Comment by ETH_start

"A recent one being Trumps payments to the porn star."

Trump's crime was in how he reported the payment in a government form, not that he made a payment. So if that's what you want: more laws and thus more laws being broken so that the state has more justification to prosecute people, then yes, financial surveillance laws are effective.

Yes people have been caught using information gleaned through dragnet financial surveillance, but there is no evidence that this surveillance has reduced the total volume of crime. Organized crime for instance doesn't seem any weaker than it was in the past, despite the absolutely enormous sacrifice in privacy and free association rights that much of the world has been forced to endure.

As for crypto and crime, yes crypto crimes were not a thing before crypto existed. The same could be said of cyber crime. It only came into existence with the internet.

But this is just a phenomenon of moving crime from meatspace to crypto space. The pickpockets have just moved into the digital asset space. It doesn't mean a net increase in crime.

We need to go after criminals, but not at the expense of privacy rights. There is no excuse for it, when crypto scammers already leave so much evidence that can be used to track them.

Giving up privacy is giving up a free society. It is also creating profound risks of abuse of power by people with official state power, who gain the ability to search people's private financial activity without a warrant.