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DHS Shuts Down Dwolla Payments To and From Mt. Gox
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from BetaBeat:
"The Department of Homeland Security appears to have shut down the ability to use Dwolla, a mobile payment service, to withdraw and deposit money into Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin trading platform. ... A representative for Dwolla told Betabeat that the company is 'not party' to this matter and encourages those with questions to reach out to Mt. Gox or the DHS. 'The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a 'Seizure Warrant' for the funds associated with Mutum Sigillium's Dwolla account (a.k.a. Mt. Gox),' he said. 'In light of the court order, procured by the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla has ceased all account activities associated with Dwolla services for Mutum Sigillum while Dwolla's holding partner transferred Mutum Sigillium's balance, per the warrant.'"
The government finally decided to care and used the one achilles heel of BitCoin...conversion to and from dollars. If BitCoin had some innate value, it wouldn't be a problem, but since it's primary use is as an exchange currency for dodging taxes and selling goods on the black market, this change is going to seriously impact the value of the currency.The government can't control BitCoin, but it can control US financial institutions and other companies that need to interact with those financial institutions.
We'll now see how well the BitCoin market can operate as a completely stand-alone entity.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Actually, it is more correct to say that the Obama administration can be as GWB-like as it wants, and its reputation will remain amazingly high with Democrats. It's proof that Democrats didn't hate GWB's policies, they just hated GWB personally.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I've bought some pretty nice stuff with bitcoins that I've mined.
Anyways, people like you are the suckers who will let the government do anything it chooses because the evil thing they do only targets ( kiddieporn | gambling | drugs ) so they should be allowed to do it as they please, because clearly only those people will be affected.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I had no love for Bush, but I think it's quite a smear to compare him to Obama. Bush's administration wiretapped suspected terrorists. They never sank so low as to wiretap reporters. And you'd have to reach back to Nixon to find an administration using IRS to target political opponents. I also don't recall Bush starting any wars without Congressional approval (albeit approval obtained under very, very questionable auspices).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Love it -- hope you get a plus 5 insightful. That was a nice reworking of the "calling him an idiot is an insult to the wider idiot community" type quip.
I totally agree that Obama has been worse than GWB but what is even more disturbing is how Democrats don't even want to know about it and have gone totally silent now that it is their guy doing the abuses.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The likelihood that Mt Gox was complying with the "Know Your Customer" anti-money-laundering rules that apply to all financial institutions that handle currency was approx. zero. I'm not surprised in the least. If a bank was doing what Mt. Gox was, (as in, not even pretending to comply with the law), the same thing would happen.
(That's not to say that disobedience of money laundering never occurs, just that experienced banks are substantially better at hiding it.)
You mean "theft through inflation carried out by the Federal Reserve Bank."
(Pro-Tip: The Federal Reserve, despite its name, is not a government entity.)
Kid-proof tablet..
That is completely and totally wrong. The NSA has been wiretapping every single US citizen for the past decade. This is well known. And Bush started it. Obama is only making it bigger. Now the NSA has to build a new, gigantic data center out west to house all the data they're collecting.
You can believe that one if you like.
Do you honestly thing the government (choose whichever one you want) started to listen in just a decade ago? I got some real estate between Manhattan and Brooklyn to sell to you if you believe that one. At best, Bush Jr. only expanded earlier efforts that were well under way and expanded that to include scanning nearly every IP packet transmitted more than a couple hops.
Nixon did plenty of wire tapping himself without warrants, and the technology wasn't even new with his administration. It might be pushing the envelope a bit to go back to the Hoover administration, but the FDR administration definitely kept tabs on communications between nearly all citizens when necessary. J. Edgar definitely collected his share of information about a great many ordinary citizens, and a fair bit by wiretapping too.
Up to the GWB administration wire tapping was a case by case basis, after 911 the Bush administration asked for direct links to all the telecom operators. ATT, Verizon and all the others provided direct fiber optic connections to their networks and funneled copies of everything going across their network directly to the government. This is the reason Congress was forced to give them immunity because if they didn't the class action suits would have sunk the phone companies. The need for immunity alone should point to just how serious of an expansion in wire taping occurred under the Bush administration.
In fact as the previous poster said, it was those very links that caused the creation of the Data Center in Utah. I live in Utah and I can tell you that Data Center was already planned and sited in 2008 when Obama took office. The formerly 2-lane highway leading up to Camp Williams (where the data center is) was upgraded in 2008 in anticipation, new power lines were installed at the same time (the data center uses more power than the entire salt lake city valley). Though Obama has done nothing to stop this massive expansion of federal power it most certainly did start under Bush. And though I agree that the government's been spying on people for a long time, the passive acceptance of full monitoring of every single communication didn't start till after 9/11/2001. You are arguing that tapping a few phones here and there is no different than recording every single phone call/text/internet traffic going across the network. And there is a very big difference.
Except that no wiretapping occurred.Records of calls to and from AP were obtained.
This rises to the level of wiretapping. This information was enough to figure out who the reporters' sources were. Which is the only type of information which otherwise stays secret as a result of such a phone call. All news-worthy information contained in such phone calls gets published. Only the sources stay secret. So the content of the call actually is less secret than identities of the individuals making the call.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.