Slashdot Mirror
Florida Arrests High-Dollar Bitcoin Exchangers For Money Laundering
tsu doh nimh writes "State authorities in Florida on Thursday announced criminal charges targeting three men who allegedly ran illegal businesses moving large amounts of cash in and out of the Bitcoin virtual currency. Experts say this is likely the first case in which Bitcoin vendors have been prosecuted under state anti-money laundering laws, and that prosecutions like these could shut down one of the last remaining avenues for purchasing Bitcoins anonymously."
Bitcoins!
It's law enforcement, so they get to break the law whenever they want to, even if it means slaughtering someone in full view of online media (Fullerton, CA). If the existing law fails them, they can use made-up economic crimes like "money laundering," which is nothing but the legal term for trading in cash.
Not everything need be accountable to government or the people they represent.
Everyone is accountable for their actions to the society in which they live. That doesn't automatically mean that anything in particular is outlawed or even regulated, but it does mean that anything which has the ability to negatively affect a society may be regulated or outlawed by that society.
Very little would be legal and no one would be free under such a system.
Non sequitur, although perhaps you define "free" as "allowed to do precisely the things I want to do", which brings me back to the dictator complex.
It's the height of hypocrisy to suggest the free actions of consenting adults is somehow indicative of a dictator complex. Projecting much?
There is nothing mutually "consenting" about choosing to benefit from a society yet evading the agreed responsibilities which come from living within it. Money laundering is leeching at best, and hiding further harmful activity at worst.
government should not have a monopoly on currency, outlawing all other forms.
Agree. But it should get to regulate all currencies.
Not to mention, the US government, among others, have abused their power to manage the people's currency by debasing it through inflation
Not sure they've "abused" it - people have been fairly clear for the last ~40 years that it's the sort of currency they want. I don't want this, but I don't base my life on hoarding currency, so it is of little concern to me.
-- both as a backdoor method to increase taxes on the people
Explain.
and as a way to reduce the debt they've incurred through their constant spending of the people's money.
Government money belongs to the government, howsoever legally collected, just like the money you use to pay for your iPhone belongs to Apple. Emotive phrases such as "other people's money" to describe tax revenue, as if the government were a thief, does not fly in rational conversation.
Such abuse by the government illustrates why the people should be free to create their own forms of currency and methods of exchanging goods and services
No, it illustrates that sometimes an elected government does things you don't like. While I think Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme and has little to do with currency, IDC what people use to trade with. But, as long as they expect the outcome of the trades to be protected by society, society has a right to oversight to make sure the trades are not causing harm (e.g. money laundering).
Since a currency regulated by a third party has at least as much potential for abuse as a regulated one, but without democratic oversight, I think your problem is that you don't like that the elected government has a monopoly on your perception of abuse. Which brings me back, again, to the dictator complex.
Provided all exchanges are voluntary and nothing is misrepresented, why should government or anyone else care how free people exchange goods and services amongst themselves?
Since a major purpose of anti money laundering law is to ensure that it is possible to check that "all exchanges are voluntary and nothing is misrepresented", your argument isn't working. A more fundamental justification, however, is that only a leech thinks it has a right to protection from a society and protection from all the consequences of its actions in that society. So, even if a society foolishly applies the theoretical myth of the perfectly informed, rational consumer in order to justify absolute "freedom" of contract, and even if for some fundamentalist ideological reason it puts the primacy of promise over the suffering which may result from that promise ("I volunteer to be your slave until I die"), it can and will still take account of the knock-on effect of economic activity on third parties.