Quote from: Hungry ghost on July 28, 2012, 09:02 pmQuote from: RootZero on July 28, 2012, 08:16 pmQuote from: Hungry ghost on July 28, 2012, 06:56 pm I have wondered for a while Vlad, and perhaps you can help: how easy is it for the police to get info from banks. Obviously they can but is it a case of, having found a gram of smack in an envelope with my name on, they can just ring up my bank and ask for my statements? How do they find out where I bank?I worked for a UK bank and its very easy, it just requires a court to make an order.If you are caught with drugs in the UK they will almost certainly search your house too, finding your bank is as simple as finding a card or statement.While people are now encouraging cash in the post in the UK, that is a very bad idea if you value your cash. Sorry to Vlad etc who do this, but your fooling yourself if you think its 'safe'. After all that person who you send cash to has to use a deposit and exchange at some point unless they were mining or something. Then its very unlikely they would involve themselves in this activity.I have to admit sadly, I think its very unlikely anyone who deposited / transfered to Metro will get it back.Maybe it will all resolve but I'm seriously rethinking BTC and the future of it muself.Not quite sure what you mean by not safe? If Vlad sends my btcs to an instawallet that I only access throught TOR and I then put them through bitcoin fog to SR, I don't see how it can be safer? There is no connection between me and the coins, that's the point. Where Vlad got them and how safe his methods are needn't concern me (although I expect he is fairly careful)I can spend these coins having only "touched" them through TOR.Also, I didn't realise that police come and search your house automatically when they find a package addressed to you. The same with getting a court order to investigate your finances.Obviously they have these powers but surely they have to consider if it's worth it for a small personal amount? LE get decent wages and their time is valuable and limited, and with the huge amount of drug trafficking and abuse that permeates our society they obviously must perform some kind of triage; focussing on the larger targets. I really don't think they care about a fish as small as me. If I stumble into their path they'll take the bust but I don't think they' ll come looking for me.Touch wood.Many thanks to Rootzero for your comments.I think I may have mentioned this on another thread - I don't want to sound alarmist but the situation is a little different in theory and in practice.As RootZero rightly says in theory a court order is required however due to new powers under the Anti Terrorism act bank accounts can be frozen on a whim - although this was always the case this can now be done aribitrarily for personal bank accounts (Limetless and I think this is the kind of account the owners of Intersango use) and even when only small sums have moved in.However, the practice in my bank at least is that when the Police want financial information about an individual or company we give it to them (I find individuals are subject to closer scrutiny actually as Ltd Liability companies must publish and audit their accounts publicly in any case..).The reasoning the Police give is that if they had to apply for a warrant each time they suspected someone was acting suspiciously, investigations would slow to a snail's pace. Of course we never refer to such requests directly as ironically it's illegal for us to supply information in this way, even if it is to prevent a crime so we always refer to such as information requests as being from "our friends". Obviously if any evidence of suspicious activity is found then the Police will go through the usual channels to make sure any information submitted is legally admissible as evidence.I wasn't sure why they do this. My mentor who trained me to use the banking system anonymously (which incidentally allows me to use the exchanges safely!) says he thinks the top brass are worried our share prices will take a dive if it's revealed that we've been subject to that kind of scrutiny- the situation with HSBC laundering money for Mexican cartels seems to bear out this theory(!)Finally, the Police do not always have to request such information. We are bound by law to log and document any suspicious account activity (mercifully I no longer have to do this!) and this is submitted in a standardised format to the Police. As far as I know we are not monitoring transfers from personal accounts to MtGox's Barclays account or Intersango's Metro account but I wouldn't be privy to that kind of information - also, just because they're not doing so at present doesn't mean they won't be doing so in future!The solution in my opinion would be to have an offshore exchange and I know certain more gifted members of our forum are currently working on this. It would be very easy to set up a business bank account here in the UK and then make a daily bulk transfer of funds to an offshore account - the actual amounts due to each person could then be e-mailed separately in encrypted CSV format.Of course as Schneier's Law says, anyone can imagine a system to secure that *they* can't think of any way to get round it and in my infinite modesty I still maintain my own system is safer. As long as bank accounts can be monitored and frozen in this way there's always going to be a demand both for an anonymous decentralised currency like the Bitcoin and physical money which cannot be traced nearly as easily. Long may they both last I say!V.