
The Bank Robber - ca98am79
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/herve-falcianis-great-swiss-bank-heist
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chollida1
This is an interesting case because the bank claims he stole the records to
sell them to rival banks, while he claims he stole them to be a whistle blower
to foreign governments.

Things in the banks favour of this story are:

1) he was convicted in a Swiss court

2) he didn't actually approach any foreign governments for the 2 years he
worked at HSBC until the day after the Swiss government brought him in for
questioning about the theft of the bank's data.

3) He was caught trying to sell the bank data in Beirut.

In his favour:

1) The French government has no plans to prosecute him and allegedly hasn't
paid him for the information.

I guess this is a case of one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter?

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brown9-2
The article disputes your second point:

 _But in March, 2008, before fleeing Geneva, he had sent e-mails to British
and German intelligence agencies, announcing, “I have the whole list of
clients of one of the world’s top five private banks.” (The agencies did not
pursue this opportunity.) He also contacted a French revenue inspector named
Jean-Patrick Martini. During the summer of 2008, Falciani arranged a secret
meeting with Martini in a French village across the Swiss border. Martini
brought along a psychologist, who helped him come to the conclusion that
Falciani seemed credible about the provenance of his data._

(he fled Geneva in late 2008)

The fact that the Swiss convicted him of industrial espionage when the main
point of the article is how important bank secrecy (and it's protection of tax
evasion) to the Swiss shouldn't really help anything.

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rbcgerard
While not the main use of bank secrecy, I find it interesting that people
rarely mention the benefit that bank secrecy provides those living in
countries that are on the brink of civil war, that are not goverend by rule of
law, or where fleeing is a real possibility in the near future...i.e. the
assumption is usually that the governments seeking information on their
citizens are the "good guys"

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peterkshultz
60 Minutes covered this same story:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hsbc-swiss-leaks-
investigation-6...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hsbc-swiss-leaks-
investigation-60-minutes/)

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golergka
It's interesting to combine the reaction in the comments here with the usual
HN comment consensus on privacy.

So, usually, it goes like this: privacy is good, government has no business
snooping around, and Bitcoin-like solutions for financial privacy are the
future of resisting "the system". But in this case, consensus is different:
privacy is bad, governments of the world need to know financial information of
individuals, and whoever tries to protect this information is evil.

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

~~~
alanwatts
In the former, a small closed source centralized authority has all the
information and power.

In the latter, everyone has the information, so the balance of power is
evened.

~~~
wallace_f
I agree. It might be impossible to effectively govern ourselves when adhering
to strict idealogical principles.

In other words, individual right to privacy may be generally a good principle
that we may agree to, but society is too complicated to not resort to
pragmatism and there will always be exceptions. Is it not the same with every
other idealogical principle by which we govern ourselves?

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grownseed
What a gong show... Falciani aside, we have big banks fully implicated in high
street robbery while suffering next to no damage (insignificant
fines/settlements, no arrests) on one side, and on the other side we have
government actors acting like cheap, incoherent buffoons, claiming one thing
and doing another, participating in international diplomatic displays worthy
of kindergarten.

Not that any of this is new, but the evidence that's accumulated thus far,
particularly in view of the leaks over the past few years, would have you
believe that something ought to happen. Yet HSBC and the likes are alive and
well, so are their executives, and the only thing governments seem to have
ramped up is their capacity for ridicule. The people in power seem to have
little to no incentive to change the game, yet they keep getting voted in (or,
in fact, just placed there). What recourse does the populace have at this
point, short of throwing away the entire economic apparatus?

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r00fus
Since we live in a network of oligarchies, apparently, that would also involve
throwing out the political apparatus as well, non? Interlocking problems.

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meeper16
The best way to rob a bank is to own (or pwn) a bank.

