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Comment by m132 | Hacker News Reader

> The real problem is this hodgepodge of laws; it's the growth of the surveillance state. From voting rights in the United States, facing Trump's Orwellian-named SAVE America Act, to Ring's doggie tracking system that can also be used to follow people, to Trump booting Anthropic to the side for refusing to allow its AI tools to be used for mass surveillance, privacy is on the decline.

I understand it is popular to pick on the current administration, and there are plenty of rightful reasons to, but let's not forget this has been happening way before either of Trump's terms (see: KYC laws). The only difference between then and now is that current administration has essentially taken a mask-off approach, so we get to see this discussion finally brought up by mainstream media outlets.

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I don't think it's unique to America either. It's just the ebb and flow of the envelope of possibilities for central governance as technology and culture changes. FATF has managed to implement KYC worldwide, even in banana republics at least for the peasant without connections.

You're not wrong, but there is a huge difference between moving US government regulated currency to (possibly) foreign and (possibly) nefarious actors, and this.

Ever since KYC was extended to cover cryptocurrency exchanges, I have given up any faith in that this is solely about regulated currencies, or money laundering at all.

I don't understand this position. Cryptocurrency exchanges are the primary legal touch point (fiat offramp) for a lot of criminal activity. Of course they will get attention for AML.

I can understand the regulation of fiat/crypto exchanges, but the verification extends to centralized exchanges that merely facilitate exchanges one kind of purely virtual currency for another, neither of which have to be recognized as legal tender.

... which is a step in the money laundering process, so of course it would.

I didn't know those existed, and so I kind of see your point.

The counterpoint is that if your job was to prevent/punish financial crimes that affect consumers, would it make sense to ignore these exchanges?

Heck, if M:TG cards were the medium, and they could be moved across international borders with a few keystrokes, then surely those would be watched too.

I won't argue that it's not privacy-invading for legitimate customers, but if the legal structure allows it, regulators have an obligation to look where the problems are expected to be.

If my job was to promote open source software it would make sense to ban proprietary software. That doesn't mean I should actually be allowed to do that.

If you were the government, and the legal structure gave you an obligation to do X, you would do X.

Your implied comparison of "promotion" vs "monitoring" makes zero sense though.

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