We all need to be very aware that what Snowden (npub1sn0…jdv9) is describing here is not some distant dystopian future. It's our dystopian reality.
In May, Elliptic, together with researchers from MIT and IBM, developed a dataset to identify "the shape of money laundering" on the blockchain.
This dataset attempts to predict money laundering activity that has "not yet been labeled" by distinguishing between what the dataset defines as "anomalous signatures" and Bitcoin transfers between "licit services".
Falling out of these clusters deemed normal by intelligence financed corporations already leaves you penalized. Avoid KYC services? Flagged. Can't tie your transactions to a bank account? Flagged. Frequent user of coinjoins? Flagged.
You are already being debanked because a computer program has decided that you are a money launderer – not because you did something illegal, but because your transactions are deemed abnormal – and you have no legal recourse as suspicious activity reports swear financial institutions to absolute secrecy.
It's the full on criminalization of privacy in finance. The future is here, and it's Orwellian.
