As outlined in its consultation paper, “Transposition of the Fifth Money Laundering Directive”, HM Treasury is currently considering broadening the scope of the UK’s anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations to impose data collection and reporting requirements on not only cryptocurrency developers, but all open-source software developers and others who facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of cryptoassets.
In our comment letter, we urge HM Treasury to refrain from such an over-broadening of its AML/CFT regulations. We argue that such an expansion would violate UK citizens’ free speech and privacy rights, as codified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Those arguments, which are more fully laid out in the comment, are briefly summarized below.
Regarding privacy rights, both the ICCPR and the ECHR prohibit intrusions upon the privacy of persons unless those intrusions are made in accordance with law that is sufficiently clear in its terms to give citizens an adequate indication as to the circumstances in which and the conditions on which public authorities are empowered to resort to this secret and potentially dangerous interference with the right to respect for private life and correspondence. The imposition of financial surveillance upon every user of cryptocurrency, regardless of their particular circumstances, would fail to meet this standard and would, therefore, not be in keeping with the ICCPR and the ECHR.
Regarding speech rights, any law or regulation attempting to ban, require licensing for, or compel the altered publication (e.g. backdoors) of open-source cryptocurrency software would be unconstitutional under First Amendment-like protections for speech afforded to UK citizens by the ICCPR and ECHR.
These arguments, and their underlying principles—the right to free speech and to privacy—hew closely to our recent report on how the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution protect open-source software developers and users here in the United States.