Want to take some meaningful action in the real world?
Heres your chance.
We all need to do as much as we can to stop the new ATF letter about braces (template letter for that soon question mark?) but there is more stepper garbage brewing that WILL affect the GAT INDUSTRY (remember operation choke point? Theyre trying to do it again!!!!!!!!!!@1!!) What commie nonsense is this, u asc? Reed on…… (srisly plz I worked hrd on this p0tst)
“There are photos from the Hong Kong protests of long lines at the subway stations as protestors waited to purchase tickets with cash so that their electronic purchases would not place them at the scene of the protest.”
-Marta Belcher, special counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
the way you spend your money is a way you express yourself your tastes, your preferences and your beliefs, and thus your right to spend money PRIVATELY at YOUR OWN DISCRETION is protected by the first and fourth amendments.
Also, in the event of a dance party in a big ice structure, a decentralized and anonymous way to send and receive value/money will be CRUCIAL. STEPPERS KNOW THIS, and they are TRYING TO QUIETLY KILL IT!
basically, FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which operates under the Treasury Department) is STEPPING ON THESE RIGHTS, trying to force all these new rules to keep track of when, where, and with whom you spend money, and how much you spend. These proposed rules DONT require them to have a warrant/reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed, this is LARGE SCALE, DRAGNET SURVEILLANCE OF EVERYONE, that will be ANALYZED, TRACKED, and STORED FOREVER.
A SURVEILLANCE STATE CANT EXIST WITHOUT THIS!!!!! THATS WHY WE GOTTA STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU CAN STOP THIS!!!!!!1!!
A lot of crypto experts and civil liberties experts are already speaking out against this (see links for proof). But we need as many people as possible to stop this statist powergrab. Until January 4, 2021, (and beginning December 23, 2020) the rules are open for public comment here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2020-28437/requirements-for-certain-transactions-involving-convertible-virtual-currency-or-digital-assets
Until then, you can read the unpublished pdf version here:
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-28437.pdf
Dont understand cryptocurrency? PLEASE watch this (its important):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4
Eloquent civil liberties and crypto experts explaining why these rules are a bad idea and invasive of privacy:
https://www.coindesk.com/fincen-proposes-kyc-rules-for-crypto-wallets
(Big Surprise here!) FinCEN is completely inept at securely storing sensitive personal data, and their carelessness resulted in a bunch of innocent people getting doxxed:
https://www.coindesk.com/fincen-files-honeypot
Also, as we saw with Operation Choke Point, globo steppers love to damage “unfavorable” industries (like the gun industry) by secretly threatening banks into cutting off “unfavorable” companies, effectively driving them out of business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
As I said, together WE CAN STOP THIS!!!!!!1!! But not if we just sit by. We gotta raise a serious storm and GET AS MANY PPL AS POSSIBLE AWARE and angry about this. Also, on Dec 23, LEAVE A COMMENT on the proposal telling these statists to go pound salt, and CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEN and tell them to tell FinCEN to knock it off, and encourage everyone you can to do the same. But we gonna EXPLAIN WHY if we want to get other people and congressmen on our side, so im gonna try to suppress my aufkxsn and lay out some clear talking points for you to paraphrase in your Comment and letters and conversation. Even if you know people who will automatically ignor anyting that comes from WKND, copy/paste or parahprase and spred this info around to /b/, /k/, r/Firearms, etc.. If you really love freedom and r willing to fight in the hills living of of Bang nd Spam, this is the 1nd step in fighting for freedom.
elokuent summeryy: The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions, supposedly to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, along with other crimes. On December 18, 2020, the bureau released an unpublished draft of a new rules that will require people who want to send cryptocurrencies from their accounts with centralized exchanges to a private wallet to provide the exchanges with personal information about the owner of the wallet, if the amount sent is greater than $10,000 in one day. (Cryptocurrency exchanges, or just ‘exchanges’ for short, are companies that help match people who want to sell their cryptocurrencies with people who want to buy cryptocurrencies, and act as a third party to make trades quick and reliable. Moving cryptocurrency from your account with a centralized exchange to a private wallet is similar to withdrawing cash from your bank account and placing it into your physical wallet.) Imagine having to fill out a questionnaire at your bank, describing what you will do or where you will store the bills you are withdrawing, every time you go to withdraw your own money! Additionally, exchanges would be required to keep the personal information of people involved in transactions over $3,000, and required to submit to FinCEN the personal information all people who have transactions that add up to more than $10,000 in a single reporting period.
In essence, this is constant, warrantless mass surveillance on millions of people who have not committed any crime. It is a flagrant violation of the right to be secure in person, papers and effects, which is recognized by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Sources:
https://www.coindesk.com/fincen-proposes-kyc-rules-for-crypto-wallets
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-28437.pdf
However, many civil liberties activists and cryptocurrency experts say that this rule has many more serious implications.
In November, word got out that this sort of regulation might be coming. Brian Armstrong, Co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, an American company that is one of the biggest names in the cryptocurrency exchange business, posted a thread on Twitter explaining why regulation like the rules FinCEN has just proposed will do much more harm than good. A summary of his reasoning is as follows: Many people who use cryptocurrency send it to “decentralized finance smart contracts”, a new category of financial product that has been created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, to promote transparency and fairness in finance. Because of their decentralized, transparent nature, these “smart contracts” are not owned by individuals or businesses that can be identified. By enforcing these new rules, FinCEN would make the use of these new services exponentially more difficult, forcing people to remain reliant on self-interested, and sometimes corrupt, greedy and dishonest corporations and banks. Many cryptocurrency users send their cryptocurrency to people in developing markets or areas experiencing hyperinflation or other economic crises, where it is difficult or impossible to collect the kind of information FinCEN is demanding. For example, many such individuals might be living in poverty and as a result not have any permanent address or government ID, being dependent on cryptocurrencies to pay for basic necessities of life. By enforcing these new rules, FinCEN may cost these people their lives. While the additional red tape imposed by FinCEN’s regulation would certainly impede technological innovation in the USA, such progress will undoubtedly continue in other jurisdictions. US customers will as a result be forced to use foreign companies to access new services and technologies, which could endanger both the USA’s economy and status as a financial hub. Just as the US benefited enormously by embracing a free and open internet, it should do the same for open financial networks. In its infancy, people called for the internet to be regulated in the same way as phone companies, but with the benefit of hindsight, everyone can clearly see what a terrible idea this was. Likewise FinCEN’s new regulation will leave a terrible legacy and negatively affect the whole world. Finally, Armstrong states that Coinbase sent a letter to the US Department of the Treasury, but they have obviously ignored it and gone forward regardless.
Source:
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1331745196887867393
Mr. Armstrong is not the only expert who is loudly criticizing such regulation. Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association, stated “...last-minute rulemaking in the twilight days of an outgoing administration is not the way to make the type of long-lasting, responsive regulations that will support the safe growth of this industry in the U.S. Whether regulators acknowledge it or not, crypto is here to stay and should be considered a pro-growth part of the national economy, not something to be brushed aside quietly at the midnight hour.” Peter Van Valkenburgh, research director at Coin Center, said the regulations requirements may be “infeasible in the context of cryptocurrency transactions.” Jeremy Allaire, CEO of the peer to peer payments technology company Circle, said the rule would “inadequately address the actual risks that are at issue” and overall damage the industry. U.S Representatives Warren Davidson of Ohio, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Ted Budd of North Carolina, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania signed a public letter asking Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to discuss the move with elected officials.
Sources: https://www.coindesk.com/fincen-proposes-kyc-rules-for-crypto-wallets
https://www.circle.com/hubfs/AllaireLetterUSTreasurySecretary.pdf
https://www.coindesk.com/us-lawmakers-tell-mnuchin-to-back-off-from-potential-crypto-wallet-regs
In an interview with CoinDesk, Marta Belcher, a civil liberties and technology attorney and special counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reminded readers that “There are photos from the Hong Kong protests of long lines at the subway stations as protestors waited to purchase tickets with cash so that their electronic purchases would not place them at the scene of the protest.” Otherwise, government surveillance of electronic purchases could result in pro-democracy protestors being arrested and imprisoned. She continued, saying “These photos underscore that a cashless society is a surveillance society; that is why the ability to import the anonymity of cash to the digital world is so important for civil liberties… one of the most important things about cryptocurrency is that it imports the civil liberties benefits of cash into the digital sphere by allowing for anonymous transactions.” While FinCEN’s new rules will have negative side affects that will damage the global economy, they are most fundamentally an unvarnished attack on the expression and privacy rights of United States citizens.
Source:
https://www.coindesk.com/fincen-proposes-kyc-rules-for-crypto-wallets
Cryptocurrencies have also provided a new means of receiving payment to industries that have fallen out of favor with or contradict the ideology of federal bureaucrats, who have used initiatives like Operation Choke Point to bypass due process and pressure banks and other financial companies to cut off such industries. With these new rules, FinCEN is seriously damaging the convenience of these new payment methods, again subjecting companies to the mercy of the wills of unelected government employees.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
The circumstances under which FinCEN is releasing these new rules are particularly ridiculous. Recently, over two thousand documents belonging to FinCEN were leaked to the public. These documents include names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security, passport and driver’s license numbers, relevant dates and detailed descriptions of the financial activity of regular, average Americans who have NOT been the subject of ANY warrants and have NOT been accused of ANY crime. An a CoinDesk article entitled “How FinCEN Became a Honeypot for Sensitive Personal Data”, Benjamin Powers elaborates more on this leak and its implications. A summary of his article is as follows: CoinDesk interviewed numerous lawyers and KYC-AML compliance experts, including a former FinCEN employee. None of them were able to tell how long such data (contained in so-called Suspicious Activity Reports, or SAR for short) is actually kept by the government, guessing the information is never deleted at all. Additionally, FinCEN itself did not respond to inquiries concerning its data security procedures or how long it retains collected data. FinCEN did reveal that they have received more than 12 million SARs from 2011 to 2017, and 2 million in 2019 alone. Despite the massive trove of sensitive data it already possesses and its apparent inability to securely store the deeply personal information of law-abiding, regular Americans, FinCEN has the audacity to ask for more.
Source:
https://www.coindesk.com/fincen-files-honeypot
Finally, FinCEN’s latest rules are the latest in a long string of Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money-Laundering (KYC-AML) laws that quite literally cost lives. Michael J. Casey elaborates on this in a CoinDesk article entitled “Money Reimagined: ‘They Starve’: The Ugly Side of the US’ KYC-AML Obsession” A summary of his article is as follows: Many people who have emigrated to the United States from other countries send back money to their less fortunate friends and relatives living abroad in the form of remittances. Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO of The AZA Group, when asked about the impact on Somalians of a shutoff in remittances after the US government labeled Somalia a “high-risk jurisdiction,” promptly replied “They starve.” These remittances have been a major factor in poverty reduction, and thus FinCEN’s new regulations are a direct barrier to prosperity and global economic fairness. The additional cost and red tape of FinCEN’s new rule will allow big banks and well-established companies to enjoy a barrier to entry against innovative new startups, who lack the ability to scale FinCEN’s massive compliance paywall. So FinCEN’s new rule will do very little to stop serious, sophisticated criminals from moving money, but will prevent honest “little guys” from participating in transactions while protecting outdated financial dinosaurs from fair competition. These new rules are a part of a bigger move to force new startups into the US government’s massive international monitoring system that allows constant, warrantless surveillance over almost every financial institution in the world.
Source:
https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ugly-side-kyc-aml-obsession
(Too long, Continued in Comments)