[tptacek]

Can I for once be the origin of a crazy conspiracy theory rather than the annoying guy huffing and griping in the corner and killing everyone's fun?

How about this:

DOJ has launched a project that coordinates with the country's largest banks to constrain and monitor high-fraud businesses; say, porn sites, prepaid cards, and payday loans.

Porn doesn't have a significant lobby.

But payday loans and prepaid cards sure as hell do.

Unfortunately for those lobbies, it's unseemly to write op-eds about how the DOJ and banks are collaborating to suppress the exploitation of poor people.

It is, however, possible to get stories placed about the government's secret plan to create a Morality Police Force to eliminate pornography and, one assumes, any other form of expression the government disfavors.

[hga]

So they're now "high-fraud" businesses, vs. "fraudulent businesses" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671113)?

And this must be some new meaning of the word "constrain" I wasn't previously acquainted with. This "operation" appears to be intended to terminate these "undesirable" businesses with extreme prejudice, and without the pesky Rule of Law getting in the way.

[tptacek]

When I called payday loan companies "fraudulent", I was letting my biases show. The more accurate way to describe them is with the phrase I used in my latter comment: a high-fraud business, one that hosts quite a bit of fraud.

[hga]

So an acceptable solution is "Kill them all, God will know his own"? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Ki...)

[tptacek]

If you want to write an impassioned case on behalf of payday loan companies, be my guest. You asked a question: what did the OP mean when it pointed out that this issue was being driven by op-eds from banking lobbyists? I provided a possible answer.

[hga]

My impassioned case is for the Rule of Law.

Do the ends justify the means?

[tptacek]

Investigations and prosecutions of fraud --- OCP includes criminal prosecutions --- are part of the rule of law. Meanwhile, banks profit directly from fraud by collecting transaction fees. The banking lobby wants to convince the government thank the banks will self-police, but the issue at hand is an externality to the banks.

What I'd like to know is, why are EFF and Reason casting this as suppression of pornography? It's the payday lenders and prepaid card scams that are driving the lobbying effort.

[dkural]

Don't you find it offensive that you're purposefully misled by the two industries - who prefer to not defend themselves directly and instead use Porn as the innocent victim?

[hga]

Not at all. The general principle is the defense of the Rule of Law, and of course those fighting for it are going to use the most sympathetic victims as leading examples.