<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ckastner</author><text>&lt;i&gt;But unless you have some evidence I am simply unwilling to believe that banking regulators can make up any restrictions they like without regard for the actual requirements of federal law.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The actual requirements of federal law are often (intentionally) formulated on such a high level that in practice,  the banking regulator does end up specifying the actual rules.&lt;p&gt;Say, for example, a federal law requires that banks &amp;quot;take reasonable measures to impede money laundering&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Now what those &amp;quot;reasonable measures&amp;quot; are is usually determined by the overseeing regulator (eg: the SEC). Sure, you can disagree with their assessment, but they&amp;#x27;ll fine you anyway and then, the best-case scenario is that after X years in court, the fine gets overturned.</text><parent_chain><item><author>mcherm</author><text>I call BS on that.&lt;p&gt;It is true that banks will go a long way to try to satisfy banking regulators. But unless you have some evidence I am simply unwilling to believe that banking regulators can make up any restrictions they like without regard for the actual requirements of federal law.</text></item><item><author>cynicalkane</author><text>In the US, at least, AML regulations are whatever the regulators say they are.</text></item><item><author>ckastner</author><text>&amp;gt; Welcome to the world of financial regulations!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to endure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US.&lt;p&gt;While I fully agree with this statement, PayPal&amp;#x27;s actions here seem excessive even by the broadest interpretations of anti-money-laundering regulations. Furthermore, AML regulations target a specific set of transactions and&amp;#x2F;or individuals.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Monitoring all traffic for illegal content&amp;quot; is a vague statement that could mean anything. Illegal where? Illegal how?&lt;p&gt;Edit: I forgot to mention: PayPal operates as a credit institution (ie, a bank) within the EU, so the strict AML regulations the parent alluded to apply to it directly.</text></item><item><author>cm2187</author><text>Welcome to the world of financial regulations!&lt;p&gt;You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to ensure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US.&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure this is what is forcing paypal to do this. And also why I wish good luck to startups who think they will disrupt this massively over regulated industry.</text></item><item><author>josteink</author><text>&amp;gt; PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as all our customers’ files for illegal content. They have also asked us to provide them with detailed statistics about the files types of our customers sync and share on &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.seafile.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.seafile.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a pretty big WTF right there.&lt;p&gt;I know PayPal has a on overall pretty scummy reputation, but I still I cannot imagine PayPal doing this because they themselves think they&amp;#x27;ll benefit from this data.&lt;p&gt;To me this seems like a demand which comes &amp;quot;upstream&amp;quot; from above PayPal, from its payment providers (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, etc). Would I be overly paranoid to imagine these demands and claims are the result of lobbing by entities like RIAA and MPAA? They &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have a history for blocking payments to known pirate-friendly services after all.&lt;p&gt;And as such, they clearly have too much power, and there needs to be some anti-discriminatory financial regulation to stop business-hostile practices like this from being lobbied and put in place.&lt;p&gt;Because this is just madness.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>“PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”</title><url>https://seafile.de/en/important-infos-about-app-seafile-de-and-licensing-purchases-through-our-web-shops/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>lettergram</author><text>Coming from a bank (but with limited interaction with regulators), regulators usually try to work within the law. However, I would like to remind you the law is all contradicting and has literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of various laws each one with its own implications.&lt;p&gt;Point being, regulators can justify just about anything. That is why all large banks have an army of lawyers. They then work with regulators to find some middle ground.</text><parent_chain><item><author>mcherm</author><text>I call BS on that.&lt;p&gt;It is true that banks will go a long way to try to satisfy banking regulators. But unless you have some evidence I am simply unwilling to believe that banking regulators can make up any restrictions they like without regard for the actual requirements of federal law.</text></item><item><author>cynicalkane</author><text>In the US, at least, AML regulations are whatever the regulators say they are.</text></item><item><author>ckastner</author><text>&amp;gt; Welcome to the world of financial regulations!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to endure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US.&lt;p&gt;While I fully agree with this statement, PayPal&amp;#x27;s actions here seem excessive even by the broadest interpretations of anti-money-laundering regulations. Furthermore, AML regulations target a specific set of transactions and&amp;#x2F;or individuals.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Monitoring all traffic for illegal content&amp;quot; is a vague statement that could mean anything. Illegal where? Illegal how?&lt;p&gt;Edit: I forgot to mention: PayPal operates as a credit institution (ie, a bank) within the EU, so the strict AML regulations the parent alluded to apply to it directly.</text></item><item><author>cm2187</author><text>Welcome to the world of financial regulations!&lt;p&gt;You may have not realised but banks and any financial institutions have been deputised by the regulators to be the financial police. They need to ensure that none of their client use financial services to commit crimes or launder the proceeds of a crime, under the penalty of heavy (up to multi billions) fines. Particularly in the US.&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure this is what is forcing paypal to do this. And also why I wish good luck to startups who think they will disrupt this massively over regulated industry.</text></item><item><author>josteink</author><text>&amp;gt; PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as all our customers’ files for illegal content. They have also asked us to provide them with detailed statistics about the files types of our customers sync and share on &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.seafile.de&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;app.seafile.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a pretty big WTF right there.&lt;p&gt;I know PayPal has a on overall pretty scummy reputation, but I still I cannot imagine PayPal doing this because they themselves think they&amp;#x27;ll benefit from this data.&lt;p&gt;To me this seems like a demand which comes &amp;quot;upstream&amp;quot; from above PayPal, from its payment providers (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, etc). Would I be overly paranoid to imagine these demands and claims are the result of lobbing by entities like RIAA and MPAA? They &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have a history for blocking payments to known pirate-friendly services after all.&lt;p&gt;And as such, they clearly have too much power, and there needs to be some anti-discriminatory financial regulation to stop business-hostile practices like this from being lobbied and put in place.&lt;p&gt;Because this is just madness.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>“PayPal has demanded that we monitor data traffic as well as customers’ files”</title><url>https://seafile.de/en/important-infos-about-app-seafile-de-and-licensing-purchases-through-our-web-shops/</url></story>