That's Google's SafeNet. HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps.
We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it.
People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD. The US has started to sanction people for free speech resulting in de-banking.
Swiss law requires one bank (Postfinance) to offer banking irregardless but if you are sanctioned you can't use the wire system, no other currencies, no credit cards and you cant use Twint either so it's in effect useless. You can't pay for your health insurance or rent.
The real issue is that most "legacy" banks have to comply with stupid regulations that force them to come up with these stupid solutions.
Banks are lazy and find the quickest way to comply with said regulations - simply by enabling Google Play Integrity.
About the whole US thingie - yes, that's true, and it's what happens if you get sanctioned. I'm pretty sure russians (and other people from sanctioned countries) have similar limitations elsewhere.
In Switzerland US nationals have huge problems in opening accounts because of the whole bank secrecy law that allowed many americans to hide money from the IRS in Switzerland.
I use GrapheneOS in Switzerland and am yet to find a bank or financial app that doesn't work. ZKB, UBS, Cembra, BEKB, SGKB, WIR, N26, Revolut, debiX+, SaxoTrader, Swisscard, various TWINT apps, YAPEAL and Yuh are all installed on my phone right now and all work. Most of them don't use the Play Integrity API at all and the few that do are satisfied with the minimal level that's satisfied by GrapheneOS.
The catch is that you need Google Play Services installed and for many, you need to disable GrapheneOS' "Secure App Spawning" feature, which often trips root detection heuristics.
I know many Russians living here and when sanctions came in, their accounts became unable to receive deposits until they provided evidence of a valid residence permit. Some have problems during permit renewals as well but overall, it's nothing like as bad as it is for Americans.
Are all of these apps only available through Google's Play Store repo, or are any of the available as an apk file directly from the bank's site? For some reason most companies only distribute their apps through Google and Apple's repos. People shouldn't have to have an account with and agree to a third party US company's ToS just to download a banking app.
Why are Google Play Services required?
Genuine questions - I'm not from Switzerland and I don't have a Google account.
They're only available through Google Play. That's near-universal for commercial apps.
Google Play Services, among other things, is the main way to get notifications and location on Android, so any app that uses either of those things tends not to function if it's missing.
This goes beyond simply using Play Integrity, which normally just does remote attestation of the operating system. The next level is allowing an app to check its own package for modifications or installation from an unapproved source, but this goes beyond even that and gives the app the ability to check where a third-party app came from.
> The next level is allowing an app to check its own package for modifications
You can't modify them. They're signed. If you modify and resign it gets installed with a different key (ie the one you signed with) hence it's a different app as far as it's concerned.
To get around that you need signature spoofing which Lineage famously refused to include.
Agreed that BigTech in general is making the world worse by implementing security features in ways that erode user freedom.
>"legacy" banks have to comply with stupid regulations
In the UK "banks are required to refund unauthorized payments". Is that a stupid regulation? I quite like it but you can understand why it would make the banks worry about being hacked.
If they get enough complaints "the app doesn't work, please fix it or close my account" they'll fix it because they don't want to close more than a few accounts.
> and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD
What is this about? I'm a EU citizen, never heard about any EU citizen getting removed from any EU bank because of USD. Nor have I heard anyone being sanctioned by the US in the EU unless they're Russia-related somehow. Is there any link to a story about this?
People investigation Israel for war crimes tend to get sanctioned by the Americans. Because European banks don't have the necessary guardrails to block an individual account from participating in their American-facing banking operations, they have to choose between being sanctioned themselves or kicking out their America-sanctioned customers.
The real solution is for them to fix their shitty systems but I don't a handful of judges, lawyers, and human rights activists are important enough for them to make that investment.
This isn't just about being a customer to a multinational bank: this also includes European banks who do business with American banks. For instance, most credit/debit cards in Europe are based on either Mastercard or Visa. All banks I know of will allow you to pay in dollars through online banking.
I don't think there are any European banks that don't communicate with American payment providers in some way by default. It's possible that there are some that trust their feature gates enough to take on these sanctioned people (like government-run banks for those who can't get a normal bank account, i.e. because of a history of fraud and crime), but I don't think these banks will advertise that ability.
Perhaps if she'd take an Iranian, North Korean, or Russian bank account, she might be able to do America-free banking, but that's not very practical outside of Iran, North Korea, or Russia at the moment.
I'm an EU citizen and UK resident. If I were to become one of those officials, my banking situation would become much more complex. One of the defining characteristics of the EU (not that the UK ever cared, even before leaving) is Freedom of Movement, and this is a credible threat to that freedom.
When in the EU the UK was actually one of the countries (if not the country) that made freedom of movement the easiest because, indeed, they did not care. You could move there with zero involvement or knowledge from the authorities.
Yeah, moving here involved basically buying a plane ticket, and, after I got here, booking an appointment to get a National Insurance number (basically equivalent to an American Social Security number). Never occurred to me that moving to any other EU country might be harder than that.
My experience moving to Germany from the UK in 2018 was only one step harder than that from bureaucracy — two appointments, one for social security and the other for an ID card. Not even that I had a much poorer grasp of the German language than I realised was a problem*, as the bureaucracy is mostly bilingual and when it isn't has interpreters.
The only actual hard part was just that the rental market in Berlin has vastly more demand than supply.
* hopefully next month I pass a B1 exam, which tells you how hard it has been for me to get fluent.
One of Cambridge's commuter villages. Was a home owner, still am, very useful passive income.
I'm not sure about how London compares, but Berlin has rent controls so the queues for open house viewings around here can go all the way down the apartment staircase and along the street.
> Never occurred to me that moving to any other EU country might be harder than that.
I don't think it is? I moved to Spain from other EU country the same way, basically bought the cheapest one-way plane ticket I could find, spent ~1 month here before deciding I wanted to live here, then got myself the local residence card one morning and that's about it. Everything else just worked by using my passport in the meantime.
No, it is significantly more difficult in other EU countries, yes.
Here in Finland for example the process is actually no different than for a non-EU migrant (same amount of time taken for an unproblematic application, same amount of appointments). You are just much more likely to be accepted but in fact they do still reserve the right to reject people. And it is, probably unintentionally, much harder to exist in Finland as a non-resident as you can't have a bank account, can't use foreign phone numbers for most things and any phone you can get is very limited (can't call many numbers, etc). I couldn't even log into the local eBay for the first 6 months. All the Nordics I would guess are similar.
And people have contested in the comments to you that Spain is not actually so easy as you suggested...
I actually don't know any western country that is as easy to move to as the UK was pre-Brexit. I still think the UK is in fact one of the easier Western countries to move to, especially if you can't find moderately paid work
Countries with a national id system I would guess tend to be more difficult overall though. And the UK famously is not one of those.
It depends on the country. And Spain is not as simple as you say. Even getting the NIE is very difficult due to the foreign police not making enough appointments available. And expensive immigration agencies hoarding those appointments to make money.
Then you need a social security number exist is different than the NIE, you need empradonamiento, you need to register with the health service and you need to set up your tax if you're going to work here (or if you live there more than 180 days of the year)
> Then got myself the local residence card one morning
Well, exactly. Some countries require/required registration and residence card. That did not exist in the UK when it was in the EU, you just showed your passport/ID card when you needed to prove your right to be there (basically once in a blue Moon). Even now EU residents don't have any physical documents.
The National Insurance number @pdpi mentioned is unrelated as everyone has one once they work and an appointment is not always required to get one, and you can actually start working before you get one.
If you work as an employee there is also usually nothing to do regarding tax.
In Barcelona it is impossible to get an appointment for the residence card. There is online booking system, but it never shows any available slots. But then there are few companies that for 50-100 euros can get an appointment.
But then even with appointment one only gets a temporary permit unless one already got a job offer. One gets the permanent card only after starting a business or buying a property or getting a work.
Also to open a permanent bank account one needs to have at least a temporary residence. Otherwise banks can only open a tourist account valid for few months.
"There is online booking system, but it never shows any available slots. But then there are few companies that for 50-100 euros can get an appointment."
^^^ shouldn't complain about this on Hacker News.
I wrote my own bot and it took a day or so.
The appointment slot came in in 30 minutes thereafter ;)
If you're an EU citizen you by definition have a permanent permit, until either your country of origin or host country leaves the EU. If you are not then woe be you, but that's a separate matter.
That's not actually the case, strictly speaking. Residence in another EU country requires meeting certain criteria even if some countries (like the UK when it was in the EU) do not check or really enforce them. This also means that an EU citizen can be deported from another EU country back to their home country if they don't meet those criteria.
"Permanent residence" is also again different and requires residence under those criteria for at least 5 years.
In theory yes, one can stay in Spain as a citizen of a EU country indefinitely. In practice for anything in Spain you need a tax number. Even to get an Internet connection at home one needs it.
I had neither when I moved, sold my things, tried to survive, ended up sleeping outside for a few days and I found a job after I moved here, not before. But yeah, there is one or two more appointments in reality, one for the social security and one for registering with your local city government, both a lot easier to get than the residence permit which can be a bit of a hassle unless you work with agencies to get it.
Visa and MasterCard, for a start: if a bank issues any kind of commonly accepted debit card to someone who is sanctioned then what is at stake is that bank's ability to continue issuing those cards. Realistically, the bank would be destroyed by being excluded from payment networks and card issuance. So only very little banks that don't interact with anything American (you might manage this with a credit union in the UK, potentially) would be your best bet.
You can't have a credit card which makes your life miserable in the modern world even if you can find a bank : Visa, Master Card, Amex are all American.
Russia after starting aggressive war against Ukraine quickly deployed own version of payment system. And it has been working much better than Visa/Madtercards with much more straightforward integration with online services and very intuitive apps. Russian people who moved from Russia as refugees or just to escape mobilization or prosecution have found banking system in EU/UK/US are rather unsmooth to put it mildly.
1. "Quickly deployed" is misleading. The work started after 2014 when the idea of closing Russia from the SWIFT system was first discussed. Europeans didn't do that at that time (and they were, that would have been hugely problematic for Russian banks), but made Russia initiate technical work to add in-country backend. In 2022 they finally had to turn it on. But the work was 8 years in the making.
2. When it comes to Mir (Visa/Mastercard) alternatives, it is not that wide-spread.
3. The awesomeness of Russian Fintech (and IT/tech in general) is a separate thing, that has everything to do with Russians' technological ingenuity, not the government/sanctions/patriotism/safety/risk-management/sovereignty/independence.
Many European countries still have their own (single-country) versions of debit cards - EC card/giropay in Germany for instance - and they are often accepted more widely than credit cards.
But international travel becomes painful. (Hence EC cards are co-badged as a fall-back with Visa Debit or Maestro, impossible if you are sanctioned.)
Yeah absolutely - I have an account with mBank in Poland and I got a letter from them saying that I need to declare if I'm a "tax person" in the US and if yes then unfortunately they will be forced to close my account as they would have to report all of my banking to some US insistution and that's not worth the hassle of having me as a client.
That doesn't sound like "the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure" at all, it sounds like EU banks or de-banking US residents/citizens, which is wildly different from the initial claim, or how I understood it at least. I thought EU residents/citizens were being cut off from EU banks.
The reason banks do this is that if they don't comply with US tax laws they'll be cut off from all US-based banking systems including international payments (universally conducted in USD), cut off from issuing any credit or debit cards (they are all US-based networks) and the CEO will be arrested if he ever steps foot on American soil. So basically, the US is forcing them to do this and they don't have a choice unless they want to stop being a bank. It's the same situation as dealing with US-sanctioned individuals. HTH.
yes, but that's not de-banking. it's banking being shitty.
(it's the same problem as healthcare and construction, a shitton of regulation, some competition, but no real big differences, and a lot of global dependencies [from generic pharma producers to HVAC/heatpumps and global commodity prices for construction materials and patents and prefab systems and ...], but ultimately local bottlenecks.)
obviously it sucks that FATCA compliance is hard, but it shouldn't be, and ... it's on the banking industry that it's not using some kind of common reporting backend ... oh wait, it does! (CRS!)
(okay, I'm being probably unfair here, of course it's still more work, more support requests, more papers to push, than the counterfactual, but banks already have their reporting systems integrated to the various tax and financial-authority agencies) ... and FATCA is implemented in part through intergovernmental agreements (IGAs), and the "model 1" is a reciprocal tax info sharing between the parties, the bank reports to the local tax service, and that's it.
if you are a US citizen you can have US bank account
HSBC UK also is available (and the account can be opened from the US remotely)
in the EU there's Santander (OpenBank), and Wise, Revolut
debanking is IMHO when simply being too poor or otherwise disadvantaged results in having no viable pathway at all for having a normal account, which here is not the case.
(and this is something the EU could/should fix by negotiating with the US, and/or by helping banks to bear the costs of compliance, etc.)
I am a dual citizen of Poland and USA and haven't had any problems using mBank so far. I even opened 2 foreign currency accounts (USD, EUR) there after they had been made aware of my newly obtained US citizenship. Not sure why you're having issues with them.
> He cannot: open or maintain accounts with Google, Amazon, Apple, or any US company; make hotel reservations (Expedia canceled his booking in France hours after he made it); conduct online commerce, since he can't know if the packaging is American; use any major credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex are all American); access normal banking services, even with non-American banks, as banks worldwide close sanctioned accounts; conduct virtually any financial transaction.
Same with recently Garry Kasparov been designated a "T" by Russia. Banks simply do not take risks dealing with hot customers, as this can affect their entire business (especially if they have branches in the US).
So they rather railroad individuals that have little power, then take the risk that they will lose millions if the US sanctions their bank. Its also linked to a lot of other things.
Somebody who worked at a bank gave a description yesterday on how it works. And if your on that list, you are really in a world of hurt.
I don't think GP misread your comment at all. I do, however, think you just deliberately truncated your own quote.
Here is what you said, in full (emphasis mine):
> There were some other sanctions involving visas, but as far as I understand that did not affect the individuals' ability to bank.
And here is a quote from the article you read (once again, emphasis mine):
> Beyond the ban on entry into the US, they report that from one day to the next they could no longer receive goods, services, or funds from US companies (e.g., Amazon, Airbnb, PayPal, Visa, Master Card), along with indirect (secondary) effects on transactions with European companies as well, such as their domestic bank or a travel company.
I'm sorry this is so difficult for everyone involved. US is sanctioning EU citizens, sometimes with their banks (Nicholas Guillou, Francesca Albanese, and others) and sometimes with visas (Thierry Breton, and others).
I've updated my original post with a link that hopefully helps explain what "other" means.
That sort of sanctioning is world-wide, isn't it? Not specifically targeting EU banks, but rather she's blacklisted from any bank in the world who follows those blacklisting lists, at least from what I understand it.
Parent's comment gave me the impression that this was something exclusive to EU (and Swiss) banks in particular, since they were mentioned by name.
I'm not sure, skimmed the article and came across this:
> She cannot open a bank account anywhere in the world or have a credit card, because she has been placed on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list of the U.S. Treasury Department, which targets money laundering and terrorism.
Are you saying this isn't true then? She's not actually on OFAC, but instead just targeted via Visa/MC?
The OFAC apply to US companies only and forbid VISA/MasterCard to manage her transactions (and a LOT of others companies ... like a lot, not just Visa and MasterCard).
Legally Europeans bank shouldn't apply US sanctions, maybe they do, but legally, they should not (CJUE thing, I'm not an expert). I don't think it ever happen, because ... money launder generally doesn't complains about US sanction, it's wasn't a problem.
From what I heard, even if a person is an EU citizen and does not have dual citizenship but was born in some ex-USSR/CIS countries. For example, if they migrated with their parents at the age of 1y, they will always be considered a higher-risk client by EU banks and will always be under some suspicion. So if that true is not possible to stop being related at least fully.
EU paid Russia since the full scale Russian aggression more money for gas, oil, coal etc. than to support Ukraine. By that logic almost all EU citizens has ties to Russia as they use electricity/gas partially supplied by Russia.
The largest buyer is Hungary, which is not representative of the EU in general to put it mildly, but a darling of the American far-right. Hungary has also been blocking many of EU's support initiatives: https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ministers-outrageous-hung...
This is doing a lot of work. at what point person starts or stops having ties with russia?
if you have any siblings or parents or grandparents or cousins or classmates or ex girlfriends who are living in Russia?
I know a bunch of foreigners with stronger ties to Russia than some of my Russian friends by this logic my friend;) especially Ukrainians and Israelis but really anywhere in the world. debank them all you say?
What it sounds like is the old USSR way "make sure most people are guilty of something so that if you want to press them you always have some excuse"
Not sure what your point is, I'm not arguing for debanking anyone related or having ties to Russia, in any way. But I do understand there are victims of other circumstances here, and that has a collateral victims (which again, I don't want, but it is the reality).
> We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it.
I asked some questions to see how solid your reply was. seems not very. you basically say nah, no one is losing freedom, people are only sanctioned if they have
this
> Nor have I heard anyone being sanctioned by the US in the EU unless they're Russia-related somehow
means you heard of ppl are arbitrarily sanctioned unless there is a specific criteria for what means Russia related
Scan the German press, there are several cases.
Esp in the last weeks:
Interesting is - it started with right-wing people getting de-banked, now left-wing people are following for what ever reason.
> We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies
which companies? google? I'm the first to blame them for almost anything, but how about Postfinance, twint, health insurers, landlords, all those companies you mention? shouldn't they offer ways to do business with them that does not involve some third party? - for example, OP mentions that hsbc website still works for them on android, this is more than what can be said of other banks that basically removed certain "sensitive" features from their homepages. Or practically all the neobanks who 100% rely on apps.
Even those governments you mention: how hard/easy do they make for citizens to engage in commercial activity without relying on third parties or adversarial systems?
I know the argument used by all of them - companies, governments: we are just "following the rules enforced on us (as interpreted by our lawyers)".
Everyone goes to the "simplest" target - Google in this case - to blame for the status quo, but Google is in this position because everybody else - consumers, companies, governements, etc - buys into the "convenience" and neglect everything else.
> Everyone goes to the "simplest" target - Google in this case - to blame for the status quo, but Google is in this position because everybody else
Eh, I think we ought to dole out our ire in accordance with the damage. All are responsible to varying degrees, but Google is the most powerful, and has the greatest ability to curb bad behavior if they wanted to, so they get and deserve the most blame second only to the governments that let them become that powerful.
Dole out the ire, but it won't fix the problem until you realize that everyone's dismissal of ownership and responsibility in exchange for convenience is what creates the googles and apples of the world.
Google will argue they are enforcing good behaviour: if you want to rely on their technical guarantees you follow their rules/specs.
> Dole out the ire, but it won't fix the problem until you realize that everyone's dismissal of ownership and responsibility in exchange for convenience is what creates the googles and apples of the world
This is the opposite of true. Blaming normal human behavior for our problems is distraction from effective action. Humans are a near-constant, you have to look to incentive structures to make any changes to the world.
1) An iPhone Se 2022 that I use for TOTP, banking and auth. It is always in airplane mode, unless I need to login to banks (etc). The OS will receive security updates till 2032.
2) A Pixel phone with GrapheneOS for daily use: Internet browsing, routing, phone, message etc.
I can't find anything about this in the API docs for neither the old SafetyNet nor its replacement (Play Integrity), can you show a source for this being related to SafetyNet? I'd like to see Kore details on this API and the apps it blocks.
> Dismantling off-shore banking is generally a good thing since I'd like the ultra rich to pay tax as that funds services that I use.
There are lots of uses to off-shore banking than tax-evasion. In fact, I don't think it's feasible to use any modern (CRS/FATCA compliant) banking for tax-evasion.
Do you think US pressure is behind the push for online censorship across the West? It seems to be a coordinated effort in many countries, whatever it is.
The US doesn't need to pressure other nations to apply online censorship, because Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, Google and Apple app stores, Steam and suchlike are all American, and censored in line with American norms.
Concerning an apparent coordinated effort it might be more complicated than that. The EU and Australia have always been on the verge of sweeping censorship. Look up "Zensursula" [1][2] and the censorship list that was about to be introduced in 2008 and that, for legal reasons, was illegal to even be looked at by journalists. Back then there was significant public backlash and also indirect cristicism by the US government [3].
Today there is no such criticism from the US because censorship is something that is also of an interest to the christian backers of the current government.
When the cat is out of the house, the mice dance on your dinner table.
Of course it is. Trump is actively trying to censor LGBTQ events and DEI at European companies, they will get blacklisted from selling anything to the US federal government.
The US government should not be promoting racist DEI policies and particular lifestyles (much less deviant sexual interests) so I'm in favor of that. I'm not in favor of actual censorship.
More to the point, Trump is not (obviously) making all these countries and the EU demolish online privacy protections. There are laws constantly proposed all over the world to wreck free speech and privacy.
They flag "sideloading" - or anything installed by anything outside of their store.
They don't always flag it. Only when SafeNet is set to paranoid levels. However, sideloading is considered a risk for some reason. Even if sideloading is a synonym for "installing".
When it comes to this kind of thing, an injury to one is an injury to all and we need to not tolerate it. At minimum, we need regulations guaranteeing that Visa and MasterCard, as well as participating banks, aren't allowed to debank anyone without judicial oversight. Make the same true of apps: call it a Banking Access Tribunal.
It doesn't. I don't know if she's an antisemite, but unless the bank dumps her for being one and an Italian judge agrees that they're allowed to for that reason, this is a clear result of foreign political influence.
Calling the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories a "vile antisemite" sounds a lot like trolling, though.
First of all you need to provide some proof because being against a genocide is not antisemitic. Hating Israel is not antisemitic even if Bibi wants you to believe that.
Second of all, what happened to free speech? In fact I can list several actual antisemites currently operating freely in the US political discourse who are gathering larger and larger audiences. Why aren't they being sanctioned?
It's fair to assign the blame for actions of the executive branch of the US government to Trump while he holds the office of president. The policy of sanctioning people for being too critical of Israel required his assent whether or not he made the call to apply it in this case or delegated that to a subordinate.
Especially problematic is that her actions would be unambiguously protected speech under US law if she did them in the USA.
Condemning the 7/Oct attacks as an unacceptable act of terrorism is "being a mouthpiece of Hamas"!!! Fucking _disgusting_, and many stronger words I'm trying my best to contain.
We're reaching levels of wretchedness that I've never thought possible. Truly no shame anymore.
This is her statement essentially saying Israel bombed a hospital that we now know as close to a fact as we can, that they did not and that in fact it was a palestinian rocket that fell on the hospital.
But lets say we can't know that for a fact.
She was still parroting Hamas's line without any ability to validate the statement.
This statement amongst many demonstrates that UN "Experts" have zero credibility in the statements they make.
If the best case you can make for your position is a retracted statement from over two years ago, consider that perhaps your position is not as strong as you think.
Anyway
> On Friday 13 October, Israel ordered hospitals and the population of northern Gaza to evacuate to southern Gaza. Because of insufficient beds in the southern Gaza Strip and no means of transporting patients, such as newborns in incubators or patients on ventilators, the evacuation orders were widely regarded as impossible to comply with.
> The Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem stated the hospital had received at least three evacuation warnings from the Israeli military on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
After repeated warnings of imminent Israeli shelling, the immediate explanation for an explosion killing half a thousand people if obviously Israeli shelling. After a more thorough investigation, new facts come to light.
But regardless, all of this is moot! In what conceivable way are extra-judicial reprisals for opinions or public speeches an acceptable state of affairs in a democracy? This is what is being discussed, not the particulars of Albanese's reports.
I'm responding to "being a mouthpiece of Hamas" that you reject. This is one case out of many where she parroted their line completely without any critical thinking. Hence, why I think its a fair statement.
With all that said, I doubt (be happy to be proven wrong) you complained at all when europe and the US "extra-judicially" sanctioned Israelis (I personally don't care that they got sanctioned). Heck, I'd hazard to say that you would welcome "extra-judicial" sanctions on many Israelis. You believe its a "genocide", so if the only available tool to stop the "genocide" is extra-judicial sanctions, would you really say "no, we can't do that!". I don't believe you would.
Or what about all the russian oligarchs that have been sanctioned. did that bother you to say anything? Again, doesn't bother me that they got sanctioned, but if you want to die on the "extra-judicial" hill, I believe you are going to get buried by all the bodies of all the sanctions you ignored that you tacitly supported.
as an aside your "obvious" explanation, was obviously not true in retrospect, so why was it so obvious that one had to make a statement that one in retrospect obviously did not have the information to make. to me its just as obvious that she doesn't care about the truth.
yes, it's bad to bomb hospitals, but before you go all gotcha, war is bad in general, that doesn't mean war is always wrong or evil and what occurs in war is always evil or wrong. If the enemy is using a hospital as cover to fire at you, it's bad that one has to perform attacks that put it at risk, but its not evil.
We know for as close to a fact that we can get that gazan hospitals were used as cover. (bbc, nytimes et al reported from under hospitals in places that Hamas used for shelter and stored weapons and equipment)
But what is especially evil, is accusing people wrongly when you knowingly accuse them when you know you have no ability to validate your accusation. Which is clearly the case with the accusations launched against Israel in regards to the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion.
But to many people it doesn't matter, to paraphrase the word they made about on the Colbert Report, it's all about "truthiness", one doesn't really care if this thing is true or not, the fact that it feels true and fits with one's general perception of what's true or not and good or not, is all that matters.
I even might go a step further, those who accuse someone knowingly that they don't know the truth, bare moral culpability for bad thing the person they accuse does is the future.
It's human nature for someone accused of bad things falsely to simply not care in the future. "I tried my best to do right, but they falsely accused me, I am simply not going to put as much effort into doing right in the future, as it doesn't matter".
Personally, I disagree with that sentiment, and is very much part of my internal criticism at somethings that have occurred, but I also think its a very human reaction and therefore while it doesn't excuse those who do wrong because they simply don't care anymore and doesn't reduce their blame, it also places moral culpability on those who made the knowingly false accusations. Much like if I would falsely tell someone that "So and So killed your kid" knowing that it would make them go crazy and take revenge.
Life is complicated, and human reactions to the complications of life are complicated. But when an outsider inserts themselves into a complicated situation and presents lies about it in the name of "doing good", they might very much be evil.
Or to put it a bit differently, if one believes that that Bush Administration members were evil for spreading lies that led to the Iraq Invasion, why is Francesa Albanese and her cohort fundamentally different. Why are their lies better and more justified?
So Trump can support war criminals like Netanyahu, but when someone says Israel shouldn't colonize Palestine and practice appartheid, she becomes a mouthpiece of Hamas? Get your facts together.
You're the one advocating to help people whom not even their neighbours who share the same religion want nothing to do with it so I think you're the one who's joking
Just looking at the punctuation here makes it easy to guess you're fuming. No rational arguments, twisting the narration, moving goalposts and then frustrated because it doesn't work here, on HN.
You might want to find another outlet for that, why kick up the blood pressure this much?
Irrelevant. I'd prefer laws and the courts to decide punishment for transgressions, rather than the arbitrary whims of a quasi-fascist. I'm old fashioned, I know.
> People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD
That's not quit accurate.
American citizens will indeed have a very hard time to open a bank account in Switzerland. But the reason is not so much free speech than FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) [0] [1]
The requirements to host bank accounts for Americans are so onerous that banks rather forgo business with such clients than having to deal with the legal mess it incurs.
Another reason for a bank not wanting to deal with customers are if they are on a sanctions list. People winding up on such lists usually don't do so, because they said something nasty about Mr. Trump.
This, alas, may change if you look who got sanctioned in recent times just for raising the ire of the president (such as EC commissioners or ICC judges).
Any sovereign country can come up with whatever sanctions they want. The only reason the US ones have such broad reach particular in Europe is due to Europes hopeless reliance on US financial system, infrastructure and capital. Stop using eurodollar and us debt markets and sanctions would be much less impactful
>Swiss law requires one bank (Postfinance) to offer banking irregardless but if you are sanctioned you can't use the wire system, no other currencies, no credit cards and you cant use Twint either so it's in effect useless. You can't pay for your health insurance or rent.
What's funny is that this particular jurispudence was actually enforced due to a Russian oligarch (Vekselberg) on a C permit.
I am not sure regarding the rent and the health insurance, the health insurance especially as it is a legal requirement.
>The US has started to sanction people for free speech resulting in de-banking.
The sanctioned people were "hate-speech" fighters. Which is the most Orwellian branch of Brussels machinery. While it irks me on pure power level, you could hardly imagine people more deserving to be taken couple of pegs down.
I can confirm that the Postfinance app doesn't work on graphene. I left some feedback and they said they're working on it so maybe there is hope. But as such I need to keep an old iphone around for banking apps.
Also being an American in Switzerland trying to do banking is eye opening. Local banks mostly tell you to pound sand when they find out you're American. Regardless of this or that administration, the US is really totalitarian when it comes to finance and taxes.
To play devil's advocate for a moment, could this not be a risk?
Is Google implementing a rule which blockes any 3rd party app which wants access to things like the keystore (which could be reasonable), or are they deliberately blocking Bitwarden?
Given there is a choice, and given HSBC is on the hook if you get hacked in most jurisdictions, it seems fair to chalk this one up as a stupid move by HSBC that's nevertheless within their rights.
HSBC is on the hook if I get hacked? I can't think of companies having to pay up because their customers got hacked because of their doing. Let alone if it wasn't directly their doing. Solarwinds was for example never forced to pay a dime.
This is both good and bad. It's good because fraud is rife and the banks had little incentive to do anything about it. It took them absolutely years of foot-dragging to add a system that verifies the name of the destination account holder when you transfer money between accounts. It's bad because the reason fraud is rampant is that the police do nothing about it. It's the crime you can get away with. The government saw the easy way out: rather than organizing and funding the police sufficiently, let the banks deal with it.
> HSBC is on the hook if I get hacked? I can't think of companies having to pay up because their customers got hacked because of their doing. Let alone if it wasn't directly their doing. Solarwinds was for example never forced to pay a dime.
Even if they are not on the hook, there is still the hassle/overhead of dealing with the fraud (e.g., opening an investigation), and/or the bad press when a customer gets hacked and you refuse to refund money per the terms of service:
In the UK, yes, banks are on the hook if _you_ get scammed. It seems the bar for them to prove that you were at fault is too high so in reality the banks just make the decision on what you can buy for you.
A good few years ago now (when it was possible to get something in good condition for such a measly sum) I was buying a car from a private individual. The transaction was in cash. You can't take £1500 out from an ATM, unless you spread it over multiple days, and probably doing that would also get you flagged. So I went to my bank (also HSBC coincidentally) and they required me to tell them what I was buying with that money.
Now I could have lied, of course. But they could also have just told me that I can't take cash out if they didn't believe me.
If you look around, there are news stories of people being denied access to their own money because the bank decided it was too risky.
You can get kicked out of a bank for being too risky. And there's not even any legal requirement in the UK for a bank to offer you an account. Or well, there _is_ but like with all UK regulations which protect the individual, it's full of caveats. You are entitled to a Basic Bank Account (BBA) if you can't get any other account except if you can't verify your identity/residency, or you have a history of financial misbehaviour, or if you are too closely associated with terrorism. So I guess homeless people or pro-palestine protesters aren't allowed bank accounts.
Yes you might, because Bitcoin doesn't solve anything correctly (notably, its value is so volatile it can't be relied upon), while consuming an absurd amount of energy.
By design, it made its first users stupidly rich, which is not a good characteristic.
More importantly, it's a technical solution for a societal issue (aka, it's not at all a solution).
We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it.
People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD. The US has started to sanction people for free speech resulting in de-banking.
Swiss law requires one bank (Postfinance) to offer banking irregardless but if you are sanctioned you can't use the wire system, no other currencies, no credit cards and you cant use Twint either so it's in effect useless. You can't pay for your health insurance or rent.