Title: The U.S. Government Is Targeting Cryptocurrency to Expand the Reach of Its Financial Surveillance | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Headings: The U.S. Government Is Targeting Cryptocurrency to Expand the Reach of Its Financial Surveillance
The U.S. Government Is Targeting Cryptocurrency to Expand the Reach of Its Financial Surveillance
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Content: Nonetheless, courts and lawmakers have allowed widespread warrantless financial surveillance in the traditional banking system. The Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to maintain financial records because of their usefulness in investigations, and in 1976, the Supreme Court (in U.S. v. Miller) allowed the government to obtain bank customers’ data without a warrant. EFF is concerned about the U.S. government’s attempts to expand this surveillance to encompass cryptocurrency transactions. Cryptocurrency is important for civil liberties because—like cash—it allows for anonymous transactions. Photos from the Hong Kong protests showed long lines at 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. These photos underscore that a cashless society is a surveillance society—and the importance of importing the anonymity of cash to the digital world. Cryptocurrency is also important because it is censorship resistant. Many traditional financial intermediaries have engaged in arbitrary financial censorship, cutting off access to financial institutions for adult social networks, adult booksellers, and controversial websites, even when these services have not violated the law. U.S. regulators’ recent actions, including this new proposed rulemaking, threaten to undermine the privacy and civil liberties protections afforded by peer-to-peer technologies. The rulemaking requests comments from the public by January 4, 2021.