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by remarkEon 1576 days ago
You're right, these are separate issues. What you're describing is really just money laundering, which is already illegal and there a number of dimensions available for this to be discovered and prosecuted under the law. What the person you are replying to is concerned about - and rightfully so[1] - is that zealous enforcement of banking controls, even though it comes from the same principled place of "dictators shouldn't be allowed to hide their funds in country_that_has_laws", can and probably will result in banks making decisions about who has access to banking services based on internal political dynamics. It's a huge elephant in the room that I think deserves more discussion and scrutiny.

[1] https://twitter.com/OttawaPolice/status/1495367658132361216
1 comments
vmh1928 1576 days ago
Why post a link to an Ottawa Police tweet about looking for people actively involved in the civil unrest there? If there was an organized conspiracy by right-wing US crisis actors to create chaos and bring downtown Ottawa to a stop, is it overzealous for the police to look into it and any possible crimes committed?
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remarkEon 1576 days ago
To quote the tweet explicitly: "If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges." [emphasis added]

Protest.

Even the police are telling on themselves here. What's great about the tweet is that the verbiage is context-independent. You can apply that to anything. Imagine a tweet from e.g. the Portland Police Bureau saying this about protests in Downtown Portland - protests which often devolved into violence and actual damage to businesses, something which hasn't happened at all in Ottawa.

So to answer your question, it's an example of where if you are protesting for the "wrong" thing, your finances are now threatened. Are people actually okay with this?

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TomSwirly 1575 days ago
No, the Canadian officials are saying that if you took financial support to participate in a crime, they are going to confiscate that money.

And that's a damned good thing.

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remarkEon 1575 days ago
>>Are people actually okay with this?

Well I guess we have one person who actually is okay with this.

Like I said farther up thread, the next frontier of this debate really is going to be about if we will "allow" people with the "wrong" politics access to the banking systems we all depend on for our livelihood.

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salawat 1575 days ago
So protesting is a crime now?
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