by DrNuke on 2/20/22, 5:05 PM with 109 comments
by barry-cotter on 2/20/22, 7:13 PM
by jdrc on 2/20/22, 7:52 PM
https://bitcoinist.com/allie-rae-onlyfans-x-crypto-crossover...
by vmception on 2/20/22, 6:17 PM
Although this isn't a popular or public opinion by the public or banks or politicians, it is also the reality for banks and their host governments, and all lip service otherwise is either a lie for data collection or simply fails spectacularly at actually preventing any flow of funds.
So, there isn't any point in saying "Credit Suisse is a rouge bank", because the whole idea of pretending to whitelist transactions and clients is flawed and useless. There isn't any point in saying "privacy laws are immoral" because it doesn't matter what anyone's background is, they can still access banking and pools of liquidity to move between assets and trade with others anyway.
Even the vague idea of avoiding terrorist financing is flawed. Terrorism isn't expensive enough for this whitelisting project. People aren't flying planes into buildings because they don't want to fly planes into buildings. Its not that expensive. Let's drop the charade and reduce overhead costs for everyone.
Congratulations, we've successfully stigmatized having money, except for the people that actually have it who ignored the cultural stigma and can afford better education and counsel on reality. Let's move on from this data mining and transaction whitelisting project.
by seanhunter on 2/20/22, 6:04 PM
by Traster on 2/20/22, 10:32 PM
At the point where your own employees are risking their careers because they know it's wrong. Well... maybe only poor people have moral compasses.
by nathanaldensr on 2/20/22, 6:36 PM
by WHA8m on 2/20/22, 8:28 PM
[1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers
by adamhearn on 2/20/22, 8:21 PM
by jmyeet on 2/20/22, 8:04 PM
Look at the Manhattan project. utmost secrecy. Attempts to segregate the workers in towns to limit contact with potential spies. Yet people felt ideologically the US should not have a monopoly on such a weapon so leaked it to th Soviets anyway.
Go back to antiquity and you have Julius Caesar who held ultimate power in Rome and had loyal legions and immense wealth. And he was undone by a handful of principled people with knives.
I actually think this is why things are never as bad as they seem and conversely never as good as they seem.
This leak, the Panama papers, the Paradise papers and so on. I applaud whoever is in a position to leak this information and does so at great personal risk.
by umvi on 2/20/22, 6:15 PM
It's a hard problem and I don't think saying "oh well, having human traffickers and terrorists use the service to enable their activities is just the cost of privacy rights" is going to fly any more than "oh well, having tons of criminals use guns for murder is just the cost of the second amendment" flies. The latter argument used to fly, but it's increasingly unpopular to say that these days, and I suspect the same will happen when it comes to services with strong privacy guarantees.
by amai on 2/21/22, 4:24 PM
by kragen on 2/20/22, 7:41 PM
Earlier today we were discussing the false-positive rate of Google Drive's copyright-scanning approach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30404587. What do you suppose the leaker's false-positive rate on "fraudsters and corrupt politicians" is?
The article does admit this:
> It is not illegal to have a Swiss account and the leak also contained data of legitimate clients who had done nothing wrong.
Moreover, almost all of the examples in the article seem to be cases of "ex-con nevertheless is able to open bank account". Isn't that a good thing? Do we want a criminal conviction to implicitly include a lifetime of exclusion from the financial system?
The sole exception seems to be "an allegedly fraudulent investment in London property that is at the centre of an ongoing criminal trial of several defendants, including a cardinal," which is to say, the accountholder may turn out to be innocent. This suggests that the whistleblower's false-positive rate was upwards of 99%.
So, if you've done nothing wrong but you don't want your banking details to be leaked for journalists in hostile countries to comb through looking for something they can pin on you, maybe Bitcoin would be a better alternative.
Not a hosted wallet like Coinbase or Binance, though. They're probably almost as vulnerable as Credit Suisse.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30375671
by leroman on 2/20/22, 6:04 PM
by joseloyaio on 2/20/22, 7:07 PM
What's the point of neutrality if you are gonna ignore it when it's convenient.
There's a reason Switzerland held Jewish and Nazi gold alike.
by jokoon on 2/20/22, 8:22 PM
The worst thing about capitalism and globalism is tax dodging and bank secrecy.
by rosndo on 2/21/22, 2:00 AM
> Such controls might be expected to prevent a bank from opening accounts for clients such as Rodoljub Radulović, a Serbian securities fraudster indicted in 2001 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Guardian seems to be proposing that people with (certain?) criminal convictions should not be allowed to have bank accounts.
Is there any other way to interpret this?
by mouzogu on 2/20/22, 6:25 PM
is there any connection between these events, or am i just taking the simulation hypothesis too seriously.