RE: Coinbase Handed Over Data on 14000 Customers to the IRS Without a Warrant
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The IRS has been chasing, demanding, and harassing Coinbase for its users’ transactional information for over a year. Coinbase has been receiving a John Doe summons dating back to December 8th, 2016, with further demands throughout 2017 that transactional data from 2013-2015 should be handed over.
Coinbase fought back and won a partial victory, reducing the amount of data demanded for submission – one battle was won, but the war was lost.
This is the opening of the article you linked.
Your representation that Coinbase is just willingly giving out data to third parties without a fight is not confirmed by your own sources.
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I appreciate the criticism. I am often overcome by passion and hyperbolic, which is self-defeating. Clearly Coinbase has more than 14k customers and has not simply provided all the data it has regarding all it's business operations to the IRS. My takeaway from the provision of the data it did provide the IRS was that the data Coinbase possesses regarding it's business operations does not belong to it's clients, but to Coinbase, and it can do what it wants with it's records only as permitted by law.
For this reason doing business with companies that are subjected to legal requirements and pressures by regulators and taxing authorities like the IRS must be carefully considered by individuals that are determined to secure information regarding their private financial matters from such creepy stalkers. Americans are supposed to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects from warrantless searches, and doing business with Coinbase relinquishes security of their financial operations to Coinbase, because both Coinbase and individuals that use Coinbase's services have records of those interactions, and either party can provide that information at their option, or must act as legally required. Laws affecting Coinbase are not the same laws that secure private persons, because Coinbase is a commercial enterprise.
In recent years governments have been eliminating financial privacy that commercial enterprises are able to provide, and it is apparent that regulators intend to attain total information awareness of financial assets and transactions, even to debank persons for political purposes. Commercial enterprises increasingly are compelled by law to provide information to regulatory agencies and taxing authorities, and parties intent on financial and political freedom must secure their operations by managing their use of banks, exchanges, and communications because these operations create data possessed by both parties involved, and this relinquishes data security regarding those operations.
Thanks!