You know what still works? Debit cards. Credit cards. I’d assume checks. Possibly other apps (though I’d be afraid to put so much money through them personally).
BTC does nothing good special here unless you’re trying to launder money.
Why does the bank / government need to know were/how I'm spending my money?
I'm already taxed when I'm paid every month, I pay my property taxes. This is not about tax evasion or money laundering for me.
Because they need that information to identify and trace tax evasion and money laundering.
> This is not about tax evasion or money laundering for me.
Oh, since you said so, I guess it must be true. No need for the government to actually check using information.
But do they need to check that for every citizen without a warrant in close to real-time? Is panopticon the only way for it to be effective? Is this what citizens want?
Isn't that what IRS audits are for?
This discussion reminds me of the automatic CSAM scanning on phones (Apple iirc?). Seems like a noble cause but you sure are handing over a lot of power.
You also had a lot of tax fraud. It was easy to lie about things like how many children you had for tax discounts, so people often did. This particular loophole was closed by Social Security Numbers, but the principle is the same: records deter lies. The IRS often knows how much tax you should pay before you file.
This isn't all about government overstep. It's also about the giving up of your privacy to for-profit entities.
Regarding the gov: In the US, citizens have protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Forcing nearly all transactions into the view of the gov is an unreasonable search.
The US government regulates itself on the circumstances to which it can search data it already has the power to obtain all the time. Searches become unreasonable when law enforcement does not provide a valid reason to search & acquire information in front of the judiciary. But if the judiciary rules it to be reasonable, the government should have a way to obtain such data. Promoting the use of untraceable transactions like cash is essentially preventing the government from ever procuring any relevant data even if it would be reasonable and relevant.
It doesn't make much difference to me personally, bank records have never been subject to 4th amendment protections and Americans don't freak out about that, don't see why financial transactions are much different. Cash transactions are already not supposed to be private because records are supposed to be kept, it's just easy not to keep records which is a fact exploited by criminals.
Regarding ISPs, you can still hide that info from the gov by routing through a no-log vpn. Your proposal seemingly prohibits that type of mask, purposely.
We cannot give up individual freedoms because it makes police work harder.
The IRS sets a cash threshold above which you are required to manually report the personal information of the payer (ie Form 8300). The headline notes the Israeli threshold at 6000 shekels, the IRS sets it at 10000 dollars. We've established the threshold, we're just haggling over the number.
I never expressed any intention to allow people to hide from the government based on technical hacks that won't realistically be known or used by most people anyway. If you don't want government to read your stuff, that's the law's/legislature's job to determine that, like the Stored Communications Act. While criminals and citizens alike have equal access to technical loopholes, the law alone distinguishes between them.
Financial crime is the backbone of organized crime, it is the foundation of hostile spycraft and funds the most depraved regimes. I absolutely refuse to regress to the era where the mafia and cartel leaders ruled the streets and stood toe to toe with law enforcement. Anti-laundering laws are written in blood and they are designed to prevent those scenarios, not tie law enforcement hands then blame them for not working hard enough. You're going to have to do more than spout libertarian cliches to convince anyone.
Assuming you're talking about the US, this really only happened because of the dramatic increase in organized crime prosecutions in the 70s (mostly due to the departure of Hoover), the RICO act which significantly increased sentences for typical mafia activities like drugs/loansharking/extortion/etc, and the witness protection program which changed informing from a likely death sentence to a potential to turn a new leaf. Money laundering only became a crime in 1986, the original BSA mainly just introduced cash reporting requirements (which had a threshold that at the time was two times GDP per capita). Also things like carjacking, cigarette trafficking across states were made federal crimes which again made prosecution easier. "Follow the money" is touted as this law enforcement panacea but historically is not really that effective. Which is why for instance most major narcotics trafficking cases today almost always rely heavily on wiretaps and informants/government witnesses.
And the now standard practice of adding money laundering charges to non drug cases really only started happening after 9/11. So in my opinion there is a lot of evidence that these laws have had rather limited benefits in terms of stopping crime but because of the erosion of the threshold due to inflation are having an increasingly large negative effect on privacy of regular people.
Unlike what you imply, money laundering is not about tacking on charges but rather detecting and tracing criminal organizations so it can be effectively prosecuted. Money laundering's critical role in organized crime is now widely understood [1]:
- without money laundering, criminal finance is easy to discover
- criminalizing it provides a legal basis for international cooperation that wouldn't otherwise exist to pursue global organizations
There also aren't any Great Depressions and bank runs anymore, but we don't ask to remove those finance laws even though they historically didn't prevent the Great Depression.
[1] https://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/organized-crime/module-4/key-is...
I would also push back against this idea. The two biggest "rogue regimes," Iran and Russia, generate hundreds of billions in clean money and substantial portions of their budget from oil/gas sales. Iran just has to have somewhat unique financial relationships with Turkey/China/UAE due to sanctions and their removal from SWIFT but I don't think that's really what you or most people mean by organized crime. They don't need financial crimes to make money. In fact their governments are often the victims of massive financial crimes and looting (Russia during privatization, Russia today with corrupt government contracts, Iran with subsidized goods like gasoline being smuggled out of the country on a massive scale, etc).
North Korea is maybe an example of what you're talking about but as a percent of total financial crimes its activities are small. They're also aren't doing structured cash deposits in bank accounts or whatever. They're stealing money through phishing and wire transfers or crypto hacks. After stolen money has been sent through 3 or so jurisdictions the amount of international cooperation needed to recover it will take at least a year.
Transaction records also ensure hiding domestic sanction violations is extraordinarily difficult (unless you're state-backed like Swiss or Chinese banks). You won't see these countries rely on financial crime because these transaction systems already largely prevent them, few organizations really think they can get away with it. For example, North Korea cannot use cash to transfer large amounts of money because that's not even allowed in the first place, it has to use things like wire transfers. They are already subject to a monitored financial system that blocks major undocumented cash transactions. Once the records are mandatory, international data search & coordination can be made more efficient independently.
Can you imagine the government forcing 2.55 of entire swaths of the economy over to VISA?
Debit transactions also have fees.
If the government really wants people to switch to digital, kill VISA fees.
VISA is the 'Organized Crime Syndicate' that has a stranglehold on the entire digital economy.
Gov. can't do it because banks/visa practically own them.
It would take a Jimmy Carter or Bernie Sanders for that.
Institutional Dems. won't ever do it.
It's clearly not the only intent of the law. Bu when a government does something to benefit large and entrenched players in the market, we can all be forgiven for thinking that the fix is in.