Privacy and financial roundup

  • Harassing Google executives at their homes: what better way to show you truly care about privacy? [Ars Technica]
  • Feds arrest Bitcoin executive on charges of “money laundering” and running an unlicensed cash transmission service, latest of what looks very much like a series [Reason, Rob Wile/Business Insider, earlier on Bitcoin]
  • Know (and babysit) your customers: “HSBC imposes restrictions on large cash withdrawals,” then backs off [BBC, earlier on KYC as outgrowth of money-laundering law]
  • “Banks say no to marijuana money, legal or not” [NY Times]
  • Randy Maniloff on the Target data breach and the example of the T.J. Maxx case [Coverage Opinions and more on class actions] “Swipe fee” price controls don’t help in allocating the costs of response and prevention for card data breaches [John Berlau, CEI “Open Market”] and
  • “Financial Disclosures as Regulation” panel video, part of Vermont Law School symposium “The Disclosure Debates” that I participated in last fall; participants include Tennessee lawprof Joan Heminway and moderator Jennifer Taub [YouTube]

4 Comments

  • Re harassment of Google engineers (and others) at home: if the USSC is reckless enough to overturn the Massachusetts law protecting abortion patients from harassment (and worse) then home harassment will become steadily more common, restrained only by the Second Amendment.
    The best way to bring the USSC to its senses might be to point out at every opportunity the questionble legitimacy of their own exclsion zone around the court building. If they invent a right ( nowhere found in the text of the First Amendment) to accost private citizens on lawful private business, then the explicit right of the people to assemble and petition the “government” (including judges) will come into play. Let the judges who wish to water the ground outside abortion clinics with the blood of patriots and tyrants experience their own daily routine for a few months of walking through excitable and hostile crowds,and they may belatedly see wisdom.

  • While I understand your anger, Hugo, why is it that people alternate between the sinking level of political discourse and urging it ever lower?

    Bob

  • Bob–
    Please clarify.

  • Sorry, Hugo. I seem to have missed a word in my question. Here is what I meant to write:

    While I understand your anger, Hugo, why is it that people alternate between denouncing the sinking level of political discourse and urging it ever lower?

    I left out the “denouncing” for some reason. I understand the frustration. I understand the impulse to say “Ha! If they had to go through this, it wouldn’t be two seconds before they’d change their minds!” I just feel that some one needs to be the adult, some one has to remember that we all want a better world; we just disagree with the right way to get there.

    I don’t want to see Google engineers worried about their families being attacked. I also don’t want to see the political activists on the other side worrying about their children. As a practical matter, people tend to get irrational when they worry about their kids. It’s also not right to do such things.

    Bob