The Bank Robber | Hacker News Reader

The Bank Robber

newyorker.com

75 pointsca98am7913 comments

This is an interesting case because the bank claims he stole the records to sell them to rival banks, while he claims he stole them to be a whistle blower to foreign governments.

Things in the banks favour of this story are:

1) he was convicted in a Swiss court

2) he didn't actually approach any foreign governments for the 2 years he worked at HSBC until the day after the Swiss government brought him in for questioning about the theft of the bank's data.

3) He was caught trying to sell the bank data in Beirut.

In his favour:

1) The French government has no plans to prosecute him and allegedly hasn't paid him for the information.

I guess this is a case of one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter?

The article disputes your second point:

But in March, 2008, before fleeing Geneva, he had sent e-mails to British and German intelligence agencies, announcing, “I have the whole list of clients of one of the world’s top five private banks.” (The agencies did not pursue this opportunity.) He also contacted a French revenue inspector named Jean-Patrick Martini. During the summer of 2008, Falciani arranged a secret meeting with Martini in a French village across the Swiss border. Martini brought along a psychologist, who helped him come to the conclusion that Falciani seemed credible about the provenance of his data.

(he fled Geneva in late 2008)

The fact that the Swiss convicted him of industrial espionage when the main point of the article is how important bank secrecy (and it's protection of tax evasion) to the Swiss shouldn't really help anything.

While not the main use of bank secrecy, I find it interesting that people rarely mention the benefit that bank secrecy provides those living in countries that are on the brink of civil war, that are not goverend by rule of law, or where fleeing is a real possibility in the near future...i.e. the assumption is usually that the governments seeking information on their citizens are the "good guys"

60 Minutes covered this same story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hsbc-swiss-leaks-investigation-6...

It's interesting to combine the reaction in the comments here with the usual HN comment consensus on privacy.

So, usually, it goes like this: privacy is good, government has no business snooping around, and Bitcoin-like solutions for financial privacy are the future of resisting "the system". But in this case, consensus is different: privacy is bad, governments of the world need to know financial information of individuals, and whoever tries to protect this information is evil.

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

Is it the same people arguing in both directions, or signs that different groups have different interests and are attracted to/comment on different stories?

In the former, a small closed source centralized authority has all the information and power.

In the latter, everyone has the information, so the balance of power is evened.

I agree. It might be impossible to effectively govern ourselves when adhering to strict idealogical principles.

In other words, individual right to privacy may be generally a good principle that we may agree to, but society is too complicated to not resort to pragmatism and there will always be exceptions. Is it not the same with every other idealogical principle by which we govern ourselves?

The 2015 UBS Future of Finance Challenge, so to speak, leaves you with the convenient impression that the investment bank is fighting becoming obsolete due to technological innovation; until it becomes this accessibly clear that the grand objective is understanding how the Bitcoin machinery works for example to improve the techniques of banking secrecy.

What a gong show... Falciani aside, we have big banks fully implicated in high street robbery while suffering next to no damage (insignificant fines/settlements, no arrests) on one side, and on the other side we have government actors acting like cheap, incoherent buffoons, claiming one thing and doing another, participating in international diplomatic displays worthy of kindergarten.

Not that any of this is new, but the evidence that's accumulated thus far, particularly in view of the leaks over the past few years, would have you believe that something ought to happen. Yet HSBC and the likes are alive and well, so are their executives, and the only thing governments seem to have ramped up is their capacity for ridicule. The people in power seem to have little to no incentive to change the game, yet they keep getting voted in (or, in fact, just placed there). What recourse does the populace have at this point, short of throwing away the entire economic apparatus?

Since we live in a network of oligarchies, apparently, that would also involve throwing out the political apparatus as well, non? Interlocking problems.

What's the origin of the term "gong show" as you use it? I'm curious because the host of the Gong Show as mentioned in the article, and apparently liked to create fanciful stories.....

The best way to rob a bank is to own (or pwn) a bank.

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