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EU Set To Crack Down On Bitcoin and Anonymous Payments After Paris Attack (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Home affairs ministers from the European Union are set to gather in Brussels for crisis talks in the wake of the Paris attacks, and a crackdown on Bitcoin, pre-paid credit card and other forms of 'anonymous' online payments are on the agenda. From the article: "According to draft conclusions of the meeting, European interior and justice ministers will urge the European Commission (the EU executive arm) to propose measures to strengthen the controls of non-banking payment methods. These include electronic/anonymous payments, virtual currencies and the transfers of gold and precious metals by pre-paid cards."
Because it already is. And killing people with guns and bombs is something you want to prevent instead of penalizing it after it happens. For this you need the ability to predict what will happen. Such ability is gained from observing the current state of the world (because you cannot observe the future), and drawing inferences from these observations. The more you observe, the more predictive power you gain. Large-scale organized activities (like organized crime or organized terrorism) usually require monetary support, thus observation of monetary transfers gives valuable information about the existence of organized structures, which in turn improves prediction about terroristic (or criminal) activity.
Just how many terrorists are using this again? Oh, right, that doesn't actually matter...
Um, and what about cash?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
It's not because bitcoin payments are anonymous or enable terrorists. Because they're not and they don't.
I understand that cutting of the money supply for terrorist is very effective, and I can understand bitcoin as it can move large amounts of money, however I don't get pre-paid cards? Do they want traceability when people use these items when using a VPN?
It's money laundering. The terrorism is in part an excuse, but realistically a massive portion of the criminal economy runs on cash. If you have a way to turn cash into transmittable currency, you have easy money laundering and untraceable transactions.
We appreciate our privacy, but there are *billions* of dollars of illegal transactions because cash exists and is largely untraced. Any sane government would want to crack down on cash transactions up to the point where it starts hurting their own economy in a serious way.
These include electronic/anonymous payments, virtual currencies and the transfers of gold and precious metals by pre-paid cards.
Two problems here. Electronic payments can transfer from anything to anything else, meaning two accounts both external to the EU; the EU's rules would never touch that transaction. The payment can then be introduced into the EU if someone wanted to (and honestly it would never need to). It's the old trick of "abstract until it's legal."
Second is that there's no point in only restricting cards that represent 'precious metals', since it represents a denomination that's indirectly backed by the metal. A card could just as conveniently represent the same value in base metals, or blue chip stocks, or frozen concentrated orange juice. Limiting prepaid card value to 500Euro or something should suffice.
That said I don't see how any of that would've prevented the Paris attacks or allowed the accomplices to be found out after the fact. Wallet cash could've covered transportation, food and lodging; and the guns (probably the largest expense) were smuggled into the country anyhow. The total cost was probably less than 50k Euros, almost all of which was probably paid in cash to criminals who weren't going to try and trace their payment even if it were traceable (demanding cash because they don't want to be traced themselves). I don't know the details of the case though. All I see is politicians trying to push through a EU PATRIOT ACT.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
So to defend against attacks on our freedom we take away that freedom? Politicians have totally lost the plot.
I'm actually quite impressed that you know every muslim. Really? By name?
So you don't want to let them enter Europe. So what's the alternative? Shoot them? Let them drown in the Mediterranean Sea? Let them starve and freeze to death? You can shout that most of them are young men. Still, there are a lot women, children and babies among them.
I'm not even claiming that we should allow them to enter Europe. I just take offence at the idea that a (or any) solution is 'simple'. The fact that so many people find the parent's post informative, saddens me.
...were used to support the attack. But, hey, never let a good crisis go to waste, right?
I understand that cutting of the money supply for terrorist is very effective, and I can understand bitcoin as it can move large amounts of money
Also, you need to understand that the main keypoint of bitcoin: is that it's distributed.
Bitcoin protocol advantage isn't that you can move these large amounts of money anonymously.
Bitcoin protocol advantage is that it's only the poeple involved that get to make the call, there's no central authority.
This lack of central authority is done by the distribution. Every single transaction is broadcast to the whole network, and is stored into the blockchain: a huge virtual ledger of which every single node in the network has local copy. That's far from anonymous. That's publicly broadcast.
The bitcoin protocol still provides pseudonymity. In the blockchain, transaction aren't stored together with some username/identity. There is none as there's no central authority with which to register. Instead in the blockchain, transaction are signed with cryptographic key. And each user's wallet generates constantly new cryptographic keys specific to this user.
For an individual, it might not be easy to track every single such use of cryptographic key, in order to be able to trace a "money trail" between 2 users on the network.
But for a government, even more for an entity as the whole european union, that's well within their capability of "Big Data" analysis.
Much more easy to track than plain cash: with plain cash, you only get to read the serial number when the ATM handle out the money at one end of the chain, and when the deposit machine gets the cash back later. Any transaction that has happened in between is left to the imagination of the detective.
Whereas with bitcoin, it's as if every single movement of cash note was publicly broadcast. Be it when the cash changes hands (e.g.: an actual transaction between a merchant and a seller) or simply changes pocket (metaphorically symbolising the constant stream of generated crypto key as part as the normal function of a wallet).
A single individual might not follow it.
But a government could at least do the tracking, alghouth they can't block it (that's the whole point of the "no central authority").
Also, law is still law, and all the law against money laundering still apply against any institution that handles money. No matter if the money is plain cash, or credit cards or, in this case a weird protocole with no central authority.
BTC exchange, payment processor, etc. all requires user registration, and all require all the other procedures in place against laundering.
Simply, the transactions happening bitcoin will happen without any control from 3rd party (just like cash changing hands, although better traceable, as mentionned above).
Unlike transaction with credit card and central payment processor like Pay-pal, where the Visa, MasterCard or Paypal companies are able to freeze accounts and reverse transactions.
Bitcoin protocole still offers advantage for the average citizen: absence of monopoly.
(mainly the main advantage of cash, except that it also works online.
or the main advantage of SEPA payment, except that it works anywhere in the world, not only between european bank account supporting the protocol and a faster speed being minute to hours instead of next-day to days)
Meaning:
- freedom to chose one provider and interact as long as everbody else supports the same protocole.
- not a single company being jury judge and executionner (like with credit card companies and charge-backs), but instead enabling complexe multi-party scheme, were seller and buyer can freely agree before hand on a 3rd party arbiter (a role that the various consumer associations and certification groups in europe would be happy to play)
- not being at the whim of Visa/MasterCard freezing acount. Currently it's not possible to use a Credit Card to pay anything that they don't like.
(e.g.: you can't donate money to whistleblower. Wiki
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Do you imagine the MIddle East had liberal democracies before the US and Europe came in and destroyed it? The Middle East has been a totalitarian shithole for a long, long time. It never had "human rights" in the Western sense. And the whole point of many of these Islamic movements is to get rid of "national sovereignty" and restore an Islamic empire. And creating that Islamic empire isn't for the good of humanity, it is to take revenge for the fact that Europe successfully defended itself and kicked out the first few Islamic empires.
Now, I disapprove of the US and European governments meddling in the Middle East. It is clearly not very effective, it is very costly, and it just riles up the people who live there. But the West does not bear any moral responsibility for the plight of the people in the Middle East, and it isn't our responsibility to ensure that they have "national sovereignty and human rights". In fact, the Middle East probably has achieved more "national sovereignty and human rights" with US and European meddling than without, it's just that the price we are paying for it is too high for us.