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from the all-your-coin-are-belong-to-us dept.
In May, the bill S.1241 (archive) was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Chuck Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa. The bill, if enacted, would call upon the Department of Homeland Security to develop
a strategy to interdict and detect prepaid access devices, digital currencies, or other similar instruments, at border crossings and other ports of entry for the United States
According to a story at btcmanager.com (square brackets in original),
the bill would "criminalize [those] intentionally concealing ownership or control of a [digital currency or digital exchange] account.
The Senate held a meeting about the bill on November 28. Witnesses included Charles Davidson of the Kleptocracy Initiative of the Hudson Institute conservative think tank; Douglas Farah of IBI Consultants, which specializes in "issues of national security, transnational crime, terrorism, terror finance and non-state armed actors"; and Kathryn Haun Rodriguez of Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange. Ms. Haun, however, made no mention of cryptocurrency in her testimony (PDF).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday December 05 2017, @06:09PM (21 children)
Oh, also of your brain. Can't have anyone crossing the border while in possession of more than - what is it - $10k? Exactly how you are "in posession" of a cryptocurrency is another question, I mean, any more than you are of a bank account back in your home country. But logic be damned, I'm sure its "for the children". Or bureaucratic empire building. Or something.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 05 2017, @06:23PM (2 children)
According to Soylent:
A patent for financial assets "on a computer:" Totally not-novel, adding "on a computer doesn't make it new."
A law pertaining to financial assets "on a computer:" This is brand new, never before seen, and therefore any existing laws are null and void.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:18PM (1 child)
If the existing laws aren't null and void, why are they proposing new ones?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 05 2017, @08:48PM
They aren't. Take a look at the actual bill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @06:28PM (5 children)
He's from 1933, well before computers.
They used to give out little booklets with bank accounts. You had to bring the booklet to the bank. They'd stamp each transaction into the booklet. If you didn't have the booklet, you couldn't access your account.
Obviously, being in possession of an account is when you have that booklet on your person.
Actually, this isn't such a terrible comparison. To actually have bitcoin, as opposed to somebody else having it on your behalf, you need a storage device. (discounting the sort of people who memorize a million digits of pi -- but then their head is a storage device)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:27PM (4 children)
Sure, but that storage device doesn't need to be on your person.
For example you could store your wallet on Dropbox, or any other file storage service anywhere in the world. In a file encrypted using some nondescript photo on your phone as a keyfile, if you want to be properly paranoid but still have convenient access.
As you cross borders, there's no evidence such a file even exists. Meanwhile you have immediate access to it from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
That's a simple, obvious solution - and the only way to detect it reliably would be extremely invasive surveillance of the criminal long before they decided to leave the country.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday December 05 2017, @09:09PM
Sure, but that storage device doesn't need to be on your person.
For example you could store your wallet on Dropbox, or any other file storage service anywhere in the world. In a file encrypted using some nondescript photo on your phone as a keyfile, if you want to be properly paranoid but still have convenient access.
This stuff is completely ridiculous. Every Senator born in the 1930s knows full well that the only way to move money across borders is in person, and that this law will work just fine in physically preventing people from moving money across borders without authorization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @09:18PM
a. You didn't carry it across the border.
b. You did, in your head.
Either way, we can use a brain scanner to find out about it. There are probably ways to reveal a password even. For example, read off supposed passwords, watching the brain, and note when the signal changes -- that is the first incorrect part of the password.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday December 05 2017, @11:44PM
Absolutely correct. However, if I understand the summary (and won't read the TFA), they can ask you: Do you have any cryptocurrency accounts? And you say, "No," and they have absolute proof (thanks to the CIA or FINCEN or whatever) that you do. You are then guilty of a crime, and not only can you be refused entry or deported, you most likely can be held in Guantanamo or black sited.
They aren't looking to catch you with a USB drive with a Bitcoin wallet - though this will be the pretext for getting the law passed and DEA or whatever will take you down if you do.
And Extremely Invasive Surveillance of the Criminal Long Before They Decided to Leave the Country = NSA.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday December 06 2017, @01:26AM
It does not matter if coins cross the border at the same time as the body or not. They can simply check the source when coins are spent. It is either a buy from a reputable dealer with traceable funding source or mining with a paid electrical bill. Lacking last two would prove illegal border crossing. Note that any exchange of coins in an attempt to anonymise transactions would be repeated crossing and I can imagine say 100000 violations * 1 month each prison term.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:17PM (11 children)
Or it's about going after actual international criminals. You know, the kind that have large amounts of money sitting around. People like you and me only get caught in the cross-hairs because the enforcers can't easily tell who's an international criminal.
The real question is why anybody needs to hide their money from the government. Are you trying to avoid taxes? Avoid prosecution for where it came from? Or are you just ideologically opposed to the government knowing things about you? If it's the last one, I'd really like to help you, but I'm afraid you're fighting a losing battle regardless of your access to things like cryptocurrency.
Besides, if I wanted to hide from the government, I would try very hard to stay away from the kind of international criminals that attract government attention.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)
Or it's about finding a way to stop money laundering that isn't funneled through THEIR respective political parties!?!
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:51PM
It's a way to stop money laundering that isn't funneled through their real-estate misadventures.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @07:50PM (1 child)
Is because they aren't willing to opt out of the country along with the government.
If you are really man enough to dislike government surveillance then you need to leave the US, officially renounce your citizenship (somewhere between 1500-5000 dollars now, and requires 2 visits 3 months apart at a US embassy on foreign soil.)
At that point you can have whatever privacy you are willing to make for yourself, so long as your financial transactions don't take place in any country with those reporting requirements. On the other hand, you also lose any constitutional protections against them spying on you. But at this point in America's history, those protections don't mean shit anyway and anyone claiming they do is a fool, plain and simple.
Do your part to Make America's Emigrants Great Again. Emigrate somewhere new and show by example how those Americans Left Behind can be great again.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday December 05 2017, @08:11PM
I really doubt that renouncing US citizenship is going to be anybody's solution to getting more privacy. It's not like we are only subject to surveillance by our own government anyway. And while the constitutional protections don't seem to be stopping anybody, they do generate media attention. They also might stop a drone strike, or at least make the commander think twice. It's only slightly more protection than nothing, which makes it only slightly safer to stay a citizen than not.
Unless you are credibly capable of creating your own state apparatus. If you are, then you've probably already started co-opting one that already exists because that is safer than starting a new country.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday December 05 2017, @08:08PM (5 children)
LOL, yeah like the won the Drug War right? It's hardly a losing battle. You're talking about interdicting digital data at border crossings and entry points, which includes airports. That assumes one would do something like that in the first place, transiting with data devices. If I was going to transit a border crossing, airport, whatever, I wouldn't have any digital devices on me, or a few of them with teletubby videos or other funny honey pot shit.
Interdiction in any realistic sense would need to be conducted in cyberspace as much as meat space. Good fucking luck. How are they supposed to make sure I've got no other little caches of information somewhere? No secure email services? Government is doing swimmingly cooperating with big corporations that run the major tech sites and offerings right?
Considering how small a data bearing device can be, and that the Internet is effectively a magic bag of holding you can summon at will, the task presented to Homeland Security is the lost cause.
That, and civil disobedience is never a lost cause. They've no right to perform such invasive searches on me without due process.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:38PM
Professional criminals can do reasonably well at circumventing restrictions. International crime is their life. They can do everything securely, within their own networks.
You and I, meanwhile, have insecure lives full of insecure relationships that keep sending insecure data through insecure means. If you or I tried to hide our things from the government based purely on ideology, we will lose, because ideology is not enough to keep us from getting sloppy.
The dragnet may be full of holes, but it's still pretty good at catching ordinary people dabbling in the kind of tech that only international criminals will ever be good enough at to avoid detection.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:40PM (3 children)
Data can be hidden right in plain sight. An IoT device could have extra storage with a few added files added to it. Even if they are looking for data bearing devices, they are not going to attempt to search them all. Such as an IoT teddy bear. Or IoT electric razor with web based interface to check the battery level along with history of how many times you have used it and for what durations.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2017, @12:36AM (1 child)
Yes they will. They can just take your stuff and never give it back to you. They have all the time they could want in searching your stuff and if you lie about anything then that's it for you. They can also follow you back to your home and effectively kidnap you. The majority of the population lives within the constitution-free border zones which covers everywhere within 100 miles of the border, and the border includes all international airports in the country. It's not abused too often, but they already have the power.
If you get raided by the FBI, they take everything electronic and keep it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 06 2017, @04:38PM
Increasingly every day things contain electronics that could be subverted to hide information. Toasters. TV sets. Children's toys. Meanwhile, information can be stored on a micro-SD card smaller than your fingernail which could be cleverly hidden in numerous places.
Are you suggesting the TLAs are going to start taking every innocent looking electronic item from everyone all the time because someone might be smuggling information in or out of the country?
Better yet, publish this information in a book. The dead-tree format of book. Not an e-book. A book like Applied Cryptography. Would this book be stopped from being brought in or out of the country?
What if the code to access your bitcoins is penciled lightly somewhere in the pages of a very innocent looking paper back novel you are carrying?
As for what you say, I actually agree. We are becoming, if not have already become a police state. The line is fuzzy. Sort of like the event horizon of a black hole. It is difficult to know when you have crossed over. Just as with the tipping point for Microsoft's best days being behind it. I predicted it, but I said (years ago) that we wouldn't recognize it for sure until it was already behind us. Similarly with the black hole and the police state.
We already have:
Secret Laws
Secret Interpretations of Laws1
Secret Courts 2
Secret Warrants
Secret Court Orders
Secret Trials
Secret Evidence3
Secret Convictions
Secret Prisons4
Secrete Enhanced Interrogation
It sounds like we've become everything we were fighting in the previous century.
1TLAs claim their interpretation of certain laws must remain secret, otherwise people might try to comply with how they are interpreting the law and thus could not be arrested
2FISA, others
3evidence not made available to the defense. Stingray for instance.
4Gitmo, other black sites in countries that practice torture
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday December 06 2017, @12:31PM
... on the side of a wall in downtown Camden New Jersey.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 05 2017, @08:56PM
The kind of international criminals laundering large amounts of money tend to work for the very biggest banks, and I 'm sure this will in no way prevent business as usual for them.
They might catch a very few very stupid small time players, but not the big time guys.
To be fair, they really don't want to catch the big guys, because they're often the same people funding the US political class.