http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1956.text.html
Daniel Boone writes:
> Another design issue to take into account in building a payments mix system
> is that, unlike a message mix system, there is (at least in the United
> States) an obvious "legal" (as opposed to technical) attack against payment
> mix machine operators. Whereas message remailer operators are not obviously
> doing anything that could expose them to legal sanction, a payments mix
> machine operator could face a fairly plausible money laundering charge.
Not necessarily. The payment mix could choose to fully comply with all
relevant reporting requirements. It's not clear that there are any.
The mix is not receiving cash, it's receiving some kind of electronic
payments. Chances are the reporting burden fell on the financial system
when the money got turned into electronic form.
Let us keep in mind that it is not illegal to seek financial privacy.
It is only illegal to launder the results of illegal activity. There is
a large market of people who have fully legal funds but who would wish
for more privacy in how they choose to spend them. This is the service
the payment mix would offer.
As a lawyer, can you point to specific code sections which would be
violated by receiving electronic money and passing it on to a third
party on request?
> The obvious implication, then, is that a payment mix should to be designed
> to conceal the identity of the operators of the nodes, whereas this is
> merely an optional feature in a message remailing system. Always assuming
> (never safe on this list) that the parties involved have pretty standard
> risk tolerances and are subject to US law or can be found in sympathetic
> jurisdictions.
This is impossible. Recall that the point of the payment mix is to
provide anonymous payment services. We have no anonymity to start with.
The mix is built on top of a system of fully identified payments,
like paypal/x.com, or e-gold, or even regular Visa merchant payments.
The mix operators (and users) have account numbers, names, addresses and
social security numbers registered with the payment system. One thing
the mix operators will not be is anonymous.
David Molnar writes:
> Does anyone know of a good survey/introduction of money laundering laws?
> Paper is fine.
Doing a yahoo or google search on money laundering will provide some
interesting hits, including:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1956.text.html which is one of
the statutes that criminalizes money laundering
http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/seminar/papers/bortner.htm which is an
analysis of what role DigiCash style ecash would play in money laundering
