At 04:28 PM 10/13/96 -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
It is unpublished, but he kindly allowed to me describe it in a paper I wrote that discussed whether a bank would ever want to take the risk of allowing bank accounts where it did not know the identity of the customer.
Why should that be a problem? It's the customer's money, isn't it? It's not like the bank is making a loan. It's the customer who should be worried...about the bank's identity. Remember "plausible denial." Shouldn't we believe that if a bank cannot know its customer, likewise it isn't responsible for who that customer is? A bank's legitimate interests should not include acting as enforcer for the government, so any system that prevents this from happening is helpful. And I don't think that a bank can ever be embarrassed (assuming bank accounts are anonymous) by it being revealed that some particular bad guy kept his money there, any more than other cash-based (anonymous) businesses are embarrassed if it is revealed that some bad guy used their services. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com