America Threatened as Never Before
The Justice Department is on the job. Perceiving a dire threat against the American republic, they have acted to keep America safe. As my colleague Sallie James noted yesterday, they are stealing confiscating the money of Internet gamblers.
Reports Richard Morrison of our friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
Just when it seemed that those in power had begun to think about Internet poker in a positive light, the Department of Justice throws us back into the digital dark ages by seizing $34 million in funds rightfully owned by around 27,000 online poker players. The government is alleging that the funds are associated with illegal online gambling and money laundering.
In a letter sent to Alliance Bank, the prosecutor said accounts held by payment processor Allied Systems Inc. are subject to seizure and forfeiture “because they constitute property involved in money laundering transactions and illegal gambling offenses.” The letter was signed by Arlo Devlin-Brown, assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Knowing that the federal government is busy violating our privacy and grabbing our money to save us from ourselves just makes one feel great to be an American
Filed under: Regulatory Studies; Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Online Gambling: According to the Feds, You’ll Be Holding Today
From The Wall Street Journal today, an article about the federal freezing or seizing of 27,000 online gambling accounts (including that of one of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless but is $150 short today).
I blogged a few weeks ago about some (admittedly very dim) light on the horizon so far as the freedom to gamble online is concerned, but this is a setback indeed. The Poker Players’ Alliance (a lobby group for online poker players) says this is the first time that players’ accounts (as opposed to the gambling site operators themselves) have been targeted.
U.S. laws against gambling online, and the way those laws are administered, are an affront to personal freedom and a threat to our trading relationships.
Filed under: Law and Civil Liberties; Regulatory Studies; Trade and Immigration
There Are Always Strings Attached…
Following up from my blog entry last week on Rep. Barney Frank’s (D, MA) efforts to reduce restrictions on Americans’ freedom to gamble online, it seems that the prospect of more tax revenue has made some folks see religion.
An article from Texas Insider has details on the political shenanigans needed to get this bill passed, including an associated bill introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott (D, WA) to tax (at a rate of 2%) the deposits into online gambling accounts. Apparently, that could provide up to $43 billion in tax revenue over 10 years. For the children.
Apparently we get our freedoms restored with a side-dish of tax.
As an aside: Note long-term opponent Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (R, VA) non-sequitur on why allowing the Frank bill to pass is a bad idea:
Apparently, Rep. Frank believes that [Treasury Secretary] Timothy Geithner can do a better job at enforcing our nation’s criminal laws than the Department of Justice, which is scary considering [Geithner’s] track record on complying with the tax code,” he said.
(he is referring to the Frank bill’s proposal to shift responsibility for the licensing and regulation of online gambling companies to the Treasury)
HT: hero of the revolution Radley Balko.
One Step Closer to Gambling Online?
Following on from the mildly good news of a few weeks ago, Barney Frank (D, MA) has announced that he will introduce a bill tomorrow to roll back current restrictions on gambling online (the restrictions are made operative by bans on U.S. banks from processing transactions to and from gambling websites). Although the details of the bill are yet to be released, this here article contains some good analysis.
A (Baby) Step in the Right Direction on Gambling
Semi-good news for lovers of civil liberties and the rule of law. PartyGaming, a UK -based internet gambling company, has reached a deal with the Department of Justice. In exchange for a $105m “fee”, prosecution proceedings against PartyGaming will be dropped.
Why am I only partially excited by this development? Although I think that dropping the case is a positive move, PartyGaming withdrew from the U.S. market when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed, so the case against the company (and therefore its punishment) is, in this non-lawyers opinion at least, dubious. The Wall Street Journal alludes to the retroactive nature of the DoJs case here:
After almost two years of discussions, the U.S. Attorney’s Officer for the Southern District of New York has agreed not to prosecute PartyGaming or any of its subsidiaries for providing internet gambling services to customers in the U.S. prior to the U.S. government banning the online gambling industry in October, 2006.” [italics mine]
Aside from their assault on civil liberties, U.S. laws on internet gambling go against the spirit and the letter of WTO law, and undermine the international trading system that has on balance served the United States well (see more here and an FT piece on the announcement here).
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