This isn’t even about individual transactions. The situation here is more like them saying, “your business has characteristics in common with the kind of a business that might facilitate a contract killing and we’re lazy so we just aren’t going to do any business with you at all”.

If the payment processor knows what your contract is for, it should have an obligation to report it to you. If the payment processor knew the transaction was for contract killing then it should have an obligation to report it to the authorities.

> are you suggesting something more broad: that in the chain of cause and effect that eventually effects a crime, only the “last” party should ever be held responsible?

No, I think that some parties between the "first" and "last" should be indemnifiable because they provide neutral services that everyone relies on for legal purposes. Without proof that a contract between two parties is illegal, it should be permitted.

Do you have any idea how many employers have unenforceable clauses in their contracts? If you think that payment processors should be held liable for criminal contracts then perhaps we should hold payment processors and banks liable for criminal contracts of all employers.

This is the difference.

You are not "aiding and abetting" by handling the money. There's already a well-established body of law outlining who is and is not culpable for a crime. We don't need to debate it from first principles here.

Same with postal service, etc.

Uh, guys, this is not true.

This is not how any of this works.

Don't let these people on HN mislead you. Even the postal service cannot knowingly deliver a bomb to a target and claim immunity. It doesn't work like that. If you know they are committing a crime, then you have to stop them. Or at a minimum try to stop them.

The training materials are approved by the federal government.

It’s technically a crime for them to repeat what they hear, including to law enforcement.

Some narrow exceptions apply, such as when the telecom company is committing a crime.

But technicians who have to listen in on calls (I don’t know if this is a thing anymore), are instructed to never report crimes they overhear.

1. The accused party must be aware of the perpetrator’s intent to commit a crime

2. The accused then took action to help or encourage the perpetrator in carrying out their intent

If both are not met, the accused person cannot be held criminally liable. I’m sure each of us have met a single one of these requirements in isolation. For example, if you watch a crime happen, you likely met #1 and if you helped out a random stranger and the help you rendered later assisted them when committing a crime, you met #2.

We as a society agree that just the act of solicitation for murder is crime, one that is totally separate from a murder charge. It is also a crime to sell a weapon if you are not licensed to do so in some jurisdictions.

A lot of legal theory revolves around the concept of “mens rea” (which itself has four levels: intent, knowledge, recklessness, and negligence), and “actus rea” which is the subsequent action as a result of the accused’s state of mind. Entities that act as a common carrier are shielded from this because their position in any transaction precludes any knowledge of the specific details of what they are facilitating.

Fun story about the electronic toll pass, which I refuse to use and as a result get to places slower by never taking a toll road, in over 20 years.

We had tolls. You throw a couple of quarters in, and you go on your way. They were replaced by the electronic toll tag. Which is linked to your name, your credit card, and keeps a timestamped transaction history, forever.

There was a custody battle, and the divorced husband got the kids. The court looked at the wife's toll records, showing she comes home from work real late, and that would impact the quality of life for kids. Boy, I bet she never thought she'd lose her kids by using a toll tag. I bet she did think after the divorce she'd have to start coming home earlier and probably set it up with her manager. We'll never know.

Thing is, it should have been an anonymous electronic RFID wallet you reload, to replace the function of the quarter coin, and it became a government tracking device attached to your car.

Now answer me this: is your ISP responsible for you downloading that torrent full of child porn? Well, that's probably a bad example. Is Cisco, the maker of the network switch that ISP uses, legally responsible for it?

Do you have a source for that? Google wasn't being helpful.

Here is an article https://www.wbez.org/stories/how-your-private-illinois-tollw...

"many of the requests for I-Pass records in civil matters were divorce cases"

This is from the first search result linked in the other reply.

"In child custody disputes, a parent who believes the other parent is not fulfilling their parental duties may use this data to establish the parent is not caring for the child. A parent may use the data to establish the other is not with the child, but instead on the road headed to a different location, such as a race track. The parent who believes the other is not meeting their obligations may be able to use this information during custody litigation or as support for a modification to an existing agreement"

"“We routinely utilize I-Pass records in discovery,” says Maureen A. Gorman, a divorce litigator at my Chicago law firm."

Now, let me spread some more anger, because let's face it, people love being angry. Road tolls were supposed to be temporary, to finance building the roads. They were never supposed to stay permanent. Toll revenue is more than road maintenance. In fact, over 50% of toll revenue, is redirected to other uses, and increases close to 100% per decade. Some of it is used for mass transit - so people in cars, pay for people on the subway. Many toll roads (and city parking meters, and red light and speed cameras) are run by private companies, with taxpayer-paid city staff enforcing that private corporation's profit.

What can you do? Only thing I've found is to not participate, at a great inconvenience to yourself. No, I don't use city parking meters. I pay way, way more, for private parking - although I'm only in a car a few weeks per year, usually in a work-paid rental. The benefit - for me - is to fall asleep fast, without laying there for hours in the dark getting more and more pissed off at things I can't fix.