Comment by mothballed 3 days ago
The point is to raise the barriers/cost of business high enough so that the larger criminal enterprises do not have competition from the smaller ones. Ensuring the greatest threats become even bigger ones, but also that any corrupt politicians/officials/bankers get even bigger payouts and the payouts they get are more predictable from fewer channels.
Ignoring the obvious problems with drug dogs, which I have a very personal extremely degrading and humiliating tale about involving a fraudulent search warrant that turned up nothing, a key difference here is the thing being monitored here is primae facie legal and involving forcing private parties to be the drug dog handler on behalf of the government on private property in a private transaction. In such case there is a presumption of innocence and government should need a warrant before requiring client to satisfy AML or KYC documentation.
I can't just walk up to your doorstep, make your sister take my drug dog, and force her to walk it around your bedroom and then punish her if she doesn't do it.
> In such case there is a presumption of innocence and government should need a warrant before requiring client to satisfy AML or KYC documentation.
But since you don't know when the government is going to ask for it, you need to collect it from everyone all the time, otherwise you won't have it to satisfy the request. "What do you mean you don't know who your customers are?" is not a question you want to have to answer in the face of a warrant.
>The point is to raise the barriers/cost of business high enough so that the larger criminal enterprises do not have competition from the smaller ones.
You can make the same argument about literally any crime deterrence measure though? For instance having drug search dogs at airports probably makes it harder for the indie drug trafficker to get drugs through, but probably isn't going to do much against organized crime networks with insiders working at the airports and/or bribed officials.