From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 00:45:19 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Surprise - Anonymous Journalist Opposes Laundering [4/4]
Message-ID: <199801101641.RAA00151@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



	Part 4 "Fighting the Next War" [4/4]

				[4/4]
Next, cyberlaundering?

If there is one thing that money launderers hate it is cash; physical cash,
that is [No, we hate criminal governments who refuse to issue larger 
denomination notes]. Shipping huge wads of banknotes is a logistical 
nightmare [which would be less onerous if, by way of example, the US 
guVermin recirculated $500, $1000, $5000 and $10,000 FRNs. The printing 
plates for such "money-laundering friendly" notes having been de-activated 
since the reign of dictator Roosevelt; refusal to issue higher denomination 
FRNs to keep pace with Accumulated Wealth Tax extractions (commonly referred
to as "inflation") since the 1930s is nothing less than slow-motion, 
backdoor currency recall]. It also raises the risk that couriers will be 
intercepted [they mean robbed] and the ["]loot["] traced back to its source.
Transferring money electronically is both quicker and easier [but not 
necessarily safer in certain nations]. [*]Hence concerns in law-enforcement 
circles that new forms of electronic money could render obsolete traditional
methods of tracking ["]tainted["] money, which rely heavily on the poLicing
of bank transactions[*]. 

["Hence concerns in law-evasion circles that new forms of vooter sanity 
threatening to outlaw drug Prohibition could render obsolete traditional 
streams of tax-free income."]

["Hence concerns in law-enforcement circles that new forms of vooter sanity 
threatening to outlaw drug Prohibition could render obsolete traditional 
pretexts for increased budgets, privacy deprivation and sheeple tracking."]

Electronic-money systems come in three different forms. There are 
stored-value cards, which allow customers to load money onto a 
microchip-bearing piece of plastic. This can then be carried around like a 
credit card. There are computer-based systems, for example, those involving
payments over the Internet. and there is talk of hybrid systems, which allow
smart cards and network-based payments to work together.

Although these new gizmos are still under development, financial regulators
and policemen have been studying them intently. And they have raised several
questions to which they want answers. One is whether limits will be placed
on value that can be held on chip-bearing cards. A card without a limit
"could break my back", [then there would be no need for a tree] worries 
Stanley Morris, [the anti-christ, ] who heads FINCEN, the American 
government's financial-intelligence unit [FiU]. He thinks launderers could 
use it to shift millions of dollars on a piece of plastic.

The anti-laundering brigade [brigands?!] also wants reassurance that crooks
will not be able to set themselves up as e-money issuers. [I guess as 
opposed to the crooks who set themselves up as fiat banknote issuers] And 
they want to know whether all transactions in whatever system will be logged
at a central point, so that investigators can reconstruct an [unencrypted??]
electronic audit trail ["]if necessary["]. [B.S., they don't "want 
reassurance" or "want to know" squat, this is their non-negotiable DEMAND; 
they will try to rob, kidnap, jail, and murder anyone who thinks different] 
At least one card-based system currently being developed by Mondex, a 
company owned by Master-Card, [MassaCard] is designed to allow money to be
transferred directly between cards, without leaving such a trail. DigiCash,
which is developing a computer-based payment system, is using what it calls
a "one-way privacy" method, which allows payers to check who received money
from them, but does not allow the recipients to find out where it came from.
[as in a postal money order (but sans the silly $700 per m.o. limit and the
ridiculous $2999.99 daily limit) sent to a payee anonymously]

While these and other issues, such as who will have jurisdiction over
laundering on the Internet, [I smell a brand new Global Bureaucracy in the 
air] suggest the new systems could cause the authorities a few headaches,
some experts beg to differ. A report published last year by the Bank for
International Settlements, [another report cited, another worthle$$ 
bureaucracy, amazing isn't it?] the central bankers' central bank, [in other
words, a den of iniquity] noted that in most cases, measures designed to
protect the new systems against fraud--such as attaching unique electronic
serial numbers to transactions--would make them less attractive for criminal
activities than many existing payment systems. At the moment, all financial
regulators can do is watch and wait.

> E-Communist
> 25 St James's Street
> London SW1A 1HG
> www.economist.com

[Remember if you do your banking in a socialist country, there are three
parties involved in any transaction:
	1) you, the presumed criminal.
	2) the (non-)bank employee, snitch/narc/mind-reader.
	3) the guVermin employee, looter/thief/spy.]

Fly Low


S'n'S

Pro: Money Laundering, Self-Medication, Militia-Grade Arms, Realism
Pro: Indirect Taxation, Adults, Individual Irrevocable Rights
} 	Smurf N Sniff		Non-Member, Gunfiscators of Canberra	   |
} 	P.O. Bunker 6669	"We don't want to be like those paranoid   |
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Anti: feral guVermin, Vooters, rapacious tyrants, nihilists
Anti: biometric herd management, "(The)" children, state granted privileges