Booming business, steal and sell to governments
Everybody heard of the fact that an employee of a bank in Lichtenstein has sold for big money information to Germany. The data contained information about foreigners and their bank details.
Today, November 3,2009, Reuters published that The Netherlands received a list of people and their bank details and will pay the informant depending on the value of the information, but will end up several hundreds of thousands of Euros.
I think this is getting very dangerous, I will not discuss the fact of black money here, but the dangerous part is that the government pays thieves to reach their goal.
When an spy gets caught, selling private information he has to go to court, when an employee talks to the competitor, he/she gets fired and probably a law suite as a bonus. But when governments are doing it…. Well nothing happened.
Can we allow as citizens that government pays our tax money, which big part already goes to police and investigators, to spend on thieves? Can we allow that government spies on legal companies?
The government is playing with big amounts of money on the accounts, so the public is blind. Who doesn’t want to have a few millions on his/her account? People start dreaming when they hear this amount, and dreams are making the reality just that little bit different….
When the government is launching the news, they don’t say the money is fraud, they will start the investigation.
After 9/11, many governments used the event under the umbrella ‘war on terror’ and bypasses laws, now we have financial crisis and governments are using every means to ‘handle’ the crisis and bypassing laws. Will it help solve the crisis?
Do you think governments should pay thieves to buy data?
(This can be become very lucrative business and wondering if the thief pays taxes on his income and in which country 
)
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5 Responses to “Booming business, steal and sell to governments”
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I could not agree more with you Frederik!
Very interesting post!
Where is black money coming from ? From illegal practices. So who is the thieve in the first place?
You forget one thing: every citizen is obliged to report a crime to the government… as this is obviously about black money which is de facto a criminal case as black money is only coming from fraud wether it be tax evasion or other, the person reporting to the state is only doing his moral duty as a citizen and is helping government to get the persons who stole from us all by not paying taxes or VAT.
Wim,
I understand your point, and I am not discussing the black money here, but wat is happening is that these accounts sometimes contains black money, sometimes not. When the employee copies the data and gives it to the governments, without letting the bank know, he is committing a crime.
Also assuming that having an account in another country is black money is completly wrong. Most of the people have legal money their.
As it is a moral duty to report person who commit crime, why is the government paying?
How can the employee know if the money is black or white?
In our countries, their must be an investigation, then a judge needs to decide, not a person who does it for the money.
It’s an interesting topic my friends
it shows exactly the condition of a society. This things what are going on here, that a government pays for stolen data reminds me very much on the happenings in the German Democratic Republic – eveyrone observs everyone, for sure “under the guise” of beeing a good member of the society. But at least the motivation is allways just jealousy and stupidity. The first, jealousy is simple: The other one has something what I want but will never have, so I denunciate him, even I have to go an ellegal way! Its so simpl, every bugger, doesnt matter how stupid he is can do it. And the government rejoices about so much stupidity. But to accept to solve a crime with another crime, its the end of a functioning legal system. You crossed once the boarder, it will be easy to to it again. Because if it is right for the government (the are members of the society but they think thea are something better) to succeed with stolen date, even its helpful, then it has to be good for the single citizen of this society as well and has to be accepted, because that one has a good reason too. He had to feed his family, its a honourable argument. Ther Europena Union has a very strict jurisdication about the principle of equality. its not just for the romanians, hopefully! Either we have a jurisdication or we dont have. But it cant be that for a group of people (politicians) is another book of jurisdication valid then for the normal citicen. If I buy stolen documents (its already a crime) and use them for my personal advantage (its another crime) I will be sentenced to prision. So who of the German government goes to prision? And the excuse that it is happening for the society is completely wrong. The simple fact is again jealousy but this time from the politicians and from clerks. The system is so ill, in such an extent, that it really doesnt make sens to discuss about.
I’d like to add that I’m not frustrated or absent about this facts, I just tried to give a short glance behinde the mirror, because this system has so many advantages, if someone is just a bit clever and brave enough to use it. It was hardly ever better. You can make so much money this days, for sure legal, just legal, no othe way is recommended and is not needed, and pay so little tax, like never ever bevore. You can start already with little money like 100.000.00 Euro and make 5% per month, you dont need to be Merceds or BMW to save tax.
Most intelligence collection involves “stealing” information in one way or another, and breaking the laws of the target country (not least because espionage is generally a crime), so in what way is this case at all unusual?? Paying people to steal information is what intelligence agencies do – it’s their job.