[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.

[CryptoPunk]

Rights are NOT often in conflict. Genuine rights are private, and do not overlap with others' equal rights.

What you are describing as a right: the ability to subject others to warrantless mass-surveillance, violates the core liberal principle of Western culture, namely the rights to privacy and the presumption of innocence.

And for good reason. There is no evidence at all that abrogating these core rights makes people safer, either from threats in general, or specifically from crime.