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US Government To Study Bitcoin As Possible Terrorist Threat
randomErr (172078) writes "The US Department of Defense is investigating whether Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are a potential terrorist threat. The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), a division within DOD that identifies and develops counter terrorism abilities and investigates irregular warfare and evolving threats, has listed Bitcoin among its topics for research and mission critical analysis related to terrorism."
n/t
Bacon is clearly not a terrorist threat. So, eat up, America!
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
FYI, all other electronic money transfers in the US are required to go through money laundering and terrorist funding checks. By law the bank isn't even allowed to tell you why you can't get your money, if the scan hits a positive.
It's a bit immature for people to be blindly making fun of this. At the risk of RTFA:
This sounds like a perfectly valid thing for someone to think about, and consider the implications of. Honestly, whatever your business (or governmental responsibility), if you aren't thinking about the impact of crypto-currency, you might be being negligent.
You know that without a traceable currency tax dollars cease to exist right? Read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (which on my most recent re-reading seems even more spot on) about what America would like like with online anonymous black banking.
And I can't even imagine how harsh would be the punishment for those who get caught laundering money for terrorists. Let's say if a big bank (i.e. HSBC, or Santander) got caught, certainly hundreds of people would go to jail, right?
I feel so safe with all these laws protecting us.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
They are not investigating Bitcoin as a threat.They are investigating how crypto-currencies can be used to finance terrorism. The editors need to be fired.
Back in January, Bitcoin Magazine unearthed an unclassified memo detailing some of the CTTSO projects. "The introduction of virtual currency will likely shape threat finance by increasing the opaqueness, transactional velocity, and overall efficiencies of terrorist attacks”, the memo said.
quite unreasonable.
don't you know the drill, by now?
if this competes with the existing power-brokers (and yes, it does) then it can't be allowed.
to stop things we don't like, we label them as child pron or terrorism.
nothing new about this; we've seen this old play redone hundreds of times during the last 10+ yrs.
this is just about controlling currency and stopping anonymity. has absolutely nothing to do with 'terror'. only an moran would buy that story.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Bitcoin has always been falling in conversion rates... it was big money to the programmer and a money loser for everybody else who touched it.
Huh? It's surely been falling of late, but it started at an exchange rate of ZERO. Being I don't know of anybody who is paying me to accept BitCoin (i.e. an exchange rate of less than zero) I don't see how your statement is true.
Not that I wouldn't agree that BTC is going to prove to be a boondoggle... It's just not as bad as you claim.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
uhm, voting republican?
Are we not done pretending that any actionable difference exists between the two faces of the One Party?
The old "one party good, 'other' party bad" nonsense is just tiresome at this point.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Yeah, and in the last few decades law enforcement agencies on both the state and federal level have grown increasingly dependent on civil forfeiture in their insane drug war. Basically it's a guilty until proven innocent system, and good luck getting it back if the government took all your money to begin with.
This was a country with $500 and $1000 (and more) dollar bills already back in the 1920s.... and now you're suspicious if you carry more than a few hundred dollar bills. Modern hundred dollar bills that I may add have less value than a 1920s Hamilton ($10 bill).
Before anyone says it only happens to drug dealers, I had 2 friends go to CA with their life savings of $15k and a business plan get stopped in OK and the money seized and never seen again. Not an gram of drugs in the car, just some beer in the back. America looks more and more like a communist country every coming decade.
FYI, all other electronic money transfers in the US are required to go through money laundering and terrorist funding checks. By law the bank isn't even allowed to tell you why you can't get your money, if the scan hits a positive.
Obama administration offers $27 million in additional help for Syrian rebels
Wonder how they'll transfer it...
That's the dynamic of a Ponzi scheme, as is the OPs description of who benefits.
His description of who benefits was "the programmer", which is nonsense. You don't have to be a programmer to be miner, and you certainly don't have to be "the" programmer. Anybody could/can mine bitcoins. Bitcoins may or may not turn out to be a good long term investment, but the bitcoin system has almost nothing in common with a Ponzi scheme. People claiming Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme understand neither how bitcoins work, nor how Ponzi schemes work.
America looks more and more like a communist country every coming decade.
I think the words you were looking for are "totalitarian police state", or the like.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
It seems like they should have put it in bitcoin and retrieved it when they got to CA.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Seriously, though, it sounds like your friends need to give 1/3 of that to a lawyer so they can get the other 2/3 back.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Please send many BTC at 17Yvsma9tfiuqVP7QhsFE2VmsFpTEMy17P, the funds will be used to buy game consoles of mass distraction.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It would like kind of like Puerto Rico, but more high-tech.
The enemy wants to take away your freedom. The only way to stop them is to dominate, track and control every facet of life. You do believe in protecting freedom now, don't you?
Great business minds!
Was step one of the business plan: "Withdraw every penny of their life savings in cash in order to transport it cross country by car?"
[As you know, EFTs can't get over the Rocky Mountains until the pass opens back up in the spring...]
We wouldn't have gotten the ACA
From what I've seen of it so far, I don't think that would have been a bad thing. For starters, there's nothing affordable about it.
foolishness is not illegal.
carrying cash is not illegal.
carrying cash should not used as a proxy to assign guilt for some other crime.
the police should not be able to press charges against *items* and deny standing to it's owner.
civil forfeiture is an abrogation of our civil rights and we should be throwing the ones responsible for it in jail. :(
Be careful what you wish for. It looks like Holder is going to actually try and jail some bankers.
However, these banks will not be accused of laundering money for terrorists, except under an extremely flexible definition of "terrorist". Most likely they will be accused of evading sanctions and/or helping naughty Americans avoid tax (let's ignore that some of these Americans had left America). Unfortunately last time the USA went on the war path over sanction-evading banks it turned out that the countries the financial activity was happening in didn't have those sanctions. Another minor detail for the US Govt. Jurisdiction doesn't seem to matter to them.
I do feel like we're entering dangerous new territory with this constant beating up of banks, often under deeply questionable covers. The DoJ and Treasury dept have realised that bankers are so politically weak they can be made to do anything because people automatically assume they're guilty, and just the threat of prosecution under bogus laws can cow them into subservience - which is a problem because by seizing control of the banks they seize control of the people, who cannot do without bank accounts. Hence Operation Choke Point.
Frankly, I do not believe bankers are a part of some cigar smoking Al-Qaeda terrorist conspiracy and I'd rather they were left alone than we go down this path .... it can only lead to even more gross abuses of power than what we've already seen.
quite unreasonable.
don't you know the drill, by now?
if this competes with the existing power-brokers (and yes, it does) then it can't be allowed.
to stop things we don't like, we label them as child pron or terrorism.
nothing new about this; we've seen this old play redone hundreds of times during the last 10+ yrs.
this is just about controlling currency and stopping anonymity. has absolutely nothing to do with 'terror'. only an moran would buy that story.
It's about control and destroying a free and open society..
Terrorism, rebellion against the government, and being able to move wealth without government knowledge is only preventable in an authoritarian police-state type of society.
A free and open society only exists when it is possible to keep one's finances a secret from government and organize without the governments' knowledge to commit acts of terrorism and rebellion.
More government "Safety" = Less Freedom, Less Actual Safety, and Less Money for You.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So which bank do you work for?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There are not 6-7 billion domestic terrorist in any country on Earth. I'll leave it as an excersize to the reader why that might be.
I'm asking who's making the claim. "The military" is still too vague, especially with zero evidence provided.
Really? Asking for numbers to assess effectiveness is a dumb way of doing so? Then how do you propose it's assessed?
And that's how many? Exactly speaking, or even as an order of magnitude figure?
So what, exactly speaking, are you claiming here? That terrorist attacks don't actually require a lot of money, so money transfers aren't really that important to terrorists, so watching money transfers is pointless from anti-terrorism point of view?
I'm entirely convinced that you're an idiot. The only question remains whether you genuinely lack intelligence, or just can't bear to be shown wrong on the Internet.
That's all nice and good. But it still doesn't address my point: Al-Qaeda can't compete against miners who put their money on their mining equipment, because Al-Qaeda put their money into explosives.
Also, you stated above that Al-Qaeda doesn't need money to stake attacks, or at least not money above what you can make in a minimum-wage job, so why would they bother? I'll let your weird scenario of mailing a couble hundred kilobytes - or, more likely, a single adress of 34 characters - slide. It's still stupid, though.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I believe he's talking about someone who was born into a scene of angriness and greed, dominance and persecution. Whose mother was a queen, father was never seen and was never meant to be. Yeah...
Frankly, I do not believe bankers are a part of some cigar smoking Al-Qaeda terrorist conspiracy and I'd rather they were left alone than we go down this path .... it can only lead to even more gross abuses of power than what we've already seen.
You're right. But they are members of the oligarch class who will happily watch us all end up in the streets as long as they can maintain their profits. Actually, they'd like us all in the streets, since poor people have fewer opportunities to challenge their supremacy.
You can call that paranoia if you want, but given the lobbying and politician buying activities of that group, it's clear that they are willing to sacrifice our economic and social well-being in the pursuit of more money for them.
It's ultimately self-defeating, since their profits are based on our consumer society, but they'll happily sacrifice the future for quarterly gains (and bonuses).
That's not terrorism, but it is antithetical to the ideals of freedom and opportunity for all. That we don't regulate these guys or incentivize economic opportunity and equality says a lot about how deeply these guys have their filthy paws into our government.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Seriously, though, it sounds like your friends need to give 1/3 of that to a lawyer so they can get the other 2/3 back.
Yeah, good luck with that. These confiscations are notoriously hard to fight. The "friends" are probably not even an official party to some criminal proceeding -- instead, many of these cases are filed as "State of X vs. $15,000" (I wish I were kidding). Many municipalities will charge thousands of dollars in fees just for the right to file a challenge for the confiscation, so they might be out 10-20% of their money just to get the process started. Add on complicated and lengthy legal proceedings, and they'd be very lucky to get a fraction of it back. It might not be worth it at all. The only way to fix these sorts of problems is probably a class-action lawsuit against the offending municipalities.
By the way, for those who don't realize the craziness of civil forfeiture laws: law enforcement have routinely seized people's cash, cars, even houses -- with no trial, no criminal proceeding, often just a bare hint of "probable cause" or trumped up "suspicion." Look it up (for example, here's a good recent summary of some egregious examples.
While people traveling with a wad of cash are probably the most common target, this is a much bigger issue -- a truly shocking and extreme violation of basic rights.
And I can't even imagine how harsh would be the punishment for those who get caught laundering money for terrorists. Let's say if a big bank (i.e. HSBC, or Santander) got caught, certainly hundreds of people would go to jail, right?
I feel so safe with all these laws protecting us.
I'm so sick of seeing the HSBC case referenced by people who have no clue about the actual case. Nobody at the bank had any involvement in "laundering money for terrorists". Other people laundered money using HSBC's accounts. The HSBC employees did not follow regulatory reporting rules that might have revealed the laundering. So like any regulatory violation, they were slapped with a massive fine. It would have been ridiculous to charge anyone with a crime.
If the night security guard at a bank falls asleep, and someone robs the bank without him noticing- you wouldn't charge the security guard with bank robbery.
America looks more and more like a communist country every coming decade.
I think the words you were looking for are "totalitarian police state", or the like.
I think given this speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Congress in 1938, the best description would be a fascist state. It certainly isn't communism.
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
The American government has been bought and paid for by private interests/corporations. Under FDR's description, that makes it fascist, or nearly so. Elect Chris Christy as President and that will settle it. He is a dangerous man.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The basic concepts of "freedom" and "privacy" are the perceived threats here.
The fundamental concept that anyone could be doing anything without first getting permission is the threat here.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick