According to Wikipedia, between 2003 to 2006 the FBI sent out >200 National Security Letters (secret information demands) per day.
In addition, Anti Money Laundering (AML) compliance requires significant expense, process, staff and training investment from financial service providers. Know Your Customer (KYC) rules also increase the overheads.
Any large business such as PayPal is essentially between a rock and a hard place: eiter allow government spying and perform proactive account seizures and lock-outs which create these issues, or wind up targeted for removal and find partner relationships pressured away and severed.
The problem is US dot gov and their existing 'regulation'. While I agree that better consumer-protection laws in financial services might help here, ultimately the government's right hand will cut off their left to maintain spy and seizure capabilities. As Schneier said: we're the technologists, we made the problems, and we have to fix things.
In addition, Anti Money Laundering (AML) compliance requires significant expense, process, staff and training investment from financial service providers. Know Your Customer (KYC) rules also increase the overheads.
Any large business such as PayPal is essentially between a rock and a hard place: eiter allow government spying and perform proactive account seizures and lock-outs which create these issues, or wind up targeted for removal and find partner relationships pressured away and severed.
The problem is US dot gov and their existing 'regulation'. While I agree that better consumer-protection laws in financial services might help here, ultimately the government's right hand will cut off their left to maintain spy and seizure capabilities. As Schneier said: we're the technologists, we made the problems, and we have to fix things.