wojciii 3y agoThis is DRM all over again.
- mullingitover 3y agoJust did some light reading[1] on the Canada convoy protest, and my reaction is: good. That was not a "peaceful protest." People were armed, ramming police vehicles, plotting political assassinations, and this was all on top of the basic crime of blocking public roads. I don't care what your political hobby horse is. Blocking roads, which need to be open for emergency vehicles at all times, is not a valid form of peaceful protest. If people supported that cluster of crimes financially they were making themselves part of the criminal activity and should deal with the consequences. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 3y ago
- ksjskskskkk 3y agohow much money you have on that account? my guess is that you're a poor customer they're harassing.
- wojciii 3y agoI'm a bad customer as I don't have to borrow money and the house is financed using a different bank. So you're right. They are not earning money on me and this makes me a terrible customer.
- maximinus_thrax 3y agoNot sure about other countries, but I ran into this in Romania. I was very surprised, I asked the bank teller about it and she said that generally people react pretty badly to this policy and give some very nasty obviously false information about transactions. I was withdrawing some money, so she told me that when asked about the reason for withdrwals they say stuff like: 'going to burn the whole pile of cash in my backyard', 'this is just for a photo shoot so I'll bring the money back' or the classic: 'going to spend it on prostitutes'. She also told me that half the people say 'I found the money walking down the street' when asked during deposits. It's very stupid and I'm not sure exactly how this can be used to build a proper suriveillance infrastructure. I mean it's not like I'm under oath when I provide 'details' about the transactions.
- wojciii 3y agoI will be switching banks after this recent experience with Nykredit (the bank being a bit unreasonable in my situation).. and will remember to use same kind of answers. :) The penalty is having to find a different financial institution.
- ByThyGrace 3y ago> or the classic: 'going to spend it on prostitutes'. So you would infer, from OPs questions, that they have been entering dodgy, snarky, or perhaps even too honest reasons in their transaction forms? Not judging here, but what if OP did in fact spend a few hundred on an escort service and was 100% sincere about that, to their bank. And then the bank did not believe it, because of the behavioral statu quo of other bank clients. And now the bank is all "You are not funny at all, tell us the truth". Now, the laws allow banks to thoroughly pursue their investigation until they conclude "This client actually spend a few hundred in prostitutes". And because of the statu quo (and the laws that originated it) everyone up the investigative chain gets to know about it.
- dkek 3y ago[dead]
- hurtuvac78 3y agoI tend to agree with you. I have a bank account with about 5K euros on it. I have not touched it in 20 years (no deposits, no withdrawals). I earn tiny dividends on it each year. I got a request from the bank 18 months ago to provide my tax return to them. I said no, why? They threatened me to confiscate my account (orally, on the phone). I replied I understand you need to ask info from me, by law. But if you don't get the information it's ok too, afaik. And there is no possible way that I can launder anything if the money is just sitting there. I will see what happens...
- HenryBemis 3y agoIt's now called "a dormant account" and they will take your money :) Look it up for your country. You are about to lose that money :) Friendly suggestion, stop playing hardball and give them the paperwork they seek. Dormant accounts can be either 'honest' ones (you) or accounts that remain open waiting to funnel the moneys from that fraud, etc.
- hurtuvac78 3y agoYou are most likely right. In my dreams, I take the time going there in person with my ID, my anger and my badwill, and no tax return. I get wildly upset in front of all other clients in a very lively way, just to laugh at them when they tell me I am "dormant" later. I know, it makes no sense, just daydreaming...
- melenaboija 3y ago> ...banks became mass surveillance devices for the different states disguised by fighting anti money-laundering. Yes they are, money surveillance. And? That is one of the goals of banks in most countries. Banks are businesses that need to make profit following the rules of each country, if you don't like it take the cash and put it under your mattress and take care of it. Then start wondering why are you worried about having cash at home and who is the responsible on the security of your house, city and country, how this security is funded and how it can be solved.
- seydor 3y agoActually you can't easily take all of your cash out. Yes i would if it was easy, also in the form of gold and even bitcoin. This would place me on a number of laundering lists. Where i live it is illegal to transact more than 500 euro in cash
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HenryBemis 3y ago> That is one of the goals of banks in most countries That BECAME one of the goals. 40 years ago when majority of transactions were in cash, the bank's couldn't do this. Once we got credit/debit cards, the game changed and (we) by using cards instead of cash we freely hand them over the data. It doesn't help that countries have a €500 max cash limit for purchases etc. But for the everyday man/woman, and for their everyday lives, there are very few payments to that amount (laptop, phone, car, furniture). Most other payments can be done with cash, and then the bank has very little info on you.
- livinginfear 3y agoThe first thing that springs to mind here is "Betteridge's law of headlines". As others have noted, the bank is just complying with governmental regulations. What I'm curious about is what you've done to make the bank so curious about you. Banks are generally much less paranoid than you'd expect. It's not in their best financial interest to scrutinise everyone to the highest degree, and performing this due-diligence on customers incurs significant costs. For 99.99% of customers, all the bank wants is some proof that your income stream doesn't come from crime, and that you are who you say you are. What is the bank so curious about in this case?
- wojciii 3y agoI bought bitcoin anonymously for cash 10 years ago and sold it recently. This is a huge red flag. I paid taxes for this and all is above board.
- livinginfear 3y agoI feel like this post is the truth of the matter finally coming out. What other outcome did you expect? You've just received a large sum of money, from an indeterminate source, for an indeterminate reason. From the bank's perspective, how do you look any different from drug dealers, or human traffickers? Elsewhere in the thread you said: > I would expect this to be something that law enforcement would do. If the bank didn't tell law enforcement about money moving around in strange ways, how would they ever find out?
- wojciii 3y agoThis is my current issues, but the more important issue is that cash transactions are being monitored - even small amounts. This means that cash is more or less becoming illegal or at least not approved by the people in charge. Edit: not indeterminate source, but a know large crypto exchange.
- moooo99 3y ago> but the more important issue is that cash transactions are being monitored - even small amounts. How do you come to that conclusion? Monitoring cash at the point of issuing is, when talking about small sums at least, impractical if not impossible. Money laundering directives usually aren't concerned with small cash transactions on the side of the consumer. It's pretty much only relevant if the source of the money is unclear/dubious and/or the sum is very large. Judging by your examples, both of the examples mentioned above seem to apply. > Edit: not indeterminate source, but a know large crypto exchange. The exchange is not the source, it's the exchange. The question the bank has to answer is "where is the money from" and since you just exchanged the money, the question extends to "where is the BTC from"?.
- seydor 3y agoI can't wait for CBDCs so we can at least have some legal protection against arbitrary bank decisions and possibly fewer intermediaries
- osigurdson 3y agoWhat if the government stops acting in your best interests or isn't acting in your best interests now?
- seydor 3y agoAnd banks are less likely to do so or they are going to go against the state? Banks are wholly subservient to the states, the tax collectors and to the ecb , if anything they are worse. At least cbdcs will not allow one to become unbanked
- osigurdson 3y agoIt is basically an argument for increased centralization of power. If that is what you want that is completely fine. In my view centralization can be efficient but has higher risks of corruption.
- dgellow 3y agoWhat information do you have to provide? If it is just about the transaction itself I don’t see what the problem is. They obviously already know with whom you’re transacting.
- wojciii 3y agoIn my case it seems the bank wants to have some kind of proof that I owned the bitcoin that I sold. At first they didn't understand what cold storage was. Now I'm trying to get them to tell me what kind of proof they want me to send them. I don't want to be guessing and having to do this again and again until they are happy ..
- dgellow 3y agoOk, so that has nothing to do with surveillance. I wish you would have shared that context in your post, people are jumping to conclusion about mass surveillance when really you’re facing a cryptocurrency problem.
- dkek 3y ago[dead]
- Canada 3y agoYes, they are the primary business deputized by the state to surveil and control you. Not just EU banks, but all banks world wide. The whole point is to allow you to engage in commerce only in ways permitted by your government. Not only that, but the idea is to put as many people in the position where they cannot own anything or possess anything of value that cannot be instantly confiscated by the government if it chooses to do so, without resorting to the messy business of coming and getting you. They just turn off your financial access, and you cannot even pay your rent or feed yourself. It's disgusting, I agree.
- uberdru 3y agoI naively opened an account in the US with a local credit union. Took a small loan. Turned out to be a bizarre experience. Before wiring money out of the account, I'd get sent over to a room, where a guy would ask, so, how's everything going? What's this wire for? etc.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- paganel 3y agoAlso see how the new mobilisation law that's about to be voted in by the Ukrainian Rada will heavily restrict access to their bank accounts for Ukrainian citizens who have escaped said potential mobilisation by fleeing the country. We need to stick to paper money no matter what, otherwise we risk going back to a condition worse than slavery.
- GuB-42 3y agoBanks were mass surveillance devices before people talked about it on the internet. Probably before the internet in fact. Why do you think cash is so popular among criminals? Maybe there are some new laws, but if the government suspects you of anything, they are definitely going to look at you bank account, and if you owe something, they can just take it. And they can definitely ask about any transaction, for tax reasons. And after all, that's how they got Al Capone. I find it ironic how people go through ridiculous lengths to secure their communication as if they were some high profile targets for governments and on the other hand have no problem going all cashless, exposing their entire life through their bank account, all in one convenient location. There is a flip side though. Banks are highly regulated. So while they will hand your life over if asked for in due process, they also have obligations of security and secrecy, so that they won't hand your life over without due process.
- Stagnant 3y agoIt is just the way it is. Once a bank asks you for details about a transaction you pretty much have to or you're in for a major inconvenience. My understanding is that the process is partly randomized, meaning that they could ask for details on any transaction regardless of the amount transferred. In majority of cases the bank is just happy to get an answer and won't bother you any further. But I do agree that it is a bit worrying how AML (combined with terrorism and child abuse) seems to be increasingly used as justification for more surveillance. Personally I am not convinced that the money and resources being spent on AML are yielding proportional results for the cost.
- wojciii 3y agoThis is another example of a system which depends on input. These kind of systems tend to fail in the sense that a certain type of people can abuse them without detection as they depend on the info people give.. so they are usually flawed and will fail sooner or later. :)
- I_am_tiberius 3y agoI know it's crazy, since 2008 you're actually a criminal if you're not providing information that proves your innocence. In the EU it's even worse than in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, I don't see a way that gets us back to a world like before 2008. Maybe, the situation looks different if central banks inflate the money supply to a point where currencies implode in hyper inflation. But I guess that's not likely but it's the only way for people to wake up.
- salawat 3y agoAll banks are mass surveillance devices. No exceptions.
- jubalfh 3y agolol.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoFunny that someone who is into crypto would be concerned with surveillance. The notion of the "blockchain" is not exactly an improvement in financial privacy given that the general public (cf. a bank, a merchant, some entity that one has transacted with) can see how the crypto user manages his money. As if so-called "tech" companies are not silently collecting enough data about peoples' lives already. Cryptocurrency _is_ used for money laundering, and generally not as a currency. The internal messages of Binance employees made public after the CZ arrest have provided evidence of what we all knew anyway. Perhaps the title should be "Is crypto just a money laundering device?"
- reirob 3y agoMy bank in France (Credit Agricole) requires me to install an App on the phone in order to do operations like entering an non-french IBAN to transfer money to supiers. Stuff that worked before easily over the web, doesn't work anymore if I don't install the app. Now I need to go physically to the branch. And they tell, this is because if security - such a lie. Apps are much more insecure than web + sms tokens.
- raincom 3y agoGovernments indirectly forces banks to not deal with physical cash any more. If you frequently deposits/withdraws cash or any untraceable monetary instruments, AML algos flag your account as risky, leading to closure of your bank account. Even though your politicians say that they are not waging a war against cash, governments through regulation/laws such as BSA, AML, and KYC wants a cash-free world, as it becomes easy to trace every transaction.
- bad_username 3y agoWhen they "cancel your account", what will happen to your money?
- wojciii 3y agoI expect that you have two months to find a different bank and move your money. So nothing much will happend.