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EU Proposes End of Anonymity For Bitcoin and Prepaid Card Users (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In June the European Commission will propose new legislation to effectively end the possibility of anonymous payment, by forcing users of virtual currencies like Bitcoin, and of prepaid credit cards, to provide identity details. Additionally the EC intends to propose monitoring inter-bank transfers within Europe, a measure which had not been implemented with the launch of the EU-US Terrorist Financing Tracking Programme (TFTP). Though the proposed measures are intended to heap new pressure on the financing of terrorism, a report from Interpol last week concluded that terrorist funding methods have not changed substantially in recent years, stating 'Despite third party reporting suggesting the use of anonymous currencies like Bitcoin by terrorists to finance their activities, this has not been confirmed by law enforcement.'
How does EU legislation have any effect on Bitcoin? Just ignore them, same as those who legislate the value of PI.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There was literally something on some TV news program yesterday about how easy it is to set up shell companies in the US for the purposes of money laundering. It was hilarious how many lawyers were busted telling the undercover reporter how to do it. Only one lawyer they interviewed said no.
How the hell do they think this can be deanonymize crypto currencies when they can't even keep people from setting up anonymous businesses?
Funny how these "Terrorist tracking programs" fail to track the US government, the Saudi government and a bunch of other western governments when these happily finance terrorism. But god forbid you try to rent a US movie with a foreign credit card to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you terrorist you.
Better yet, make cash go away.
Some people really want this, as bad as it sounds. With even the last anonymous payment method gone, the state is happy as it can tax precisely what its worth (of course only those people who can't afford to have all their companies owned by a holding in the crocodile islands), and the banks are happy as they can sell precise data about their customers to various people (perhaps even legally). They are even happier as now they can also introduce negative interests on the money you store at the bank. It can be used to "keep money in movement", to stifle the economy, and fill the purses of the banks: You now rather tend to take loans and pay those back with interest, because collecting the money in advance got more expensive.
Better yet, make cash go away.
There are times when I prefer to take a road trip and be anonymous. Paying with cash reminds me of my youth and early adult life. Money cannot buy happiness but is can finance good memories.
and ban all anonymity.
yes that will teach the terrorists to not bank with HSBC... o wait.
In a hypothetical (impossible) universe where you could actually prove that certain levels of encryption cost certain levels of lives in crime and terrorism, I wonder how many lives are worth protecting your emails...how many lives are worth transactional security...etc.
Though if you open things up too much I guess it goes the other way, since if people can't hide anything you wind up with a ton of political prisoners, and way more crimes of opportunity.
And yet terrorism has increased, if anything. Even in Canada. Go figure.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Oh yeah - bitcoins are used by individuals to hide their transactions from advertisers, malware vendors, and parasitic financial services companies, while networks of shell companies are reserved for our ruling elite to hide their transactions from the unwashed masses (and tax authorities)... Tell ya what, you make your public, and I'll make mine public...
I'm sure the Germans were all over this. "Show us your papers". Pretty soon all Europeans will need to be tagged with a special marker. Just don't mention the War!
We The People are creating these things for convenience's sake, not for government to track our every purchase as part of their growing panopticon.
One of the natural benefits of cash for time immemorial was the ultimate anonymity. We should not give this up for a power grab by government. ISIS, for example, sells millions in oil every day. Go kill them and interrupt this massive physical operation instead of stripping our long-term freedoms.
They will lie and say it is only for terrorists then instantaneously start using it for mundane crime. They have done this before.
In the late 90s under Clinton they requested additional spy power because terrorists! They then used it on drug sellers. When questioned, they did not even bother with the sophistry that drug selling is kinda sorta terrorism. The baldfaced liars stated, "Whelp, the law doesn't actuay say terrorism only."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
To do that would require an equivalent to cash that didn't loose 2.7% of its value every time it was transfered and it would need to be unfreezeable like cash and as anonymous as possible without compromising the ability to verify the currency as valid and be easy to transfer without much knowledge.
Bitcoin actually has most of that covered.
With the exception of ease of transfer.
While not anonymous it is still good enough for casual use.
I think its best points are no loss on transfer and that your funds can't be frozen *looking at you paypal*
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Lets just be clear what this and the increasing discouragement of cash is really about. It's about preventing capital flight in Liberal Nations whose demographics are collapsing and whose social programs are expanding beyond maintainable scopes.
It is inconvenient for your governing authority to have some of your life remain private. Suckks, right?
Not really, as it turns out... we can just unelect politicians like that as fast as the law allows.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Same way cellphones do?
Extended outage? You may have more problems with the rioters but yes that's an issue. I don't believe its a insurmountable problem with a digital currency but afaik offline transactions are beyond the capability of blockchain based currency.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Thing is that it's not the tax thing that is the problem. Tax predates electronic, identifiable transactions by a few 1000 years or so, and most people don't really have a problem paying (give or take the disagreements about who pays what percentage and how much should be taken overall, which will never end).
The issue is the creepy and dangerous big brother knowing every last thing you do thing, combined with the just as creepy but probably not quite as dangerous thousands-of-private-companies knowing the same. That's why I use cash whenever humanly possible.
Require all Euro-bank involved expenditures above 100 EUR by members of the Saudi royal family to require tracking and approval.
Oh, shit, did I say that out loud?
Welcome fellows,,
I am here to state that, since the takeover of /. by the "others". It seems the quality of articles has risen significantly. I hope this is an on going trend, as I have been a faithful slashdotter for 20+ years, and would enjoy remaining to do so.
Good job peoples,, keep it up..
and Thank YOU!!!!!
Europe doesn't have any privacy for at last ten years now.
It's all being monitored and logged, weighed and used against you in the court that is our society.
“He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:16-17
Things are getting Biblical round here.
Have gnu, will travel.
Better yet, make cash go away.
I remember speaking with an economist years ago who said if you wanted to eliminate crime nearly overnight just make the largest bill $10. Very difficult for Tony Soprano to transact crime if $50,000 was a half-a-million pieces of paper.
How low in $ amounts can a "Suspicious activity report" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... go?
Even with very advanced tracking, small populations and reconciling every account, nothing seems to stop, find, track or block or slow the activities of interest to law enforcement.
Are the interesting accounts are so large in amount and so numerous in banking products that all gov fines can be seen as a fraction of the cost of doing business?
Will people showing photo ID to import a few books online really help?
The other method is just work of mouth within cults, faith groups, business and other secretive banking communities going back generations.
The only way for the EU to break that is with security services using human intelligence assets creating long term relationships with banks and communities over decades. Flood areas with lots of informants, attempt to turn every released prisoner before they move back into their communities.
The line about 'The sources of funding of the operatives in the EU are largely unknown" shows the EU is just using contractor based US methods of signals intelligence hoping a bank or electronic account is in use and the hidden digital data is just waiting on the networks with weak US supplied encryption.
Great for the contractors bank accounts and no bid over time, renting "security" services to the EU but not much use trying to find accounts that dont exist.
The "be funded by the travellers themselves" shows hidden human support networks that do not show up in digital sweeps by nations who have contractors and officials who can only think in terms of tools to map digital bank accounts.
The other issues is the total lack of any ID system in the EU and lack of any visa system in and out. So many unknown people are just wondering around with fake, no or some random non EU nations ID's with cash and never have contact with any gov.
If a person is in a nation and not a tourist, who are they and what are they doing? Why are they even in that country? Track the "cash" that flows per person. Where did the cash serial number last get entered into the legal banking system? Are the serial numbers very old? New? Brand new? Where did the no ID person get the "cash" from to "exchange"? What bank or company was the last trackable location of that cash? Work back and find the "funders" that are handing cash out that ends up in the hands of interesting people. Another nations gov banks?
Want cash to exchange and no national photo ID? No cash out until a person is fully documented. Get CCTV images of all people even entering to exchange cash but then back away if asked for ID. Share that face EU wide and with international police forces. Use undercover teams to get photographs of anyone changing cash on the streets or looking to exchange cash. Use criminals that have been turned informant to set up massive fake cash exchange networks. They will bend in with their community skills and can get a lot of gossip and images of all people seeking their unique services at competitive rates.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Great idea. Then they can drive all those pesky small-time mom-and-pop businesses out of the market entirely when they can't afford the exhorbitant fees charged per transaction. The world will be such a better place for everyone when it's all Walmart/Target/{insert name of Big Box Store here}.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Our "war on drugs" creates a perfect method for terrorists to get money into the U.S. The retail drug trade generates lots of cash, but some of it has to go out of the country to pay suppliers in third world countries. All the the terrorists have to do is make deals with those third world suppliers (if they aren't one and the same). The terrorists give the suppliers cash from their backers and the drug dealers give cash to the terrorists designees in the U.S, settling accounts. It's simple. Why bother with bitcoin or cash smuggling?
I Propose End of EU.
Yes you did.
And it should be repeated.
"Terrorist Financing Tracking Programme" is it a program to finance terrorists using tracking? Or is it Trivial FTP?
The largest bill is now $100. This is equivalent to $10 in 1948 according to the CPI inflation indicator. .
As time goes on, I doubt ( barring runaway inflation ), the US will print larger bills, so the $100 will become less and less.
During the Iraq war, the US airlifted $12 billion of $100 bills, which weighed in at 363 tons. This shows that cash is no longer useful for large transactions already.
As a side note: most of it was untracked, and melted away. I know of a distant relative who worded as contractor and returned home to Turkey with suitcases full of cash.
Better yet, make cash go away.
I remember speaking with an economist years ago who said if you wanted to eliminate crime nearly overnight just make the largest bill $10. Very difficult for Tony Soprano to transact crime if $50,000 was a half-a-million pieces of paper.
I guess that's why there was no crime in all those countries where the currency was devalued so much people would burn their paycheck for heat because it was cheaper than buying coal.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Typical, the economist is an idiot who can't think outside the small box his teaching has kept him in.
In the absence of cash, an alternative untraceable currency will simply take its place. Necessity is the mother of all invention.
This has nothing to do with so called terrorism and all to do with bankers and other big money wanting to control bitcoin.
Typical, the economist is an idiot who can't think outside the small box his teaching has kept him in. In the absence of cash, an alternative untraceable currency will simply take its place. Necessity is the mother of all invention.
Economists come in many forms, from student to BA to MA to PhD to professor. When speaking with the later in say a graduate level microeconomics class one will spend a lot of time investigating adaptation of individuals and unexpected consequences. Personally I don't consider people who took some econ classes or even have a BA in economics to be economists. Although they may play one on TV.
Better yet, make cash go away.
I remember speaking with an economist years ago who said if you wanted to eliminate crime nearly overnight just make the largest bill $10. Very difficult for Tony Soprano to transact crime if $50,000 was a half-a-million pieces of paper.
I recently watched The Man Who Fell to Earth staring David Bowie. This alien visitor had a stash of hundreds of gold wedding rings that he bartered/pawned as needed. I suppose we'll have to serialize, register and track all sorts of highly portable valuable items too.
In China, the largest bill is 100 RMB, which is about 15 US$. Have they eliminated crime overnight?
That's the first I hear about it and I've been buying pre-paid credit cards every few months for the last four years. Nobody ever asked for my social insurance number.
I propose we eliminate the economists.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Cash transactions over a certain amount are already prohibited. Here in Belgium, you're not allowed to use cash to buy a new car, for example. There's a maximum amount in euros, and a maximum percentage of the total price that can be paid in cash.
And the funny thing is that Bitcoin is actually incredibly easy to monitor since the entire blockchain containing all transactions is public. I would imagine intelligence agencies actually love bitcoin. It gives the impression of anonimity (anyone can just make a new wallet without needing any kind of identification) but the money flows can easily be followed and as soon as someone uses the wallet to order a pizza, all the previous "anonymous" transactions for that wallet suddenly become tied to you.
The only problem for intelligence agencies are the tumblers, but merely using those can probably put you onto the list of suspicious people to be tracked. Receiving money from a tumbler is just as suspicious as carrying a bag full of cash. Not illegal, but suspicious anyway.
If it's intelligence they want, they should be encouraging Bitcoin.
With even the last anonymous payment method gone, the state is happy as it can tax precisely what its worth (of course only those people who can't afford to have all their companies owned by a holding in the crocodile islands)
But then, if ALL movements are traced, maybe the state will finally be able to tax those movements to the Croc islands. Which would be a GOOD thing.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
HAHAHAHA
As if that would ever apply to what they consider real people.
No, these measures will only affect and impact folks like us.
You can rest assured there will be (or most likely already are) loopholes precisely designed to ensure one can simply bypass all these pesky privacy and taxation issues... so long as you're a Legal Entity or own one.
We already have one, that worked well for millennia: gold and silver. And actually anything that has a high value density and doesn't rot away in time can be used as a currency.
There's a good reason for something, and there's the real reason.
This is about taxation. It's about knowing where everyone has all their money, so the state has full and complete power to take it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You can also get discounts at a lot of stores if you ask when you use cash since they don't have to pay that 2-3% surcharge.
The only way I could see this is with how few jobs are available some places and that drug dealers, movers, etc wouldn't be able to find work. That's probably a pretty high amount of people involved in illegal businesses that wouldn't be able to make money otherwise.
Isn't that why bit coins are pooled some places, so you really can't tell who used the money for what? Like I deposit 100 bitcoins into bitcoinebay and when I spend it it's just someone else's random bitcoin so it doesn't actually lead back to me?
Time to start buying gold pressed latinum.
But then whose economic advice will I use to just do the exact opposite of to make money?
The main inconvenience of Bitcoin is that it doesn't reliably lose value when you sit on it. That's a huge flaw.
There's nothing like $HOME
I think politicians and friends are doing a lots of dirty stuff too, so I guess they will keep some way to transfer wealth. Blocking bitcoin is like blocking email or torrent, you can't because it's decentralized. They can try, good luck!
Better yet, make cash go away.
I remember speaking with an economist years ago who said if you wanted to eliminate crime nearly overnight just make the largest bill $10. Very difficult for Tony Soprano to transact crime if $50,000 was a half-a-million pieces of paper.
Yes. Absolutely. Because criminals immediately give up crime altogether if you make one aspect of it more difficult.
Sorry bud, but that's not how it works in real life. What happens when you close a loophole for crime is that the criminals move on to the next weakest link in the system.
Wherever there is a system with money involved, there will be a way of gaming that system for personal gain. It doesn't matter how many loopholes you close, there will always be ways for dishonest people to make money from it. It doesn't even have to be criminal; most of the banking industry's profits are based on exploiting exactly this kind of thing.
While the USD reliably looses a bit of value every year due to inflation bitcoin can halve, quarter, double or quadruple its value in the same time its neither stable or consistent.
This doesn't make it unusable but I sure wouldn't want my savings in bitcoin at this point in time.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
That is one of the reasons why the Bitcoin exchanges are treated as money laundering services.... because that is precisely what is going on there.
Spoken as someone who has never seen the aftermath of a hurricane.
Gold and Silver have a number of flaws, not the least of which is that they can be devalued by new sources of those commodities. The other huge issue is that they have considerable bulk when trying to engage in high value transactions, thus engaging significant costs when trying to execute those kind of transactions. Indeed it was that issue of transferring gold & silver which resulted in the concept of bank notes in the first place where certificates of possession of gold were exchanged instead of the actual gold itself.
It is the spread of those certifications of a deposit of gold that also causes a whole bunch of the games being played in the global monetary system, particularly if the depositing authority (whoever that might be) decides to issues more certificates than they actually have of that commodity.
Furthermore, gold is still traceable in a variety of methods, not the least of which is having a serial number stamped on the gold bars or coins. Generally that is useful so far as having is already assayed as having a certain purity from some certifying authority (often a government of some sort). Modern technique of performing isotopic analysis can also go so far as determining which specific mine that some gold might have even come from in the first place and be used to trace the gold from specific individuals as well. That isn't perfect, but I wouldn't guarantee that any given briefcase full of gold coins is untraceable either, where melting down that gold to anonymize the gold isn't always an option.
What's a criminal to do! Technology is just making it so difficult to get away with crimes. But you can be that burglars and armed robbers will like it. When crooks have no way to transfer or hold money they tend to resort to either hiding it in a suitcase of burying it in the ground. There are certain motels in Florida that have always catered to guys with money in suitcases. You know how it is. You get rich in New Jersey and when it gets too hot with the cops you head for Florida and try to live in a motel that has extra security as that million bucks in your suitcase does make you a target. And there are also people with suitcases full of cash waiting for their dope to be delivered as well. Making it more difficult to hide money or wealth is a pretty wonderful goal.
Iirc after sandy people were looting the grocery stores of canned goods and perishables not that there was anyone there to pay.... But if offline transactions can be made that should be able to handle it even after a hurricane there should be no shortage of cars or car cellphone chargers.
Now if we're talking a emp then yeah you best be using a non digital currency.
Like I said earlier afaik offline transactions cannot be done with any of the current digital currency's but some commercial services do allow offline transactions already eg:Square.
Just to be clear by offline I mean with no internet connection.
Some payment providers think it to mean transactions done in person.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I see what you did there. :-)
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