how long before PS UB and FT drop?

[Billman]

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Those who wish to debate me strictly on my arguments are likely to find it to be a fairly interesting exchange. If you want to start your posts by bringing up whether or not my position sends traffic to my blog I see right through your attempts to make this look like a legitimate debate and take it for what it is.

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Oh yes. I'm sure you are right. The over-the-top writings and arguments have NOTHING to do with making money off of your blog. You are correct. You do this for the good of mankind. You are a wonderful example for anyone involved in this debate. You are unsparingly honest. You are a pillar.

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And your posts are meant to further intelligent debate rather than be personal attacks on me. You are a pillar.

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[KotOD]

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And your posts are meant to further intelligent debate rather than be personal attacks on me. You are a pillar.

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Look, Rini, you replied to my post about your position and your argument with a shot. I replied in kind.

You're an absolutist and must continue down that road, else you must admit that your position may be wrong. You have yet to do so and have made personal attacks and twisted traffic stats to fit your argument.

[Billman]

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And your posts are meant to further intelligent debate rather than be personal attacks on me. You are a pillar.

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Look, Rini, you replied to my post about your position and your argument with a shot. I replied in kind.

You're an absolutist and must continue down that road, else you must admit that your position may be wrong. You have yet to do so and have made personal attacks and twisted traffic stats to fit your argument.

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Dude, I just went back and couldn't find a single post where I was specifically responding to anything you said until you popped in with your absolutist stuff. In fact I ignored the first jab you took about the blog because Drizz responded to it.

I'm sorry, but you really don't seem to have anything constructive to add so I'm putting you on my ignore list. If you want to pick a fight, you'll have to do it elsewhere.

[JPFisher55]

If an ewallet does their transactions through a foreign bank, like one in Switzerland, then how can a US bank identify the merchant if the foreign bank does not reveal the merchant's identity. Do you really think that US banks can stop doing business with all foreign banks that they suspect service the online gambling market.
Remember Neteller did their own EFTs. That seems to be their undoing.

[Billman]

Good question. The answer is to look at the model again:

player -> us bank -> foreign bank -> eWallet

The player must instruct the US bank to which foreign bank to send the money to AS WELL AS the account to deposit it in. Otherwise how is the foreign bank supposed to know where that money goes?

[JPFisher55]

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Good question. The answer is to look at the model again:

player -> us bank -> foreign bank -> eWallet

The player must instruct the US bank to which foreign bank to send the money to AS WELL AS the account to deposit it in. Otherwise how is the foreign bank supposed to know where that money goes?

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Actually the player instructs his or her ewallet not his bank. So if the ewaller works through a foreign bank only that foreign bank's name would appear on the transaction.
Setting this up will take time, but I think that FTP and PokerStars are working on it.

[Billman]

Maybe I;m missing something here JP. How does the money get from the player's bank account to the foreign bank?

See, I actually live in Europe and when someone pays me or debits my account I see the name of the merchant. For instance if I allow my phone company to direct debit my account the name of the debiting party shows up in my account. Similarly, when I get my paycheck every month via direct deposit the name of my employer is listed as the depositor.

And if the DOJ wanted to figure it all out they would just open up an account at Offshore eWallet, make a deposit vie the eWallet and then call the bank and ask for the detail of the transaction which would include an account number as well as the vendor name. They then put that name and that account on a list of banned payment processors and send it out to the banks.

[BluffTHIS!]

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vinyard,

well it seems that the us government found a way into swift. and the guy supporting your point of view is the one who posted the proof so i'll refrain from repeating it here.

but let's just suppose that one of the us regulations that the us treasury puts forth at the end of the 270 days says this:

any bank subject to us regulation must make a reasonable effort not to transfer funds to any institution known to be engaged in accepting illegal wagers as defined under the uigea. this would include any funds transfer over any international or domestic payment network.

see because the way swift works is like this:

customer -> us bank -> intl bank -> merchant

in order for funds to be sent from the customer to the merchant the us bank must have the account number at the intl bank of the merchant. once a merchant becomes "known" as a gambling entity they can blacklist it. and as we saw with the link bluff posted when push comes to shove banks will comply with us law even if it puts them in violation of eu law if the banks have a presence in the us that puts them in us crosshairs.

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Bill,

You are being very obtuse on this SWIFT matter.

All the US gov't *could* do is to *request* that the SWIFT authority in Belgium violate their secrecy and trust rules upon which the integrity of the system depnds. They have done this re terrorism but nothing else yet apparently (and if they're not already hooking the SWIFT system for non-terrorism money laundering then the likelihood of doing so to stop gambling transactions is very slim). Such an additional non-national security use of the SWIFT system would undermine that system as vinyard has stated. And if the US gov't were to demand that the SWIFT authority do so with a threat of cutting off that system to the US, which it isn't even clear the gov't could do without additional legislation, then such an action would have serious deleterious financial effects in the world at large and not just the US.

And vinyard has previously shown, that without the SWIFT authority's cooperation in breaching transactional secrecy, the gov't cannot identify a class of transactions to block by batch as it might be able to do with a certion portion of ACH/EFT transactions.

All you are doing now is stringing together a bunch of hypotheticals to buttress your worse case scenario argumemt, because you have not one shred of evidence that the SWIFT system will be affected. Indeed it is not even clear yet whether the ACH/EFT system will be affected in its entirety, and won't be until the regs come out.

Go ahead and repeat your string of what-ifs again if you wish, because you have already lost a lot of credibility in refusing to acknowlege it is much more difficult for the gov't to effectively block all types of transactions from site to player's bank than you have made it out to be.

[Billman]

Bluff,

Again, I think you're asking me to defend an argument I did not make. I did not say that they would or could force the Belgium office of SWIFT to conform. What I said is that as long as a US bank has an account number on a blacklist they can ask the US bank to not perform or to decline the transaction.

The privacy issues with SWIFT have to do with people/courts/etc being able to get at the records of transactions conducted. That would be used in a forensic or investigative sort of action. Publishing a blacklist and telling US banks that certain account numbers are engaged in an activity the DOJ considers illegal and to not process transactions to or from those accounts is something that neither SWIFT itself or any EU entity has any control over.

And if we're talking about credibility the fact that you still claim that blocking ACH/EFT transactions is something we'll have to wait 270 days for is proof enough that your take on this subject doesn't mesh well with the reality of what we've seen just happen.

Bill

[Billman]

How about we try a different tact and take this into the realm of being constructive? I have presented my views on ACH/EFT and other electronic funding mechanisms. Now, contrary to the way it;'s being portrayed, I've not said that the government will or won't do any of these things only that they are possible and they're a lot easier than some people are making them out to be.

So in the interest of leading this discussion into something that might shed more light on the subject I put forth the following two statements and invite anyone to offer their own opinions specifically as how my assertions are incorrect.

In regards to SWIFT, I have asserted that the US government does not need to access private banking records in order to enact the UIGEA funding restrictions. My assertion here is that the US merely has to instruct US banks not to process any transactions to specific accounts and/or account names. If my assertion(s) are incorrect, please explain why.

In regards to EFT/ACH transactions it is not even necessary for banks to comply with the UIGEA if the ACH/EFT networks are willing to perform the compliance as they recently did in connection with both Neteller and Click2Pay. If I am wrong, please explain why.

Anything else, I reserve the right to not address as these are and have been my assertions from the beginning despite whatever words/motives/actions have been otherwise claimed.