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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> If the underlying activity is a crime, we already have laws to deal with that

This is like complaining about DUIs being illegal because we already have laws banning manslaughter.

> Why is any attempt at financial privacy deemed money laundering?

It's not. Layering per se isn't illegal. It's suspicious but legal, in the same category as carting a semi-automatic into a grocery store in an open-carry state.

> Why does making any tool that help law abiding citizens have financial privacy, also guilty of money laundering?

It doesn't. Practically every prosecution of money-laundering services included evidence of knowledge by the operator that their customers included people committing crimes.

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> This is like complaining about DUIs being illegal because we already have laws banning manslaughter.

The premise of DUIs is to punish a person acting recklessly. The premise of KYC is to punish a third party for not conducting mass surveillance on predominantly innocent people in case one of them commits a crime. It's hard to see how these are analogous.

> Practically every prosecution of money-laundering services included evidence of knowledge by the operator that their customers included people committing crimes.

This is quite a fig leaf for any entity operating at scale. The customers of any major bank will obviously include people committing crimes -- they have millions of customers. They also have thousands of employees, and then some percentage of them will be criminals as well. Expecting the intersection of these to be literally zero is an unreasonable standard.

More to the point, the underlying problem is what it incentivizes them to do, i.e. manufacture some opaque and arbitrary indicators and then conduct mass surveillance and punish innocent people for running afoul of secret rules.

> premise of DUIs is to punish a person acting recklessly. The premise of KYC is to punish a third party for not conducting mass surveillance on predominantly innocent people in case one of them commits a crime. It's hard to see how these are analogous

You don't see how a bank not doing KYC and thereby financing terrorists and Pyongyang could be seen as behaving recklessly?

> quite a fig leaf for any entity operating at scale

Sure. It's why a lot of anti-money laundering isn't prosecuted and why OP's complaint strikes me as silly.

> conduct mass surveillance

U.S. AML law is actually somewhat terrible for mass surveillance. Records are held at each private institution. This is why, if you've ever been party to wire fraud, it takes the Feds hours to days to gather records. It's pull, not push.

The practical arms of mass surveillance are the credit/debit card rails. (And, increasingly, crypto.)

> You don't see how a bank not doing KYC and thereby financing terrorists and Pyongyang could be seen as behaving recklessly?

Even if that were a reasonable premise, the analogy would then be automakers not doing KYC and thereby enabling drunk drivers to have cars. Which is a much more controversial claim, and it's not at all obvious why carmakers should be the ones deciding who gets to drive.

Which is the reason the premise is unreasonable. Is it reckless for a general store to sell ski masks without investigating their customers? That's not the right place to address the problem.

> It's why a lot of anti-money laundering isn't prosecuted and why OP's complaint strikes me as silly.

Laws that are commonly violated and selectively enforced are bad laws.

> U.S. AML law is actually somewhat terrible for mass surveillance.

Just having it inside of megabanks is already mass surveillance, because then the bank is using it for things and the user can't switch to a bank that doesn't collect the information because the law prohibits that.

Moreover, the data is dangerous as soon as it's collected even if it isn't currently being centrally indexed, because its existence allows the central database to be created ex post facto. Turnkey totalitarianism is bad.

> The practical arms of mass surveillance are the credit/debit card rails.

How are you distinguishing this? Those companies are financial institutions that have to do KYC/AML.

Drivers under the influence isn't necessarily reckless, but is banned due to a strong association with reckless action.

The crime of DUI is not contingent on the actual facts, risk, and danger presented in a given situation.

The association with realized harm is probabilistic in nature.

I agree. The problem isn't drunk driving. The problem is drunk crashing.

Both can be a problem, depending on the problem statement, but the harm clearly occurs with the crashing.

Drunk driving is an upstream pre-requisite to drunk crashing.

All skills require practice, but they simply won't let us get good.

> Drivers under the influence isn't necessarily reckless, but is banned due to a strong association with reckless action

I’m trying to understand this. It is well documented that consuming alcohol impairs thinking, reaction time, motor function, etc. How is the decision to drive a multi-thousand pound vehicle in the proximity of other humans while in that state not itself reckless?

You seem to be arguing that the problem primarily exists when some percentage of impaired drivers start to drive recklessly. But given the baseline impairment, how is the act of driving not inherently reckless?

Drunk driving crashes don’t just happen because someone decided to go crazy and drive 130mph or something similar. They also happen because the impaired person fails at basic aspects of driving like staying in their lane, stopping in time, seeing pedestrians, etc.

> The crime of DUI is not contingent on the actual facts, risk, and danger presented in a given situation.

DUI is a crime based on the fact that people driving under the influence are significantly more likely to harm others, and the baseline risk is high enough to make driving in such a state unacceptable. Even with laws in place banning it, alcohol is a leading cause of vehicle related deaths and there are quite a few of them every year.

It seem problematic to argue that these laws aren’t based on actual facts and real danger when both are well documented.

> The association with realized harm is probabilistic in nature

The same could be said about almost every kind of harm you can think of. It’s unclear what someone is supposed to take from this statement.

My point is that the law doesn't actually look at situational risk or recklessness. It is a rough heuristic to approximate it. Im not even necessarily arguing against it, but highlighting the common conflation between harm, actual risk, and heuristically approximated risk.

A cop or the law makes no pretension of trying to evaluate if a driver actually put someone at risk in a given scenario. A judge doesn't care if you were alone on the road or how far you were going. A judge doesn't even care if the car is on or moving.

>alcohol is a leading cause of vehicle related deaths and there are quite a few of them every year. It seem problematic to argue that these laws aren’t based on actual facts and real danger when both are well documented.

I would say there is little systemic logic to the rate and severity of penalties. In 33% of pedestrian fatalities, the pedestrian was drunk. In 16%, the driver was drunk.[1]

Similarly, the common DUI threshold is 0.08 BAC.

Being awake for 17 hours (working late) is similar to having a BAC of 0.05%. [2]

Being awake for 24 hours (working a double shift) is similar to having a BAC of 0.10%

Simply talking on a phone while driving has been shown to be similar to a BAC of 0.08%.

Texting while driving is equivalent to a BAC of 0.19%! [3]

The fine for texting while driving starts $20, but the total cost can be over $162 due to court costs.

>The same could be said about almost every kind of harm you can think of. It’s unclear what someone is supposed to take from this statement.

Im just making the point that we we criminalize isnt as clear cut as one might think, and people often conflate actual harm, actual risk, and heuristically approximated risk.

More generally, I think the intersection with probability and criminal justice is fascinating, particularly the criminalizing risk factors. e.g. if we took a similar approach, what percent confidence would we need that someone will commit murder to preemptively lock them up based on risk.

https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/GHSA-Pedest...

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/work-hour-training-for-nurses/long... https://facilities.uw.edu/blog/posts/2016/07/26/texting-and-...

How do you figure drivers driving under the influence aren’t reckless? Are they not aware of the risk? Are they not consciously disregarding it? Or are you using some weird definition of recklessness?

I think what I find interesting in the application of statistics, and how a population characteristic can be different from individual circumstance. Real world risk isnt categorical, it variable.

On average, drunk driving obviously poses more risk than regular driving. However, drunk driving isnt always risky, and does not necessarily or uniformly put others at risk at the factual case by case level.

Edit: I think this makes it an interesting intersection between probability, heuristics, and criminal justice. It highlights the difference between a categorical model of the world, and reality, i.e. Probability is an abstraction and property of the model, not the object, in a deterministic universe.

Sometimes in this thread you appear to use the word risk to mean harm. I could probably agree with you if I was allowed to pick which you used in any given phrase. I agree that drunk driving isn’t always harmful but I can’t see any situation where it wouldn’t be more risky than the same driving act with a different intoxication level.

Otherwise I’m not sure how to resolve the contradiction between “drunk driving … poses more risk than regular driving” and “drunk driving isn’t always risky.”

You’re right to wonder how a system based on civil justifiability principles that include concretized injury also allows criminal penalty for risk without harm.

Im trying to be careful about my use of risk and harm.

In my excerpt you quoted, I meant what I said, and added an edit that might help.

On average, drunk drivers are more risky than sober drivers. However an individual is not the average. The more information you have about an individual circumstance, the more it can diverge from the average of the model.

For example, for the average smoker, the lifetime risk of developing lung cancer is typically estimated to be around 10% to 20%.

If you know the smoker is 80 years old, the chance they will get lung cancer in their lifetime is much lower.

If that 80 year old smoker is in an airplane barreling towards a mountain, their chance of getting lung cancer in their lifetime is 0% and less than an average non-smoker.

The same is true for anything described by risk (like drunk driving). If you plug in enough details around the circumstance, the risk changes. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down.

>You’re right to wonder how a system based on civil justifiability principles that include concretized injury also allows criminal penalty for risk without harm.

Thats a big part of what I was thinking. Drunk drivers can cause tremendous damage, and make up a clear portion of vehicle accidents, but I think the actual chance of accident per individual drunk trip is quite low in terms of percent. Lets say for argument it is 5%, which I think is very conservative.

If we were to use all data available, I wonder how well something like future violent crime could be predicted. At what point is that a rationale for incarceration based on risk alone? For context, the Average recidivism rate for the category of violent instant felons (spontaneous violence) is over 60%. Average recidivism rate for groups with particularly serious criminal records (Criminal History Category VI ) are over 85%![1 pg 14], and that is without all of the invasive but theoretically available information like psychological reports, medical records, race, income, and family history, ect.

What are the implications here for the viability of criminalizing risk without harm. I know these two cases are not the same, but I am still processing the differences, to see what distinctions can be made. Surely we shouldn't incarcerate based on risk alone. I suppose that is why I am posting these provocative but good faith questions.

https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...

My framing of what you're saying here is that you could put on a DUI defense that consists of "I knew the risk, it was zero, and so whether or not I acted in conscious disregard of that risk, I was not reckless."

I'm struggling to see how you could truly analyze the additional risk of being > .08 as zero but 1) I expect you're about to make an example and 2) I reckon the example is out there.

A one foot journey on a flat road during the day in good weather seems a bit degenerate, no?

Your "at what point is that a rationale for incarceration based on risk alone" reminds me a little of banning fireworks. We're not banning fireworks because we hate fun, we're banning them because of the risk of a deleterious effect that is not possible without an explosive. Do we incarcerate for fireworks possession? We usually do not. This is a thing that is worth thinking about.

I guess you could say we're not imprisoning because of the risk; we're imprisoning because drunk drivers are unable to follow a very bright line rule. Why would I be imprisoned for driving 180 mph? Same reason.

The point is that drunk driving is illegal even if you are driving perfectly fine.

Hell, being drunk just sitting in a parked, no ignition driver seat is illegal in some places.

Not sure how the second one is reckless in this context.

> Hell, being drunk just sitting in a parked, no ignition driver seat is illegal in some places.

But those laws are controversial for exactly that deviation from the norm, so it can't be held up as an instance of a widely agreed upon law which is uncontroversial to emulate.

Seems the norm is many places. I think it has been the law of the land for 40 years in California and nobody seems to care. having friend getting a DUI for trying to do the sleep it off instead of driving home seems like a standard coming of age story.

If anything, the consensus is we need harsher DUI laws and enforcement.

There are a lot of poorly drafted laws on the books that people don't care about because the nefarious edge case isn't widely enforced. That doesn't make them good laws, it makes them quietly dangerous laws.

Also, in general any kind of "people support harsher X" where X is Think Of The Children-related will be true, but that's a heuristic for discovering bad laws that should be repealed because of the known effect that Think Of The Children rhetoric causes people to support bad laws.

> Expecting the intersection of these to be literally zero is an unreasonable standard.

Nobody expects the intersection to be zero - not the banks, not the regulators. The rule is that banks must take prudent measures, and the definition of that has evolved over time (as financial crime has evolved over time).

Google "risk-based anti-money laundering approach" or if you'd like a more thorough introduction, listen to the Dark Money Files podcast.

I have libertarian sympathies too, especially since most AML rules were originally established to fight the war on drugs (my sympathies lie with the dealers, sorry). But I'm pretty happy to make life hard for terrorists, bad governments, and kleptocrats - who, unlike the characters in Reefer Madness, are not just bogeymen.

> It's suspicious but legal, in the same category as carting a semi-automatic into a grocery store in an open-carry state.

Any suspicion toward a US citizen for open-carrying a semi-automatic weapon (which you realize is like half of the handguns in circulation, right?) is entirely due to one's own prejudice and misconceptions. It is objectively not suspicious. The individual is openly carrying it, not hiding it. Concealed carry should not be suspicious either, but open carry should be less suspicious.

This would be a good moment to examine your biases against a fundamentally protected human right as recognized by our constitution.

>> It is objectively not suspicious.

It literally couldn't be any more suspicious. Carrying a jar of bees into a public space isn't illegal either but I'd be very suspicious of anyone doing it, and it doesn't even need any special protection in the constitution.

Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to be completely and unquestionably accepting of it in public spaces.

> Just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to be completely and unquestionably accepting of it in public spaces.

Nothing should be suspicious about exercising any of your rights as recognized by the US bill of rights and other constitutional amendments. Any of them. You can choose to be suspicious, but again that's a product of your own misconceptions. A gun is not a jar of bees. I'm not interested in debating straw man arguments. If you have a real argument to make, I'm all ears.

A gun is substantially more dangerous than a jar of bees. Dangerous things warrant suspicion. If you don't see that, I question your abilities in the realm of risk analysis.

> A gun is substantially more dangerous than a jar of bees. It also serves an actual purpose.

If you are just suspicious of anything "dangerous" without appropriate context then I question your peace of mind.

I was raised around law-abiding gun owners and have never felt unsafe in the presence of a firearm under normal circumstances provided the wielder is not intoxicated or otherwise exhibiting alarming behavior. It sounds like you just aren't used to guns.

I lived in a state for half my life where a concealed carry permit was one page of paper and $100. I knew a lot of people who exercised that right.

I wouldn’t describe any of them as legal scholars. Their knowledge extended to two amendments and not much more. I wouldn’t describe many of them as confident or brave either.

They could angry post with the best of them though. Loved arguments.

This is an example of bias based on your environment. These people you've encountered are not representative of every person living in the US who still believes in constitutional protections from the government.

It is more suspicious than not carrying. In terms of suspicision from a third party:

Concealed carry > open carry > no carry

The fact that concealed carry is undetectable and indiscernible from no carry does mean it is free from suspicion.

As a 2A proponent, a protected right is no protection from bias or suspicion. If I see an open carry in a strange context, I will wonder WTF they are doing.

Is a grocery store considered a strange context?

A friend of mine was open-carrying his pistol in his holster once and stopped at Walmart for some groceries. A woman called the police on him and claimed he was waving his gun around and threatening people.

So the police show up, talk to both of them, thankfully didn't shoot my friend, reviewed the footage and ended up arresting the woman for making a false 911 call.

Things like this give me little sympathy for people who find someone wanting to be safe in public "suspicious".

I know someone that caught a charge for brandishing in similar circumstances and unfortunately it stuck, so I truly am sympathetic.

That said, I think there's a difference between being suspicious and keeping your head on a swivel vs freaking out, calling the cops, or taking radical action

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