The Distributed Denial of Secrets project publishes leaks that reveal corruption, particularly leaks that undo financial secrecy. They have just released their latest dump: Project X-Ray, a leak of scanned the Bahamas Company Registry.
These are scanned documents – 135,166 in all – that reveal the directors and officers of shell companies, many of them used to hide the looted wealth of poor nations, or funds hidden away by corrupt "businesspeople" evading taxes, or just plain criminals.
They're looking for help transcribing the contents of these records so they can be made fully searchable. Many of these companies are matrioshke grifts, numbered owned by other numbered companies in other notorious secrecy jurisdictions from New Zealand to Delaware.
A previous dump revealed the contents of the Cayman National Bank and Trust, a favored cutout for Russian oligarchs.
> These are scanned documents – 135,166 in all – that reveal the directors and officers of shell companies, many of them used to hide the looted wealth of poor nations, or funds hidden away by corrupt "businesspeople" evading taxes, or just plain criminals.
Aren't they also going to end up revealing the accounts of dissidents and "Freedom Fighters" who bank in the Bahamas because otherwise their authoritarian governments would take their money and kill them, and they can't open accounts in first world banks because their country is on the naughty list?
It seems strange to me that so many people are on board with privacy most of the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want their government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain.
>It seems strange to me that so many people are onboard with privacy most of the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want the government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain.
This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous.
That said, you may be right that some innocents may get wrapped up in this, but I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed.
To be honest the biggest problem I have is that we've become so normalized to this kind of shit that hardly anything happens from the revelations. Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account. Combine that with things like Epstein's lack of prosecution and later assassination and what I see is the overton window moving to normalize corruption as a required pragmatic approach to power such that most people will openly admit the rule of law simply doesn't apply to the elite.
This, therefor, is hacktivism of the finest kind imho. The people standing up for themselves when even their own governments won't. Any potential fallout relating to innocents I would place at the feet of those governments who failed to do their job, and not the hacktivists who reveal the truth because of that failure.
For those of you interested in the topic of offshore funny money, check out the following excellent documentary. The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire
> This is a failure of government to protect it's peoples from supra-nationalist oligarchs who abuse various economic shell and tax avoidance friendly nations systems in order to abuse their country of origin (or country of profit origin). This is not at all about "what books they buy" and to say so is poor form and intellectually disingenuous.
This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records.
Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business.
> I would venture this example you've pulled out of your hat is an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed.
I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior.
> Just look at the Panama papers for example, besides a journalist or two getting assassinated because of it, nobody was held to account
It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own?
They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.
> This is about governments abusing the boogyman of supranational oligarchs to justify subjecting their entire populations to surveillance of what books they buy, and everything else about their lives which can be deduced from their financial records.
Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that indicated this was a gov operation.
> Buying books, contraception, a Grindr subscription, it's not any of their business.
Again, straw men. One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial data. Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways. Just as banks have to do suspicious activity reports if you deposit more than 10k or deposit large sums in a structured way that indicates suspicion, but them looking at your purchase data is at the same time considered a privacy violation. Don't get me wrong I'm against massive surveillance of the genpop, but that is not even close to what is going on here.
> I would venture that supranational oligarchs are an extremely small percentage of who would be revealed, because there really aren't that many supranational oligarchs. And in many cases the ones who do exist aren't obviously the bad guys -- a lot of "oligarchs" with offshore accounts have them because they're on Putin's list, but being on Putin's list is as often an indication of good guy behavior as bad guy behavior.
I'm not sure how much you know about the offshore world but that simply doesn't match everything I know about it (which is admittedly little, but some is first hand). Don't get too hung up on the one particular demographic I focused on. There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the oligarchs". Your attempt to whitewash being an oligarch of the particular Russian type because Putin doesn't like them is laughable.
> It's because leaking their names was never the thing preventing them from being held to account. You don't think the US government has the intelligence capacity to learn their names on their own? They don't get prosecuted because the information has to come in a way that it would hold up in court, or because they're politically connected, or because they're politically connected in another country which your country needs to maintain a relationship with. It was never because the government can't figure out who they are. So revealing the names does nothing against the real bad guys, but it still gets people murdered who were using those accounts because they're vulnerable and not politically connected.
You are partially correct, in that the rule of law doesn't seem to apply to the uber-wealthy, but that doesn't mean the people don't deserve to know who the shady cats are even if the gov does nothing. All of the reasons you state are obvious and exactly why this was done via hacktivism and not via some international banking regulation ala Switzerland when they changed their laws.
> Did the government participate in this leak? I didn't see anything that indicated this was a gov operation.
Innocent people wouldn't be using Bitcoin or accounts in the Caymans or whatever if you could walk into a US bank (or a Walmart) with $100 in cash and walk out with a $100 prepaid debit card without being required to give anyone a name or social security number.
> One, this is just a registry of who owns the companies. This isn't financial data.
This is registry data on people published with the intent to force them back into using the system that gives up their financial data.
> Two, if it was, there is a vast difference between we want to know what books a person is buying and hey that b/millionaire has been using the Bahamas to move millions of dollars in shady ways.
I agree! So then why does the system that allegedly exists only to prevent moving millions of dollars require the system to know what books a person is buying? Shouldn't that system only apply to high dollar value accounts?
> There are a lot of shady entities using offshore banking, not just "the oligarchs".
But then what are we getting from publishing a list which is some bad guys and some good guys? Being on the list doesn't prove you're a bad guy, so what are people supposed to do with it? Some kind of indiscriminate mob justice?
Whereas if you have some evidence that a specific person is a bad guy then publish that and not an indiscriminate list of names.
> It seems strange to me that so many people are on board with privacy most of the time, but when it comes to financial privacy anybody who doesn't want their government to know which books they buy is somehow a villain.
There's a difference between privacy for an individual, and privacy for a company.
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're all the same (case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305296), therefore tedious, therefore off topic here.
In this case I wasn’t trying to take it off on a tangent. The linked article literally has a section titled “Mafia logic and conservative ideology”. That’s what I was responding to, since it made little sense to me and seemingly didn’t match the title of this post.
I believe you, but importing that into the HN context and starting a new subthread about it amounts to introducing a generic ideological tangent, which is what we don't want here. Not everything in an article needs to make it through the membrane—it's much better to pass on the provocation.
The author (who I love!) is a leftist (like me!) and probably some kind of communist (like me). He believes that human lives are more important than property rights. From that perspective, people on the right who do not believe that seem like heartless murderers who care more about profit than the people they depend on for their well being.
So to a leftist, many far right conservatives feel a lot like comic book villains! Of course it goes the other way too, but that makes sense to me.
Your cheerfulness is refreshing, but please don't take HN threads further on generic ideological tangents. Generic discussion is bad for HN generally (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and generic ideology is the worst subtype (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This is simply not a topic that can be discussed with any nuance or curiosity on a large, public internet forum. A flood of generic comments will inevitably get sucked in, drown out everything else, and soon people will be bashing each other over the head with clubs from the sacks they always keep handy.
> He believes that human lives are more important than property rights.
How do you justify creating a total ordering of rights in this way? And why do you think that there is no intersection between these two sets: "human rights" and "property rights"?
I suppose it's more of a general line of thought, not a hard "total ordering". "Property rights" is also a broad term, and perhaps equally important are "property norms".
Also I find this theoretical stuff hard to explain in detail. I am a full time engineer, but I'd like to spend more time reading theory so I could easily and concisely explain all of this stuff in my own writing and when I talk with others.
My explanation is not super important though, because I do not believe I should impose my beliefs on you. There are however places where our beliefs (and the law) intersect. For example if you start a company that makes something really useful, but you include a little software lock or a hardware ID circuit that locks down the products ability, do I have the "right" to bypass your lock? Do you have the right to send police in to my town and stop me from using the item I unlocked?
That is the domain where our ideas intersect. Where you and I have reason to care about each other's beliefs. In that case I should get better at explaining my side, and I may want to fight to reduce the laws that give you this control over me.
But I am an anarcho communist. I am also a left-libertarian. I think property rights are useful, but I think it is wrong for a huge store of grain to sit full behind a barb wire fence while people starve outside.
> I think it is wrong for a huge store of grain to sit full behind a barb wire fence while people starve outside
If only the world worked by such simplistic rules... take the grain, and thus steal from / starve the farmer or the people who work to distribute grain to market?
I was asked by a moderator not to perpetuate this discussion, but I just wanted to say that I do not envision a world of repeated theft, but a world where no one would put up the barb wire fence to keep out the hungry in the first place. And I do not want to be the person keeping the grain from the hungry. It requires the consent of people on both sides of the fence to make that happen.
I won't reply further to avoid continuing the discussion further, but I had to correct the assertion that my view on this is simplistic.
His actual statement was that human rights are more important than property rights, yet property rights are a human right.
So it’s a nonsensical straw horse that actually just helps establish that the terms “right” and “left” are meaningless and only meant to divide and demonize people.
From the article: Steven Brust: "Ask what's more important, human rights, or property rights. If they say property rights are a human right, they're on the right."
It is all relative to you I guess, for a true idealogical communist any individual property right is as right as it gets, while people who generally are from western style capitalist economies, individual property right is probably centre or maybe even centre left and similar rights to corporate entities may be considered centre right .
He's not arguing whether or not we should have property rights. The question is which is more important, property rights or human rights. There are times when these rights clash and we as a society have to pick one or the other.
For example, if a huge natural disaster (like hurricane Katrina) wipes out the livelihood of millions of people and the government hasn't provided aid yet. Should a person who is hungry and lost everything be able to go inside a store and take food? He has a human right to live but that store also has property rights over their products. Some (not all) conservatives would argue that the hungry person should be prosecuted for stealing, while most people on the left would argue the opposite.
He is arguing over whether we should have property rights because he apparently doesn’t believe it.
And your convoluted and unlikely analogy fails because you can’t describe why this person should be allowed to steal food others are willing to pay for. Paying for food allows the store to stock more food to feed far more people, stealing the food forces the store to stop selling food.
Why isn’t the government buying food to distribute to people in need without destroying private businesses?
If I believe in property rights and using government to distribute food to the needy, am I a lefty or a righty? Or is there some other label to demonize me with because I don’t believe all of the exact same things as you and the author?
It is not a question of whether or not you should be able to own a home. It's a question of whether or not a large store of food should be guarded behind a barb wire fence while people outside starve. I think we can run a functioning economy without denying people the right to life.
I broadly agree with that statement, but it demands a definition of terms. Which property rights are human rights? Certainly, the right to a limited liability corporate form is not a human right.
I think you might be interested in William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" [1]. The US inherited all its property laws from British common law.
It's a tough read, but it is fascinating. Makes you ask questions like "what is property?" What makes something yours? Another interesting read is Johnson v. M'Intosh [2], which is a bit easier and shorter.
You state: "and probably some kind of communist (like me)"
The page also quotes:
"
Then came the definition from Corey Robin's "The Reactionary Mind": to be on the right is to believe that some of us were ordained to rule and the rest to be ruled over, and that the world is only right when the correct rulers are enthroned.
"
as well as:
"Today, I learned a new definition, courtesy of John Holbo: "Conservatism says the law protects in-group members without binding them; while binding out-group members, not protecting them."
"
Not sure which kind of communist you are proposing, but these definitions both would both make any form of vanguardist ideology (inc. marxism, anarcho communism, etc) or ends-justify-the-means ideology inherently 'right'.
> Doctorow began selling fiction when he was 17 years old
The point about the "ordained to rule" and choice to be "ruled over" reminded me of Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Anarcho communism is not a vanguardist ideology... Marxist analysis is useful without any notion of a vanguard party, which I feel was a failed idea. Of course there have always been anarchists and marxists who disagreed with the vanguard party idea, but they were suppressed by the authoritarians and famously executed in many cases.
I don't think Cory Doctorow is a vanguardist and neither am I.
We often view those on the right as beliving they should rule over us through acquisition of wealth and subsequent control of the means of production. I don't think it makes sense for billionaires to control our world, which I view as a form of "rule".
When I say I am an anarcho communist, I mean things like: we should make more of the world like wikipedia, and roll back draconian intellectual property restrictions. I do not think I should run an army full of people with guns to control your town. Nor does Doctrow from what I know. I have seen people on leftist subreddits who do think that, but then that's internet comments for you.
Aren't you then the ones making the rules? "Rolling back draconian intellectual property laws" means the world has to accept your vision of intellectual property, and I assume that's true of whatever other changes you envision as well. What if people disagree with your vision?
That's a close minded way to start a discussion about politics that has become all too common. I think it's important to assume everyone is coming from a place of good intentions until proven otherwise. As someone whose beliefs most closely align as libertarian-right I'm now much more unlikely to seriously consider what you're saying after you characterize 10-50% of Americans (depending on definitions) as heartless murderers and comic book villains.
> to a leftist, many far right conservatives feel a lot like comic book villains
Your arguments might carry more weight if you saw those with opposing viewpoints as more than caricatures.
What you’re describing as “far right” is a sizeable fraction of America. If your views are, out the door, anathema to them, I’m going to de-prioritise them—they’re politically nonviable.
I don’t think your views are nonviable. The language, however, makes the whole package so.
> I’m going to de-prioritise trying to understand them—they’re politically no viable.
imho lack of political viability should not be sufficient to not prioritize trying to understand something. For example, I don't think ideologies like Anarchism are politically viable, but do think understanding such ideologies is important to forming a solid base of knowledge upon which to base my actual positions.
> I don't think ideologies like Anarchism are politically viable, but do think understanding such ideologies is important
De-prioritise doesn't mean ignore. It just means it goes down the list. If something has a chance of appealing to the population, it could merit working on. That makes it a priority to understand.
Non-viable politics are fine. They move the Overton window. And they can, as you say, inform broader philosophies. But if something has a chance of being viable, it benefits from more-compassionate framing.
It is in some people's best interest if some continue to try to understand them, especially if what they are thinking (or signaling they are thinking) is highly irrational.
It is in the far right's interests to continue to get press and traction of their irrational ideas. They are a cult of grifters (working the con) in that respect.
I was thinking about the USA specifically, but I think it applies generally that despite some of its interesting tenets, very few people support it. Without at least some critical mass of supporters, ideally at least a plurality, it has no chance of becoming supported enough to place people in office and is thus not politically viable.
How much more weight is needed then to look around at the world; pointing everywhere as proof that the current system is 'A bad idea' and desperately needs reform?
We have given these opposing views far too much credit and need to be treated with the same ridicule and vitriol as they deserve.
You can "look around everywhere" and see a lot of evidence that the world is better than it ever has been. That doesn't mean "perfect," but choose whatever indicator you like—life expectancy, average wealth—and it looks better than the past. People are quick to forget that for most of history, the vast majority of people lived as either hunter-gatherers or indentured servants to kings and emperors. Russia had laws at one point that literally bound its serfs to the land they were born on. They lived and died in the same place and were legally prevented from going anywhere. There are plenty of targets for reform, but it's hard to imagine anyone with the slightest knowledge of history looking around and going "this is all horrible, how did we let it get so bad?!"
"It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." -- Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek
below a quote from "Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative" by Mark Fisher - this is a devastating but interesting read on this subject. (I just finished this last week).
"> Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. That slogan captures precisely what I mean by ‘capitalist realism’: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it. Once, dystopian films and novels were exercises in such acts of imagination – the disasters they depicted acting as narrative pretext for the emergence of different ways of living. Not so in Children of Men. The world that it projects seems more like an extrapolation or exacerbation of ours than an alternative to it."
>What you’re describing as far right is a sizeable fraction of the American population
Since most right, centre and left politicians in the US are right-wing compared to fx. European politics that doesn't seem like a problem with what he wrote.
Historically, far left governments have killed as many people as far right ones, despite their proclaimed love of human rights. Pretty much any closed, ironclad ideology seems to be capable of ending in mass murder.
Leftist ideology is not inherently authoritarian, and many authoritarian leftist regimes imprisoned or executed the anti authoritarian lefists in their midst. I am an anti-authoritatian, but there have always been anti-authoritarian leftists. Even Karl Marx had a well known contemporary critic with Peter Kropotkin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin
So you've made a mistake associating leftist ideology with authoritarianism. There is both authoritarian leftist ideology and non-authoritarian leftist ideology.
And then there's Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam. Their country was occupied by the French and later invaded by and viciously attacked by the United States. So they were communist and perhaps emphasized violent revolution, but how else could you gain your freedom from an occupying army?
But for a modern, United States-centric anti-authoritarian anarchist communist ideology, look up Communalism by Murray Bookchin. Bookchin was critical of Bernie Sanders in vermont as being too centrist.
The right to own property is an extension of our right to own our own life. We are only obligated to contracts we have voluntarily entered into. You need to address the immorality of using violence to force people to be empathetic. We are not responsible for the lives of others. You have the option at any time to donate 100% of your disposable income to a charity of your choice. You do not have the moral right to violent police enforcement to force people to enter into contracts against their will. These rights are guaranteed by our constitution and your misguided opinions have been discarded decades ago.
The concept of a social contract is axiomatically immoral as it relies on the use of involuntary compulsion and violent police enforcement, in violation of the non-aggression principle. Educate yourself on a world where the non-aggression principle is actually respected on an institutional level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
> The right to own property is an extension of our right to own our own life.
Not at all. It's a benefit of modern nation states and the contracts they extend to their residents.
A monopoly on violence [1] is a fundamental step of the legitimation process of any sovereignty, whether an anarcho-capitalist homestead or a modern nation state.
Property rights (including property held in common by the state) are a benefit of the state contract and are enforced by the same monopoly on violence. If you expect your property rights to be protected, you must engage in the contract (via residency and payment of taxes) with an authority that backs them up those rights. Otherwise, you will have a scenario like Afghanistan, with fluid internal sovereignty and where property rights frequently are managed through violence.
I absolutely 100% agree with that statement. Acting in an immoral fashion that violates the non-aggression principle is a fundamental step toward a "modern nation-state." But it's still fundamentally immoral and operates on the assumption that humans are not entitled to ownership of their own lives. The major difference is that an AC homestead would be voluntary, while a social contract imposed at birth is involuntary. And I've been to Afghanistan and it's a much much more complicated situation than you're describing.
> But it's still fundamentally immoral and operates on the assumption that humans are not entitled to ownership of their own lives.
That's a lovely principle, but it means little without enforcement. How would property rights be enforced in anarcho-capitalist society without a system of property laws, courts to adjudicate them, and law enforcement?
> And I've been to Afghanistan and it's a much much more complicated situation than you're describing.
Every real-world society is more complicated than the models we use to describe them. These things all exist on multiple spectra. Socialist Northern Europe is not perfectly or fairly distributive of wealth. Some people in Afghanistan have their property rights enforced by the state.
But on balance, the enforcement of property rights in a country with a weak state like Afghanistan is lower than in Northern Europe, especially the further you get from the government's seat of power. At least today, a warlord cannot take over a town in Belgium and forcibly take over a section of houses to build a garrison.
State enforcement of property rights is the stable foundation on which higher level societal productivity happens. Without it, there are no factories, no secure supply lines, limited commerce and communication. The GDP of most advanced nations would vaporize.
I think all you're saying is that it's impractical to be 100% moral on an institutional level. I like to think that's not true. Anyone who initiates aggression against peaceful people is inherently wrong, even if (they think) it's for a greater good. You're just trying to morally justify it for practicality.
> I think all you're saying is that it's impractical to be 100% moral on an institutional level.
No, I'm saying you can't make a stable practical system that protects property rights that doesn't use monopolies of violence at some scale.
> Anyone who initiates aggression against peaceful people is inherently wrong, even if (they think) it's for a greater good.
Who protects those "peaceful" people when they are objects of aggression? What happens when one of them commits an act of aggression against another group?
>No, I'm saying you can't make a stable practical system that protects property rights that doesn't use monopolies of violence at some scale.
Monopolizing and using violence to enforce involuntary contracts is already a violation of property rights. So it's impossible to have the two simultaneously. You're referring to a limited form of property rights at the expense of moral rationality that more resembles a feudal system.
> Who protects those "peaceful" people when they are objects of aggression? What happens when one of them commits an act of aggression against another group?
Do you realize you're saying that one group needs to initiate violence (in the form of law enforcement over a social contract imposed at birth) so that we can protect people from violence? You're initiating violence against peaceful people to achieve some political agenda.
“they who can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
> Do you realize you're saying that one group needs to initiate violence (in the form of law enforcement over a social contract imposed at birth)
You can describe it in inflammatory sounding terms, but it is the basis of all large human societies, regardless of the model of governance they subscribe to. Please describe the alternative that is free from the monopoly on violence, and please provide examples.
> Please describe the alternative that is free from the monopoly on violence, and please provide examples.
Sure - just a government that, while perhaps monopolizing most violence, also protects citizens' rights to bear arms as a competitive force. And not compelling anyone to enter into contracts like Social Security. As long as every single government expense is the minimum necessary intervention to protect property, that's fine with me. You aren't actually even advocating for anything outside of a monopoly over violence. If that's all you support, that's a very extreme libertarian position to have, so we're not far off. But I suspect you're using this as a method to just try to win a debate and justify your immoral belief system. We should at least be honest with ourselves and admit that immoral actions are necessary but should be minimized. I was originally replying to a self-described communist. You're here debating the nuances of how extreme you can be as a libertarian before it becomes impractical.
Bahamas Company Registry leaked
The Distributed Denial of Secrets project publishes leaks that reveal corruption, particularly leaks that undo financial secrecy. They have just released their latest dump: Project X-Ray, a leak of scanned the Bahamas Company Registry.
https://xray.ddosecrets.com/
These are scanned documents – 135,166 in all – that reveal the directors and officers of shell companies, many of them used to hide the looted wealth of poor nations, or funds hidden away by corrupt "businesspeople" evading taxes, or just plain criminals.
They're looking for help transcribing the contents of these records so they can be made fully searchable. Many of these companies are matrioshke grifts, numbered owned by other numbered companies in other notorious secrecy jurisdictions from New Zealand to Delaware.
A previous dump revealed the contents of the Cayman National Bank and Trust, a favored cutout for Russian oligarchs.
https://data.ddosecrets.com/file/Sherwood/