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Re:Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Coun... by MichaelGG on Thursday June 15, 2017 @01:36PM (#14562489)
They don't need AML stuff to have this. If someone's laundromat is doing record income, sure, fine, hang out and watch them a bit and see if they look like a lead for a real crime.

I'd also note that encryption is "not be something that harms anyone" but "often done to conceal actions ... harm".

Re:Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Coun... by freehunter on Thursday June 15, 2017 @03:22PM (#14563559)
I actually had a line in there that said "Unlike encryption, there are very few legitimate reasons..." but I took it out because it seemed like too specific of an example so if someone brought it up I would argue it then, and not before.

This particular money laundering debate is very unlike the encryption debate. Actually, you could argue that money laundering is a very specific type of encryption, you're just encrypting the source of your income by adding noise instead of encrypting digital data.

Let's see just some of the reasons you'd use encryption:

So bad people can't find your passwords

So bad people can't get into your bank account

So bad people can't see what websites you've been visiting

So bad people can't see your pictures

So bad people can't steal your intellectual property

And why would you need this type of privacy?

So criminals and bad people can't injure you using your private information

So corrupt governments can't see what information you've been reading/writing/sharing

So you can have some assurance that your email/social media/etc accounts are fully controlled by you, and likewise for those you're interacting with

Now let's see some of the reasons you'd launder money:

So the government can't see where you got the money.

That's it.

And why would you need this type of privacy?

So the government doesn't know you committed a crime to get that money.

That's it.

People don't launder money because they're ashamed to admit they work at Microsoft. People don't launder money to hide their employer from criminals who want to hurt them. People don't launder money to hide it from other citizens. People don't launder money from legitimate businesses. People launder money so the government doesn't know that they got the money illegally. That's it.

There's a lot of legitimate reasons to encrypt various things, and no one has ever argued that encryption is only ever used for legal and good purposes. The argument is that while encryption is sometimes used for crimes, the good things it enables outweigh the bad things. But there's only one reason to launder money, and that's because you earned it illegally.