[timerol]

> burdening 8 billion law-abiding Citizens with impossibly complex and arduous KYC/AML requirements

TFA notes that "This will affect the typical user of the financial system precisely zero times during their lives." It is very much not a complex and arduous situation in most instances, only in very few edge cases. (Which patio11 wants us to pay closer attention to.) I had occasion to unexpectedly transfer $10k over ACH recently, and, while a few minutes on the phone with my bank confirming things was slightly annoying, I would describe it as neither complex nor arduous. I am confident that it did not trigger a CTR or SAR, given it was not a cash transaction, and I was happy to answer a few questions.

[exbanker]

This is just factually untrue. AML policies unjustly affect millions of Americans.

At US Bank, you can’t deposit cash without an ID which is standard post 2018 or so. Yet go to a US Bank in a low income area, deposit $100 in a family member’s account and they will ask for ID, social security number and your job.

US Bank has been involved in multiple money laundering scandals leading to deferred criminal prosecution.

Many friends have times where they can’t withdraw their own cash, have had accounts closed, have been falsely reported for fraud without any recourse etc etc.

Also because financial fraud and identity theft is rarely prosecuted, regular Americans are bombarded with friction and hassle to transact.

People outside normal banking use Chime or prepaid bank cards, which promptly get banned from being used in a wide variety of businesses.

AML policies and the Bank Secrecy Act is a violation of the 4th Amendment. The BSA (a misnomer) has expanded in scope since the 70s and as money has inflated. It’s went from an adjusted $70,000+ to $600 today (or $85 in 1970s dollars).

And it seems the Supreme Court is going to act on the BSA sometime in the next year. It is a crime against the individual, a violation of civil rights and indefensible.

It is purely motivated by tax enforcement and controlling the population. It does not prevent or identify crime. There is an estimated trillion+ of trade based money laundering every year.

[pjkundert]

I'm always gobsmacked at the level of ... jawdropping "Let them eat cake!" self-delusion displayed by some wealthy people.

"This hasn't affected me, so it mustn't affect anyone!"

The grinding day-to-day slogging, through the mud of irrelevant and useless regulatory burden experienced by the "lesser" classes of civilization (and anyone actually trying to run a small business) is just astonishing.

Basically, many people just "stop". They can't navigate it, and know they'll never defeat it. So they just cease to try.

[notch898a]

I thought their response was sarcasm. Surely no one would seriously think it is reasonable to be questioned over the phone over $10k which is what, enough to cover a month of expenses for an upper middle class family in Manhattan or San Francisco?

As for a SAR, lmao. It's illegal for them to tell you if you triggered it, how on earth would you know?

[wpietri]

> This is just factually untrue. AML policies unjustly affect millions of Americans.

If it's that clearly untrue, presumably you can document this?

And I'll note that even if you can, it doesn't necessarily contradict what you're replying to, which was, "This will affect the typical user of the financial system precisely zero times during their lives."

With 330 million residents, millions of people could have KYC/AML problems and patio11 still could be right. I've never had a problem like that, and have only heard one person ever mention it. And he was an Australian trying to open a US bank account to get around certain Australian import taxes, so I suspect he was somebody who should have been having problems.

[btilly]

While I appreciate the problems that you're describing, I'm dubious that it violates the 4th amendment. In particular look at the Private Search Exemption. Which says that the 4th amendment does NOT apply to searches done by private parties. And if a private party has voluntarily done the search and reported it to the government, the government may redo the search without a warrant, but can't exceed what the private party said.

This applies here because both KYC and AML procedures are set up and carried out by private banks. Which makes it a private search, that fits squarely in the exemption.

In turn this begs the question of whether the government can encourage through intentionally vague regulation behavior that they cannot directly ask for. But given the courts we have, I suspect they will avoid answering this question.

Furthermore it is hardly the worst violation of the 4th that is common. I'm personally most incensed about civil forfeiture. Through the workaround of suing your stuff instead of you, all Constitutional protections are voided. The result is essentially legalized robbery by the government, carried out by the very law enforcement departments that directly profit from the proceeds. Given that the courts have repeatedly OKed this, why would you expect them to object to KYC and AML?

[notch898a]

It's not really a private or voluntary search when it's imposed by government. Otherwise I could just make a law saying everybody who walks down X private road has to get searched by private security or turn around, obviously that won't work. The private road owner might never wanted to do it, they're only doing because the gun of the government man is at their head.

It is a public search carried with the dirty work portion of the search done by private entities directed by the state.

[btilly]

But the government DIDN'T impose it. Whatever the bank's procedures may be, the regulator can say with a straight face, "We didn't tell them to implement those procedures, and we didn't tell them to take those actions. That was their decision."

And, unbelievable as it may seem, the government won't be exactly wrong either.

[notch898a]

I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that the KYC laws as written don't impose the requirement to search papers to verify proof of identity, address, etc.

Sure cute games can be made about the semantics of it, but that's why we have human beings as judges. It's blatantly obvious that when you threaten to toss someone in a cage for not doing something that you are imposing that on them, it's not voluntary and you are doing it on behalf of the imposer. If a human being judge truly can't recognize that then the whole system is broken and we need to start over.

[btilly]

Actually the laws as written DON'T impose any such requirement. Banks generally choose to implement policies that do that, but it is not required. And during COVID, many banks changed those policies.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/kyc-and-aml-beyond-th... goes into this. The primary concern for regulators is that you must have made statements to the bank that you can later be put in jail for lying about. And the bank must have approved procedures in place for identifying when transactions are high enough risk to decide to take verification steps.

On your comments about judges, you apparently have substantially more confidence in the common sense applied by the legal system than I do. Don't forget we now have a Supreme Court judge (Amy Barrett) who is on record, in a legal paper no less, saying that fiat money and the Fed are obviously unconstitutional, and judges should handle that by simply avoiding ever considering the question. (Read https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1304/ if you think I'm making that up.)

Does this sound like an excess of common sense?

[saurik]

In copyright law and free speech analysis something even stronger happens where the rules are sometimes extremely unclear with no real way to get clarity but some random punishment has been imposed that causes everyone to read tea leaves constantly and self-censor themselves; this is called a "chilling effect" and is absolutely taken into consideration when analyzing a challenge to the constitutionality of a law or regulatory structure.

[from]

I agree with your broader point but I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court case is about a technicality involving foreign bank account reporting, basically whether a failure to file that you had 5 foreign bank accounts is 5 counts or 1 count of FBAR violations. Unless there’s another pending case I haven’t heard of?

[pjkundert]

Ihre Papeire bitte.

Stop And Frisk.

Nobody without something to hide should want privacy/encryption.

Forcing 8 Billion people to KYC/AML before buying a coffee or helping a relative isn't too much to ask.

Amirite? /s

[JusticeJuice]

Funniest AML thing I ever did. Went to open a new account in the app, it's like sorry you haven't verified your identity can't do it through the app. Okay. Walk into a branch, ask to make a new account. They're like nah, you need to come back with proof of where you live before we can verify your identity. I'm literally standing in front of you. With ID. I already have 3 accounts, what's a 4th?

[omgomgomgomg]

They would need a recent proof of address to know where you live.

I know, it is stupid and there are so many ways to fake this, but a bank cant possibly gibe a loan to someone without knowing where they live.

Else kim jong il could just walk in with his id etcetc.