[bitcoinbutter]

What you don't see in this article is that HSBC has tons of false positives and the scrutinization of transactions slows everyone down. The more strict they need to be with money flow, the more regular people suffer from crippling KYC and financial reporting.

Do we want every transaction we send out to require an accompanying invoice and paper trail? Payment reviews, account freezing, in-depth explanations for every transaction?

Moving money has become tedious and a bureaucratic nightmare. I doubt HSBC is doing this on purpose, they just have so many obligations already from their transaction volume that it's nearly impossible to comply with regulations.

[xvilka]

This year they quadrupled their harassment of the common customers with the updates in the KYC and antifraud policy. It's close to be completely unbearable.

As we can see all these regulations do not help at all. It's better to scrap them whatsoever and just let law enforcement to do their job on following the trails themselves.

[ficklepickle]

They are applying scrutiny to the wrong parties. Ever-more-strict KYC for individuals will never catch commercial clients, by design. That is not a reason to just give up.

[UncleMeat]

> the scrutinization of transactions slows everyone down

I really don't know if this is a problem. "It is hard to follow the law" doesn't tend to be an excuse for individuals. I have to scrutinize my tax return pretty closely and "it would take a lot of time" isn't going to convince the IRS that I should be let off the hook.

Law enforcement could help. Compared to things like the drug war, we have very few people investigating financial crimes. This appears to be by design, where our society is so invested in enabling the rich to make money that anything that stands in their way is unacceptable.