Anti-money laundering laws exist for one reason, and one reason only: to control the population and penalize those who dissent via extrajudicial processes. From NGOs organizing against the war on terror to supporters of disfavorable political movements, one wrong post on social media may make you lose access to any service that depends on your bank account. To employ such targeted exclusions – via sanctions or regular bank account closures – the global financial system *must* make sure that every transaction taking place is identifiable and attributable to an individual. AML does not stop crime, but functions as a system of narrative control that would become unworkable if the right to privacy in finance would exist. This weaponization of money has become the greatest tool in the West’s oppression of dissent, and we are all paying the price for it, being subjected to the dragnet surveillance it imposes. Read: Money as a tool for political censorship, the fifth article in our educational series together with @vexl 😎 🧡
Digital IDs cannot solve KYC fraud, ever. Users already sign up with data that is stolen from KYC databases, generated with AI, or sold to them by verified users. If a guy will sell me their verified Coinbase Pro account, you can bet your a** they’ll sell me the keys to their personal eyeball app. It does not matter how much “verification” you’ll attempt to slap onto this system, because the system *itself* does not work. KYC is a scam that *enables* financial crime at the cost of all of our privacy. Read: 31 Reasons Why AML Is Retarded in this week’s newsletter 👇
80% of cryptocurrency sent to Iran comes from "global exchanges," says TRM. Not "DeFi". Not "unhosted wallets." So how do Iranians circumvent compliance? By signing up with fake IDs. And where do you get a fake ID? From hacked KYC databases. AML is nonsense. image
Israel has destroyed all financial infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Out of 94 ATMs, only two remain semi-functional – for two million people. Just as in its aggression against Lebanon, bombing banks was one of Israel's first orders of business. This is a WAR CRIME, increasingly normalized by media and governments in an unprecedented escalation in the fight against "terrorist financing". And now? We're now seeing this happen in Iran, with cyber attacks against banks and the Nobitex exchange by the Israeli front Predatory Sparrow. I don't care whose side you are on, financial infrastructure is *civilian infrastructure*, if you like it or not.
today is a good day to run a snowflake proxy 🩷
Paradigm Files Amicus On Behalf Of Roman Storm: In light of the court's "incorrect" interpretation of money transmission laws, the jury must be instructed to find that Storm knew his conduct was unlawful. The brief gets to the heart of what's at issue here: Did Storm, or did he not, know that the US Government requires a license for developing non-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols? To be convicted, it’s not enough for the Government to show that Storm objectively operated an unlicensed money service business based on whatever nonsense interpretation of 1960 SDNY is pulling out of their behinds. The jury must find that Storm *knowingly* violated the law – which will likely be hard to show as not even senior FiCEN officials themselves believe that non-custodial software developers are subject to MSB licensing requirements under current guidance. So far, legal scholars and industry professionals alike agree that *no one* interpreted 1960 to cover protocols like Tornado Cash, as it’s simply an “incorrect” interpretation of the law, as Paradigm states in their brief. The prosecution is so absurd that, according to Paradigm, its analogous to holding Apple liable for conspiracies formed through iPhone conversations, leather craftsmen for wallets holding stolen cash, and television manufacturers for state secrets being divulged on-air. “It would be profoundly unfair and contrary to due process for Storm to be found guilty, despite clear FinCEN guidance, established case law, and resulting industry consensus, that operation of a money transmission business requires control of funds and payment of a fee.” **This is precisely why the Government wants all of Storm’s expert witnesses thrown out.** Not because they “waste jury time,” as SDNY claims, but because they’d only go on to prove that Storm did not knowingly commit a crime, and that SDNY’s claims are nothing but a big bunch of bogus in a case of Government overreach of astronomical proportions. Full story:
Agree with @walker here but calling Iranians „people in a desert“ is like calling US Americans desert people because all you‘ve ever seen is las vegas View quoted note →