But some might see that as a sign you need more separation between the state and payment networks, rather than less.
You don't want private banks in the business of fuzzy-matching (because they'll default to over-cautious, and it empowers the government to exploit grey areas to pressure them).
And you don't want the executive arm of the government too involved in day-to-day financial inspection (because executive can move at the speed of an edict, versus needing a law).
I feel like people get so distracted by the problems they see with the existing system that they completely miss just how much more dangerous things could get in a centralized government system. For example:
- The current system is distributed and does not let any central entity make the unilateral decision to block any given transaction. Even if you think of banks as deputies of the government, they still differ in how they evaluate and respond to risks, and you have some ability to go to alternative institutions when one of them is wrong. This isn't speculation, it's a fact that already plays out on a daily basis. You cannot do that with your government.
- Flagging a transaction is so incredibly different from blocking it. Flagging is surveillance, blocking is enforcement. It's one thing to get suspicious why I'm getting food at a particular vendor and demand that I explain myself afterward; it's a whole 'nother thing to remotely block me from getting it in the first place.
- Scalability matters. Letting the government be the middleman for all transactions lets the person at the controls block five transactions nearly just as easily as five million of them. Surveillance can get bad enough, yes, but do you really want to give them that much pre-judicial enforcement power too? Because they literally do not have that power currently.
- We had a live demo of what happens when government maintains a record of financial transactions (see the IRS and tax records). Play out what would've happened against a bank - would it have been worse?
Which yes means sometimes legit transactions that match rules meant to catch money laundering and other shady business get blocked or flagged. Sometimes out of avoidance of legal risk, rather than actual certainly anything illegal is happening.
I don't know if the centralized government implementation would be any better in that regard, but at least you could complain to the government instead of having a bank hide behind a law they didn't write but have to enforce.