[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

In the US, a government-controlled bank would have stronger privacy because privacy is enshrined in law. Specifically my government cannot snoop on certain things.

If the government kept all of my banking records, they wouldn't be able to legally access them. Currently, they can just use taxpayer money to purchase these records from the corporations who gather them.

[tastyfreeze]

Sorry, you must not be paying attention or this is sarcasm. Giving the government the keys to your banking data and expecting them to respect rights is naive. Government ownership of data means they don't have to respect privacy because they already own the data.

The US government is wholesale spying on the entirety of electronic communications and working with social media sites to make some voices less prominent. Private business should be able to tell the government to pound sand when banking data is requested without a warrant or subpoena. Banks are not able to do that. Banks exist as long as they are in the good graces of regulators.

Laws prohibiting the sale of personal information (location, purchases, banking) closes the loophole.

The solution is less government, not more.

[vharuck]

>The US government is wholesale spying on the entirety of electronic communications and working with social media sites to make some voices less prominent. Private business should be able to tell the government to pound sand when banking data is requested without a warrant or subpoena.

Do they actually tell the government to pound sand, though? In the end, if I can only rely on the moral codes of for-profit companies who are weighing the value of a good relationship with me versus one with the US government, then I can't rely on much. But the government can and regularly does tell itself to go pound sand. Like the IRS, Census, or any agency with confidential medical records.

Also, your examples are of private companies selling data. The government is the buyer in those scenarios, not the guardian.

IMO, data is less likely to be shared between government agencies because rarely do both parties benefit. For a company, the database team wins when sales wins, as long as they get to present their success together. Government workers follow strict pay scales, get no bonuses, and have nearly guaranteed job security. They also have notoriously few ambitious ladder-climbers. It's hard enough to get them to share data with each other when it's legal and ethical. If there's any possibility sharing data would break rules, government will refuse to risk it.

[tastyfreeze]

You're dancing around a point.

> for-profit companies who are weighing the value of a good relationship with me versus one with the US government

For-profit companies shouldn't need or care about a relationship with the US government beyond selling the same product they do to everybody else. That is my ideal. How to get there is the contention. You would like to give the for-profit company to the US government and thus removing the relationship. I would like to see the power the US government has over for-profit businesses reduced and preferably eliminated. Giving banks to the US government results in less private sector and a larger government. A larger government makes more people dependent on the success and benevolence of the government. History has proven unequivocally that governments cannot be trusted to remain neither benevolent nor successful. Concentrating power makes the temptation for government malevolence too great. Power will be abused by someone eventually. That is human nature. Concentrating power is just creating a ticking bomb. The way for more people to succeed is to reduce dependence on government and distribute power among businesses that serve only their customers. Business that are reliant on the trust of their customers will think twice about betraying that trust. If their customers ever learn of their betrayal it means the death of their business in competitive markets.

[int_19h]

Large banks, and, more broadly, any large company is also concentrated power, though.

[tastyfreeze]

True. But large companies don't have the power to jail you, or worse, for crossing them. History has shown how hellish living under a powerful malevolent government can be.

[int_19h]

The only reason why they don't have that power is because the government jealously guards it. In places where that's not the case, what would stop them?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

So these statements seem to contradict each other:

> Government ownership of data means they don't have to respect privacy because they already own the data.

> Banks exist as long as they are in the good graces of regulators.

So we have this problem that the government doesn't want to respect our privacy and the problem that the government doesn't need to respect our privacy and somehow removing the bank in the middle will mean that the government isn't respecting our privacy.

If the government is in control of the banks it will make it more obvious to the average citizen that the government has the ability to snoop on transaction information and it might be that such citizens decide to demand stricter privacy measures.

Back to this statement:

> Banks exist as long as they are in the good graces of regulators.

That's kinda my point. The governments run the banks in practice, just not in theory. Changing that "not in theory" part brings the understanding to the citizenry that they can demand certain things from their bank.

[tastyfreeze]

I do not agree that giving government more power over banks is the solution. It may make it obvious to everybody what reality is but you just handed the keys to the entity that is abusing their powers already. Giving the government more power only reduces ours.

[quest88]

Apply your logic about laws to private banks. Make it so private banks have to adhere to some new law. Same outcome.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> Apply your logic about laws to private banks.

I'm pretty sure that's actually a more ambitious endeavor than insisting on a government-run solution. I otherwise still see the same issue in OP's comment: there is no reason for the private bank to exist.

[lockhouse]

I’m sure all the spooks in the three letter agencies will totally keep their hands out of that cookie jar.

All the commenters here that think the federal government should directly provide their banking services are going to be in for a rude awakening if it ever actually happens.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

At least it would give a private citizen recourse if snooping did happen; it would become private by law. It is currently not.

Maybe it all goes south and people are worse off with their privacy than now but I can't even imagine what "worse off" would be. The particular example you gave ("spooks in three letter agencies") currently happens and I can't exactly expect it to stop. How could it be worse?

[lockhouse]

I’m curious, what recourse do you or anyone else have against the CIA, FBI, or any other Department of Justice or Intelligence agency that you wouldn’t also have with a commercial bank?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

The commercial bank has something called a "privacy policy" in which they explain that they will choose not to respect my privacy. A government entity isn't allowed to do that. There are actually stricter laws for government invasions of privacy than corporate.

To your concern that these three-letter spooks will spy on you: what would they do that they're not already doing? That isn't to excuse the spying; I'm just pointing out that these are separate issues. Tackle the fact that the NSA compiles all unencrypted HTTP traffic separately from the fact that JP Morgan Chase knows my financial history and doesn't have to care about keeping it private per my idea of private.

[omgomgomgomg]

So are ypu saying the constitution and its privacy protections are totally useless?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I'm intending to say the opposite. My point is exactly that a government-run bank affords citizens this constitution-protected privacy because the bank would explicitly be a government entity.

(Unless you're asking whether the protections are useless against corporations. Then yes, they're useless.)