Re: Re: Knowing your customer
At 12:47 PM 12/6/00 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: You're thinking of something else, but you're close enough. For instance, there are laws in most jurisdictions about requiring a social security number to open a bank account, for any of a number of reasons including credit checks, and checks on how many, um, negative-funded, bank accounts you might have hanging out there before you opened this one. More to the point, since interest is taxable income for individuals, and a tax deductible expense for corporations, social security numbers are required in order to pay you interest. Ah the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (which outlawed bank secrecy). http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SupManual/bsa/bsa_p2.pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SupManual/bsa/bsa_p1.pdf The Feds do require SS numbers on bank accounts in most cases but the requirement has major loopholes. [And, yes, Duncan may be right, you might be able to spoof an SSN at them somehow, but I don't know anyone who's actually done it, admitted it in any public detail, and not been somehow razzed legally for it.] It's actually not too hard because bank officers can't verify SS numbers save by using the well-known methods to check facial validity. As long as you precheck your numbers with a program like ssn.exe which checks for non-existent number ranges and state of issue, you should be OK. The SS Admin refused to allow the credit reporting agencies to verify their records agains the Feds database (because of the privacy implications). As always, if you get turned down someplace, go someplace else. Likewise, SSNs are not required to open accounts in other countries and these accounts are accessible these days by Internet Banking and credit/debit cards. One can also set up entities such as: sole proprietorship, partnership, trust, estate, corporation, etc. and apply for a taxpayer ID number (TIN) and have the entity open an account. The advantage of this is that you can have an infinite number of unconnected entities thus defeating the linking problem involved in the use of a single identifier such as the SSN. In addition, the new online payment services don't always require an SS# to open an account: Do not require SSN to open account PayPal -- http://www.paypal.com (Now international as well which creates a further loophole.) BillPoint (Wells Fargo eBay) -- http://www.billpoint.com/ (Requires Ebay registration which requires a credit card to sell but not to buy.) dotBank (Yahoo) -- (http://www.dotbank.com/) Now http://paydirect.yahoo.com/ PayMe -- https://www.payme.com/ Ecount -- http://www.ecount.com/ MoneyZap (Western Union) -- http://www.moneyzap.com/ Require SSN to open account eMoneyMail (BankOne) -- http://www.emoneymail.com/ ProPay -- http://www.propay.com/ c2it -- (Citigroup AOL) http://www.c2it.com/ Most of these accounts can be opened with throwaway email address and a accommodation address for your physical address. As they grow in importance, having an account with them may be more useful. It is important to note that the best way to dodge some of the paperwork is to open accounts when services are new since the requirements tend to increase over time. Prior to October 1999(?) for example, Ebay did not require a credit card to open a sales account and existing account holders were grandfathered in when they added that requirement. But there are always new account and payment systems popping up so you can continue to take advantage of this principle. Keep in mind that there are other financial account privacy techniques not mentioned here. Use your imagination. [The answer to this lie to the government, don't get a bank account Usually, you're not lying to the government but to a private party acting on behalf of the government. problem, which any persistent cypherpunk subscriber knows, is, of course, to have payment systems which don't *need* physical identity for non-repudiation of transactions and the subsequent requirement of the force of a nation-state to make settlement risk manageable: bearer certificates based on cryptographic protocols like blind signatures, which will, frankly, only *really* be possible, soup-withdrawl to nuts-deposit, when a bearer currency issue is *itself* reserved by other digital bearer assets, instead of just a book-entry account somewhere.] Definitely a good idea if someone can pull it off. DCF May the Lord enlighten ... the Swiss banks -- that they might uphold justice and preserve the integrity of their own laws and the laws of confidentiality, trust and basic decency between the banks and their clients. Imelda Marcos' Prayer for the Swiss Banks - Manila - Sunday 25 February 1996.
Re: FC: Yet Another Survey: Americans have become privacy pragmatists
Business President Alan Westin says that more Americans now fall into the category of "privacy pragmatist" rather than "privacy fundamentalist." Ron Plesser of Piper Marbury Rudnick Wolf says that the Internet industry must determine how to properly use Social Security numbers. "Regulating the purchase and sale of Social Security numbers over the Internet won't come overnight," Plesser says. Damn few "privacy fundamentalists" out there. Most "privacy advocates" support massive government privacy invasions including the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, the Census Bureau, and the various state DMVs. Unless a "privacy advocate" is prepared to call for the elimination of the above privacy invading institutions or at least their conversion to anonymous credential technology, then I submit that they are *not* privacy advocates at all. As for the eternal SS# question, Amex and Discover will currently give you "one time use" cc numbers to use over the nets. A consumer-friendly government could do the same. Particularly since they already have the institutional setup in place. Anyone who forms an entity of any kind that has US tax implications (sole proprietorship, partnership, trust, estate, corporation, etc.) can/must apply for a taxpayer ID number (TIN). The Feds could issue them to the rest of us for one-time use. DCF I knew America was in trouble when I found that the application to join the Sons of the American Revolution asks for your Social Security Number.
Enhanced Taxpatriate's Page
The original Official Taxpatriates Page just keeps getting better. I've cleaned up some of the text and added a JFile database of Taxpatriates for those who use JFile on Palm devices. Here it is: http://www.frissell.com/taxpat/taxpats.pdb As always, the Official Taxpatriates Page can be found at: http://www.frissell.com/taxpat/taxpats.html For those who track such things, 3008 names have appeared on the "List of Shame" since its debut in the 4th quarter of 1996. DCF Nine U.S. states have no general tax on wages and salaries: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming
Re: Biochem convention violates privacy rights, study says
At 11:03 AM 9/28/00 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: Cato Institute News Release September 28, 2000 Enforcement Of Biological Weapons Convention Would Be Unconstitutional Protocol would violate Fourth, Fifth Amendments and appointments clause The appointments clause. I love it. Are right wing nuts and libertarians the only ones who actually read the Constitution these days? It does make fun reading. DCF
would it be so much to ask..
At 02:23 PM 9/22/00 +0100, Ken Brown wrote: The trouble with that use of the words (though it is the most common one on this list I guess) is that it defines just about every nation-state that ever existed as "fascist" including the so-called capitalist countries: "if you don't manage it the way they want they do take it away" is more or less the situation in western Europe and North America right now. (Can anyone say "consent order"?) So we end up with words that don't really distinguish between the very different situations of say, the USA, the old USSR, Spain under Franco. Most of those are "mixed economies" of course. A fully developed fascist state requires that nominal versions of a market economy, wages, prices, profit, ownership etc. be maintained but that a full-blown command economy is maintained by wage and price controls and tight regulation of private commercial activity. So the US is not a fascist economy (it usually scores in 5th place among the nations on the two Economic Freedom of lists produced by the WSJ and CATO). DCF Boston Blackie - Enemy to those who make him an enemy Friend to those who have no friend.
Re: Bill Joy suggests limits to freedom and research.
At 11:20 AM 3/15/00 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: I'd like to suggest that people take a serious look at Bill Joy's "Why the future doesn't need us", the cover article in the current Wired magazine. It can be found online at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html. I printed it out and will be working my way through it. Sounds like 50's SF films vs. 50's written (US) SF. "There are some things man was not meant to know" vs. "men as gods". Traditional fight. As to future risks to freedom - we weren't thinking of asking permission in any case. DCF "They can attempt to outlaw weapons but they can't outlaw the Platonic Ideal of a weapon and modern technology makes it absolutely trivial to convert a Platonic Ideal of a weapon into an actual weapon whenever one desires."
Re: Offshore Banks to be Excommunicated
At 08:32 AM 3/2/00 -0800, Eric Cordian wrote: NEW YORK (AP) -- The Clinton administration intends to ask Congress for new power to combat money laundering, including the authority to ban financial transactions between U.S. institutions and offshore financial centers, The New York Times reported today. Ah. Exchange controls. I thought we had always eschewed exchange controls. DCF "Women who keep wearing the skirts are crazy," says Ann Brown, chairwoman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission. "They're taking their lives into their own hands." -- Said of women who persist in defying the ban on rayon skirts from India.
Re: Re: damn commie hypocrite leech! (was Re: Re: Re: why worry?)
At 12:29 PM 3/1/00 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: Capitalism is not equivalent to freedom in any manner. If anything the pursuit of capitalist goals has driven more abuse than help by many orders of magnitude. There is a reason the Constitution doesn't mention business rights or commerce in general except in two sections (i.e. inter-state commerce and the pursuit of happiness (it's implied)). You (like the Supremes) forgot: Section. 10. Clause 1: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. Capitalism is not the answer to anything, it's the mechanism that funds the society not defines it. Nothing more, most especialy it is not the final goal of human effort. Capitalism is an attack formation created by that great Classical Economist Karl Marx. Classical Economics has been obsolete since the middle of the last century and the development of Neo-Classical Economics and the Theory of Marginal Utility. "Capitalism" isn't the answer to anything but liberalism is. These days we liberals use the term market liberalism in the US to distinguish ourselves from the followers of Karl who use that term liberalism here because they're too chicken to call themselves socialists. DCF Republican politicians are better than Democrat politicians because they don't support gun control so if you don't like them you can just shoot them. -- P. J. O'Rourke
Re: Re: why worry?
At 12:10 AM 3/1/00 -0500, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 11:27 PM 02/26/2000 -0500, Petro wrote:
Theft of property *is* the initiation of force.
Theft of property is initiation of bad behavior, but not necessarily force.
Robbery of property is initiation of force ("yer money or yer life",
or even armed burglary of an occupied residence.)
Using force to keep stolen property is initiation of force.
But sneak thievery of property isn't force, it's just theft.
It's obviously wrong, but when my fellow Libertarians claim
it's force, they're weaselwording to evade the problem that the
Non-Aggression Principle doesn't let them initiate force in response.
Bill,
The Common Law judges had to deal with this one and did a reasonable
job. Let's drift back to Law One almost the first day of Criminal Law
getting on 30 years ago...
Theft - "The taking and asportation of the personal property of another
with intent to permanently deprive him of same."
Asportation=carrying off.
Robbery - "Theft from the person accomplished by threat of force"
You can use deadly force in the case of Robbery and also in that subspecies
of theft covered by Burglary (in those jurisdictions that let you use it at
all).
Burglary - "The breaking and entering of the dwelling house of another in
the night time with intent to commit a felony therein." [The original CL
definition limited burglary to "dwelling house" and "night".] Since a
burglary was considered an inherently dangerous act in itself, you could
use deadly force.
DCF
"They believe that the Government is the problem and that what everyone
needs is to be told, 'You're on your own; go out there into the tender
mercies of the global economy; have a great time in cyberspace, and we'll
get out of your way.'" -- William Jefferson Blythe Clinton in a speech to
the AFSCME in Chicago June 21, 1996.
Re: Re: why worry?
At 09:44 PM 2/13/00 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote: Megacorp are every bit as evil as governments are. The destruction of the state and multinational corps go hand-in-hand. In fact, they probably are even more evil -- and certainly more efficient in their evil. Governments derive all their revenue by threatening to kill people. Corporations only derive a small part of their revenue from other institutions (governments) that derive their revenue by threatening to kill people. No contest. DCF
Re: NWA computer seizureg;
Northwest Airlines last week began court-authorized searches of the home computers of flight attendants whom the airline suspects organized a sick-out over the New Year's holiday. Two computer forensic experts, hired by Northwest, seized the computers of a They didn't seize his computers. He gave them to the investigators in response to a court order. He could have refused. rank-and-file flight attendant who operates a web site and electronic bulletin boards, and copied the hard drives from the computers of 21 individuals, Again, these people permitted the search under threat from a court order but they could have resisted. One possibility - I am not saying whether or not I own any computers (actually printouts or digital storage media) or where they are - prove I do you copraphaegic cretins. I'd love to see a copy of the order. No warrants were issued. Imagine the challenge of proving that someone *owns* a computer in their home without entering it (or even *after* entering it). One can read and write email without using a computer (or a computer with a hard drive). One can also use a computer one does not own and control. It bugs me when people just comply without argument, litigation, self-help or flight. Since court orders to turn over computers don't require you to actually be anywhere or say anything, a judge would have to order a person to present himself for testimony under oath relative to his ownership of computers (similar to the compelled testimony of a debtor concerning assets). Only then could he actually be compelled to discuss the matter. DCF
Re: NWA computer seizureg;
Again, these people permitted the search under threat from a court order but they could have resisted. One possibility - "I am not saying whether or not I own any computers (actually printouts or digital storage media) or where they are - prove I do you copraphaegic cretins." I'd love to see a copy of the order. No warrants were issued. A further thought. "Your Honor, the ECPA limits my ability to comply with your order. I can't turn over any electronic communications without a warrant and the warrant has to identify specific messages. I don't want to end up in federal prison."
