[wpietri]

There's a difference between privacy and secrecy. If I'm involving my bank, what I'm doing is already not secret. My bank knows. But normally they keep those things private, because it's generally not anybody's business.

There are occasions where society's interest in preventing crime outweighs personal privacy, and one way to look at that is that when something (like, say, ransomware) has an effect on other people, it can no longer be reasonably called private. When that happens, as long as there are reasonable checks and balances, I'm fine with banks giving out information, especially when it's organizations that generally respect the privacy of the people involved.

[meowface]

I think this is a valid argument. I also think a corollary argument is that it's also valid to decide not to use a bank, though, and do a lot of things purely through cryptocurrency even if you're not doing anything shady or illegal, since, as another comment says, "as long as there are reasonable checks and balances" isn't necessarily a guarantee you can always rely on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27315773

>> but how have we always just accepted the lack of personal privacy when it comes to finance?

>We didn't. This is something that has changed in the UK in my lifetime. Unless you were the subject of an investigation you didn't have to provide much detail to the tax authorities, and what you did provide was kept strictly separate from other areas of government.

>There was an attempt to strike a balance with the emphasis on privacy. Nowadays the government thinks it is entitled to all the data all the time.

[wpietri]

People definitely have differing views on what "reasonable checks and balances" mean; here in the US we have whole movements of people with... strong opinions on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

I agree it's valid not to use a bank; one could try to conduct all one's business in cash. But in practice, people doing that are often doing something criminal, so people using cryptocurrency should not be surprised that they end up being treated with the same level of scrutiny as people running around with briefcases of cash. That is to say, their attempts at secrecy may result in a practical loss of privacy.

[meowface]

That's true. I personally don't mind using banks and don't mind them knowing what I do with my money and perhaps the government knowing as well. But I wouldn't necessarily judge someone who doesn't want to use one.

[CryptoPunk]

>>When that happens, as long as there are reasonable checks and balances, I'm fine with banks giving out information, especially when it's organizations that generally respect the privacy of the people involved.

A reasonable check and balance would be the requirement for the state to get a warrant, issued by a court when probable cause is found, not 'every transaction over $10,000 is reported to the state for its warrantless mass-surveillance system'.

The $10,000 threshold was set in 1970, when factoring in inflation, it was $70,000 of today's money, and when average income was lower, making its application more seldom still.

The dragnet steadily catches more and more transactions from the twin trends of rising real incomes and inflation reducing the real value of the threshold.

[wpietri]

Yes, different people have different ideas about what's reasonable. But if you want to make a case for a reasonable balance between your desire for secrecy versus the desire of other people to be free of crime, you'll have to talk about more than what you personally dislike.

[CryptoPunk]

I want to be free from the crimes of the state too, and the kind of suffocating repression [1] [2] and centralization of power [3] that highly controlled societies create.

We should oppose warrantless mass-surveillance of private financial transactions for the same reasons we oppose mass-surveillance of every one's private communications. The desire to live free from crime does not justify engaging in either.

I think most would agree, and that AML laws are only instituted due to:

1. the complexity of the subject matter obfuscating what these laws do

2. the euphemization of AML laws by the AML industry, like calling them anti-money laundering laws rather than the more descriptive 'financial surveillance laws', and

3. the stigmatization of money, as a result of the public relations efforts of the many who stand to gain from laws restricting people's ability to transact with it.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/comments/de0sys/kyc_is_abs...

[2] https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ugly-side-kyc-aml-...

[3] https://twitter.com/SpencerKSchiff/status/125276128577685913...

[wpietri]

Again, that doesn't sound like balancing competing rights and concerns. It's sounds to me like a fundamentalist's stance.

[CryptoPunk]

Yes and I believe it is more morally correct to have a fundamental belief that innocent people shouldn't have their rights violated to achieve some larger social goal. The ends don't justify the means, and fundamental human rights shouldn't be voidable by majority vote.

[wpietri]

That is not all that is going on here and I suspect you know it. Rights are often in conflict. Insisting that a particular right you are personally fixated on trump all others is not a moral stance. It's narcissism dressed up in a noble cloak.