Banks should be under a legal duty to prevent fraud, said a crime commission, in an extension of duty of care laws.
How expensive do we think banking would become?
The commission – set up by the police foundation, a think tank – said the principle had already been established with the government’s proposed statutory duty of care on social media firms requiring them to protect children from online harms like child abuse, suicide and self-harm.
“It is worth considering whether this duty of care ought to be extended beyond the social media companies to other industries, for example financial services, to prevent fraud and other forms of economic crime,” said the commission in its interim report published on Wednesday.
Banks must monitor every transactions, see who is spending what on what? Rilly?
Plus, of course, there’s no evidence that it would reduce the amount of fraud. Thinking they’re fully protected people might take even less care than they do now…..
I’ve been reading reports about the development of digital currency in both China and the EU, and that is very worrying. Once your currency is truly digital then every transaction will be be known and your money won’t really be your own. It will be be akin to slavery with the government able to confiscate it by putting time limits on it or setting high negative interest rates.
It might take a few years but the omens are not good.
Got to continue the narrative that the government and state knows best and knows how to look after every single aspect of our lives. The public are stupid and need to be parented. However the government and state is manned by the same type of people as the public, so it’s stupid in charge of stupid then.
Here’s some background
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-china-digital-currency-another-tool-for-police-state-2021-5?op=1&r=US&IR=T
Rather looking forward to the advent of government digital currencies, BiND. It’ll provide an enormous incentive to parallel private means of exchange like Crypto. The sheep can use their government money whilst the wolves can get on with doing lucrative business, getting rich & paying taxes when they feel like it. Woo-oo…
Police think other organisations should be made responsible for crime. I suppose it leaves them more time for persecuting motorists, choose which demonstrations are to be permitted, and preventing free speech.
Yes, RichardT, but you are possibly forgetting that car manufactuters would have a legal obligation to ensure that the cars they sell obey all road signs and markings. Ideally policing should soon be all drones and social media.
TMB – I believe that you may have missed what at least one of the vehicle APIs can do.
@DMcD..
Indeed. I guess it’s only a matter of time before your internet-connected car uses its image-recognition ability to read speed-limit signs (allied to GPS) and grass you up to plod the moment you go over the posted limit.
Personally I’d go the other way. Make online fraud where payments are made voluntarily by the account holder a non-criminal offence. If you send your life savings to some random person who you’ve never met but who rang you to tell you your bank account had been ‘compromised’, or (as seems to be very common these days) chatted you up on a dating website then strung you a line about his need for cash, then you deserve no assistance whatsoever from the bank or the authorities. If a random person turned up at your door and asked for your life savings in cash (with absolutely no coercion possible) no-one in their right mind would hand it over, or would be considered deserving of sympathy. So why does doing exactly the same online make you a downtrodden victim all of a sudden?
@ BiS
Rather looking forward to the advent of government digital currencies, BiND. It’ll provide an enormous incentive to parallel private means of exchange like Crypto. The sheep can use their government money whilst the wolves can get on with doing lucrative business, getting rich & paying taxes when they feel like it. Woo-oo…
I think it’s quite likely that the government will simply make all other forms of electronic cash illegal, perhaps with the sorts of swingeing penalties which would be justified by using an enemy of The People’s Currency.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how organised crime deals with this. There will of course always be a place for barter and other smaller forms of money, but I don’t think your average Ferrari dealer, or conveyancing solicitor, or Michelin starred restauarant, or airline, or Bond Street jeweller, or solicitor, will accept Bitcoin once the penalties for accepting it are ten years in the clink.
Organised crime works within the current system because there are ways to wash your dirty cash and turn it into clean cash. But it’s still cash. Once there’s no private store of value (which cash is, and Bitcoin very much isn’t) I can’t really see how they will operate. They will have access to every transaction everyone makes, apart from the you scratch my back I scratch yours type.
BiS & Interested
Yes, Interested has it. Crypto is entirely at the whim of governments and can be closed down in a heartbeat. As Interested says, Bitcoin (and others) has almost none of the charecteristics you would seek in a store of value or means of exchange. Governments still want their take in the form of taxes and they would very much like that not to be in Bitcoin, but in $,£, etc..
“Banks must monitor every transactions, see who is spending what on what?”
As far as UK plod goes, wasn’t it the worst kept secret that they consider you Guilty unless court proves you’re not, and even then they’ll simply have to dig deeper to find the dirt they’re after?
If they don’t have the mandate to dig, they’ll “arrange” someone else to rat on you.
Looks like in this case they’re going to try and enlist the banks.
“Government digital currencies”
Coordinated world wide presumably? Because otherwise – and irrespective of crypto – any country doing it unilaterally may quickly find other cash currencies becoming more widely used, in addition to all the low level barter. It’s not as if there isn’t masses of precedent ($), albeit that historically that has tended to be for different reasons.
“no-one in their right mind would hand it over, or would be considered deserving of sympathy.”
You’d feel no sympathy for some poor old soul, part way into dementia, and robbed blind? I would, even if I do think the Police Foundation is talking tripe.
Well, I would except for Joe Biden. I wouldn’t mind if he were robbed blind, obvs.
“Once there’s no private store of value”
Gold or silver.
@Jim
Gold or silver
In a world where there is also cash, yes.
You wouldn’t and probably couldn’t buy a Ferrari, or a Rolex, or a house, or two first glass flights to LA, or a meal at whatever restaurants in London are still open and a night at the Dorchester, or a defence solicitor and barrister, with gold or silver even now, Jim.
You hold onto those commodities, hoping they will appreciate against fiat, until you need to exchange them for cash, and then you spend the cash.
It may be my tiny brain, but I am unable to imagine a world *post cash* where gold or silver have any real value, and certainly not one where the Mexican cartels have a billion ‘dollars’ worth of it lying around that they can use to buy the helicopters, AKs, fighting dogs, emeralds and other goodies they want.
Never mind the end users of their coke – how are you going to pay for your gramme of charlie? With the government’s monitored and always at all times entirely traceable electronic currency? How are the dealers and traffickers going to explain the billions of electronic coins in their accounts? Because I’m pretty sure they will be expected to.