Comment on Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods

• rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  We need to be more careful than that, no one wants to end up on a list when a non-profit is required to show its books.

  Should be a very private and affordable for-profit with some reasonable way to keep payments off the books

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  • AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Are nonprofits required to track who they receive donations from? I could be wrong, but I don’t think they are. They have to have financial records, but I don’t think that means maintaining a donor list.

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    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      “Required” isn’t the right word but they do record who donates to them because people usually want them to. People donating to non-profits will receive statements from those non-profits at year end so they can deduct the donations from their taxes when filing their return.

      People can donate anonymously but if they do so, they give up their right to claim the tax deduction so most do not.

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      • MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I feel like most people are on the standard deduction these days, right? It’s pretty high and while we’ve itemized in the past, our mortgage interest isn’t high enough to push us over and without that everything else is a tiny drop in the bucket.

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    • rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It depends on the details of the non-profit. In the circumstances I see, you’re not required to make it public, but you ARE required to provide the list to the government.

      I can say, If you started a non-profit and used it to track ice, they most certainly would obtain a list of your doners if they had to go and take it from the hands of your payment provider. Even most crypto isn’t fully safe because of banking reporting required

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      • AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That’s a good point, they’d definitely just subpoena your bank records. If crypto is used properly, it can be nigh impossible to trace, though. Bitcoin isn’t very private at all on the blockchain, but if you send over lightning network, my understanding is that it becomes effectively impossible to track, unless your adversary controls enough lightning network nodes to track the payment as it bounces between nodes. They wouldn’t need to control the whole path, but they would need to control nodes VERY close to origin and destination, ideally the adjacent nodes, and enough of those in the middle to be reasonably sure they can accurately follow the money. The lightning network doesn’t leave a detailed ledger behind, so only way to trace a payment is to be involved in its processing, which means controlling the nodes the money passes through on its way to the recipient.

        Of course, that’s way too obscure and unknown for the vast majority of people, so I don’t see a nonprofit succeeding that way these days. Maybe if crypto actually does get mainstream, but that’s still a pretty big if.

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