News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke by flexie on Monday December 23, 2013 @10:45AM (#6954789)
I think it's to be expected that governments that live off taxes force companies, that receive large cash deposits or whose business it is to receive, store or transfer money, to identify those individuals and businesses whose money they receive, store or transfer.

I don't receive any cash payments and I don't make any cash payments in my business. I am not a financial institution. This year, the value of the transactions that I participated in was probably around 100 million euro or so, and a fraction of a percent of this went through my account or ended up on my account, and all of it came from and went to banks. Not a cent was received in cash. Not a cent was paid out in cash. Now, HSBC and other banks probably have billions flowing through their system every second and in the order of millions received in cash or paid out in cash every second. I think it's natural to burden a few thousand banks with these rules, and not millions of small businesses.

Re: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke by cynicalkane on Monday December 23, 2013 @01:15PM (#6955616)
Banks don't have the same access to your clients that you do. Their fraud monitors are giant machine-learning racks of computers.

If one were to adopt the position that it is the responsibility of business to prevent fraud, well, you have a unique ability to do that that no other institution has. This is why I think your post is hypocrisy. Banks aren't lawyers, they don't know your clients like you do, and if you adopt the principle that "people should be responsible for the actions of their customers", you're going to have a significant amount of responsibility that nobody else can handle.

Re: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke by flexie on Monday December 23, 2013 @01:33PM (#6955739)
Lawyers should be responsible to their clients, not serve as an extra layer of tax informants. Governments already have hundreds of thousands in their employ. And please spare your hypocracy remarks for someone you know.
Re: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke by AndrewKemendo on Monday December 23, 2013 @02:30PM (#6956058)
Lawyers should be responsible to their clients, not serve as an extra layer of tax informants.

I was under the impression this is how it worked eg. that lawyers' only responsibility are to their client. Otherwise you would get some kind of weird conflict of interest in every case.

Re: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke by judk on Monday December 23, 2013 @02:25PM (#6956024)
Lawyers are partly agents of the government. The alternative would be to make private lawyering illegal and to require all lawyer-type work to be done at goverenment offices.
Re: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke by moocowduckquack on Monday December 23, 2013 @07:31PM (#6957529)
If one were to adopt the position that it is the responsibility of business to prevent fraud

Well, it is the responsibility of HSBC to prevent criminal fraud by HSBC, which is one of the charges they plead guilty to in their plea bargain.