ALL surveillance and control, all AML, KYC and all violations of privacy are completely unethical, immoral and illegitimate. All of them! As recently as the 1990s, one could purchase stocks without providing identification. Bank deposits below arbitrary thresholds required no explanation or documentation. Cash transactions, regardless of size, were presumed legitimate unless specific evidence suggested otherwise. The default assumption was that individuals had the right to conduct their financial affairs privately, with the burden of proof resting on authorities to demonstrate wrongdoing before intruding upon that privacy.

This historical norm was not an oversight or a failure of governance, it was a recognition of a fundamental principle. Free societies operate on the presumption of innocence, treating citizens as autonomous agents capable of managing their own affairs unless proven otherwise through due process. The current system inverts this relationship entirely, treating every citizen as a potential criminal whose financial activities must be continuously monitored and pre-approved by state bureaucrats. Given how KYC for everything short of going to a rest room is being normalized, the world needs more privacy protecting tools, not less.