For real though, the only way to deal with pervasive surveillance is to give them too much noise to surveil.
Your bank invests your money in selling arms to other countries all the time. They're already complicit in all manner of things. They just don't want it spelt out.
Worked in retail banking for 7 years. Can tell you that the tellers are required to submit illegal activities to the investigation department. Not only this but things like elder abuse, child abuse, identify thief (happens too often with parents and their unwilling kids).
Ya, don't mess with banks. Because you might mess yourself up or someone you care about.
Bonus Story: I had someone come into the branch wanting me to try and change a line item that said something like blowjobs from a coworker that was paying him back for lunch. Dude was getting a divorce and that shit caused a ton of headache for him.
But cash app, venmo, chime, etc. they are not banks maybe that's the difference but trust me you can put whatever you want and no one is investigating shit. Like so many people paying "ISIS" during college for a slice of pizza IDK what reality you live in
They are not banks, nor regulated similarly, so more risk of losing money and not getting it back in trade for perceived convenience.
When I was applying for a house mortgage, the case officer was asking me questions about the ins and outs of my financial transactions relating to my investments, because I made multiple deposits in a short period of time. I felt like I was being interrogated and I was annoyed on why the need for that level of scrutiny. Then I remembered that criminals have used buying properties for money laundering, or their initial capital came from criminal activities. There is a posh neighbourhood near where I live, and I saw couple of rough looking families having a gathering in a restaurant. I'm pretty sure they live in that area as well, and if they are, there is a likelihood that they may have bought or are renting properties using dark money (not that rich, suit-wearing people don't do this either).
Yes, underwriting is pretty strict on that shit. Also, don't deposit over 10k without a good reason. We will need to do a CTR, which reports that cash deposit. CSR if that transaction seems sus.
Yes, and, if you have to deposit over 10K, don't split it into multiple payments to stay below the 10K limit - that's structuring, the bank will catch it, and then the bank has to do even more PITA reports.
Also it's a crime.
So do people who get training from the taliban, mark there payments 'taliban training'?
*their
And no, silly. They'd use code words.
Like "nabilat gniniart"
Sure, just hide the fact that you are funding ISIS and the Taliban, the banker is on your side!
JK folk.
Yeah. I'm sure that's what actual bad guys do. They label their crimes and plots clearly with bank transactions.
What a bunch of fucking idiots.
Have you read the emails in the Epstein files? The ones where they're openly talking, in plain text, over Gmail, about trafficking girls and women?
Yes, actual bad guys do incredibly stupid things when they think the law can't touch them.
They absolutely fuckin' do. It is stunning how stupid some people are, especially when committing a crime, especially online.
are you calling the banks idiots? they are required to investigate. and yes bad guys are fucking retarded.
But imagine the outrage if a terrorist group actually marked their payments like this – maybe the day before their suicide attack – with the thought that what does it matter anyway they won't be here to be investigated.
And the bank didn't investigate. The bank would be fined to hell and back and lose all trust, because they couldn't do "the bare minimum" in finding something this obvious.
Do you hate your bank? Go find a bank you like.
Find a credit union instead. If you are banking at an institution with shareholders, the profits are going to rich assholes instead of serving its customers.
Switch to tagging transactions as 'real estate fraud', 'financial instrument fraud', 'fake university', 'epstein party fund'
We don't prosecute these things.
I am glad someone reads those. When I was 15 and got my bank account, while making cash deposits I used to put "I use Arch-based distro, btw" into the "note" field.
It was Manjaro with Plasma. Now I use vanilla Arch.
I guess the only thing that reads most of those is one poor regexec(3) in a loop.
If you keep sending them the bank may give you the boot. They tend to fire customers who trigger too many investigations of this type.
Along with seizing all your funds until they've "investigated." Its not like this is on the banks, the government forces them to do this in the name of "stopping terrorism."
Before we had EU-wide free instant money transfers that only worked within some banks. Two guys, who were at one such bank, decided to use it as an instant messenger. So they sent hundreds of messages while transferring just one Cent back and forth.
Until they got a message from a bank teller that they were equally amused by their jokes but should tone down the frequency because every money transfer cost the bank 11 Cents (don't remember the real number, but it was ridiculously high).
Assuming they sent 1000 texts a day that would cost the bank a whopping $100. I think they'll be fine.
Don't try such kind of jokes with security in the airport or with the police.
My dad once joked about having a bomb while going through airport security.
It was 1997, though.
I still nearly came unglued at him.
Security just rolled their eyes. And I'm pretty sure it was just basically like the call of the void. It was obviously a joke too
Jeez. Even when I was a child in the 1980s I clearly remember that is one of the words we absolutely must never say at an airport. Your dad is somethin' speshul.
both my wife and I have to stop ourselves from making those jokes. she swears she doesn't have a dark sense of humor, but she works at a school. she's had so many damn drills and we've had to seriously comprehend so many different horrific scenarios~1~ she sometime tells school shooting jokes to lighten the mood.
1 that is supposed to be higher or lower dammit fuck you formatting short version of the training we've both had that is accessible to almost everyone
If you're wondering what's the least you can do to get prepared, CPR and Stop the Bleed training are first aid training that are accessible, beginner level training that people of nearly every ability level can do. I am nearly bedridden and I get CPR and Stop the Bleed certified every other year (I tag along with my wife's CPE. The district has gotten used to me showing up, I pay for my own cert, and we went to high school with the EMTs who teach the class (technically I taught one of them his first first aid class in boy scouts but meh. he's passed his boards fair and square it's just funny how small a world it is sometimes because we just keep reviewing the same shit every two years like we're going to a bad church)
edit: mild formatting, sent for coffee
Once I sent a payment to a friend with a note like "drugs and guns" as a joke and it was delayed for like, two days.
Who tf is out there with zero opsec just using the banking system and straight up putting illegal stuff in the note field? So stupid.
Mate you'd be surprised.
I knew a guy in the Police who said that Facebook was a gift because people are dumb.
One guy posted publicly a photo with a couple kg of weed and flashing a pistol acting like a badman. The local police account commented under the post saying they'd like a word, guy responded "what you gonna do, arrest me?", I think you can work out what happened next.
One thing I've learned from parenting a teen is that if you suspect your child is doing something really stupid, there is a very good chance that there is photo or video evidence of it.
Lot of kids out there under age drinking and taking videos of their shenanigans. Dumbasses.
Epstein used fucking Gmail.
Think of the average dumbest use case and realize there's someone dumber still.
I think that's a little different though, Epstein had blackmail material on basically everyone in power, he was basically legally untouchable, he had mutually assured pedophillic destruction. That's why they had to assassinate him.
Your broader point is correct though of course, no argument there.
Matt Gaetz literally used his public venmo to pay underage prostitutes.
People are fucking stupid.
Fun fact: back in the early 2010's Verizon Wireless started a new mobile payment option where you had the option to get an accompanying debit card for your account with the name of the app on it.
The mobile payment system name was ISIS.
The video game Eve Online, a game about spaceships, had a screen listing all spaceships in the game and their stats.
It went by it's acronym, which stood for Interbus Ship Identification System.
It had since been renamed.
Isis was a major Egyptian goddess. It shouldn't be super surprising that things had that name before the Islamic State co-opted it.
Bob Dylan has a (great) song called "Isis"
Have my friends make the note on all cashapp transactions to me say "Support for ICE" so the powers that be double what I receive. 😌
Does not sound like they appreciate it
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