[tptacek]

Weird. I looked up Operation Choke Point and you're right, the lead-off stories are from Keating and Oxman, followed by an article in Reason, all suggesting that OCP is a scheme run by DOJ to suppress legal businesses through the banking system.

Then I found a WaPo article saying that OCP was a scheme by DOJ to monitor and constrain fraudulent businesses like payday loans and prepaid cards.

Before your comment, I had no inkling that any of these enforcement actions might have been orginating with DOJ at all. I figured, Chase just doesn't want to service the porn industry. But it looks like that's not actually the case!

My priors indicate that the Democratic DOJ is not actually launching a shadow jihad against porn (of all things) by intervening in the bank system. That's just not a Dem issue. On the other hand, consumer financial fraud is a top-tier issue for the DOJ under any administration, liberal or conservative. Occam's razor suggests the WaPo is probably right-er than some op-ed by a banking lobbyist.

Why are EFF and Reason and the largest bank lobby campaigning against OCP?

Weird! Thanks for pointing this out. I flagged the story originally, but have now unflagged it.

[pmorici]

"Why are EFF and Reason and the largest bank lobby campaigning against OCP?"

Because the DOJ shouldn't be using the regulatory bureaucracy to make an end run around congress to close down businesses they don't like that are otherwise legal? What happens if they decide next that they don't like gun shops or abortion clinics or businesses that are owned by <insert discriminated group> here.

If these businesses are doing something wrong then shut them down legitimately under the law or have the law changed to outlaw them but allowing some official in the DOJ to use bank regulation to for them out of business is not right.

[tptacek]

If that was the argument, why not make it directly? Why does the EFF frame the problem in terms of "feminist porn" while burying the lede on payday loan scams? It seems increasingly clear that nobody at DOJ gives a shit what kind of porn you watch. They're just tired of auto-billing scams.

[pmorici]

Are we reading the same article because I feel like they are making that argument. Payday loans maybe a bad deal but they aren't inherently scams. At any rate if these are scams then why aren't they being addressed through the courts instead of via this extrajudicial method?