Transaction Denied

What would you do if you suddenly lost your bank account – and potentially access to all your funds? What about your credit cards? How long could your business stay afloat if you could no longer receive payments? Most of us take financial services for granted, but they can be taken away at any time – for almost any reason. And sometimes the reason is just that they don’t like you – or someone in power doesn’t like you, who can put pressure on the financial company. In many cases, this amounts to financial censorship. My guest today, Rainey Reitman, is the head of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and author of a book on this very subject called Transaction Denied. We’ll learn about how this happens, what the impacts are, and what we can do about it.

Interview Notes

• Freedom of the Press Foundation: https://freedom.press/ 
• EFF: https://www.eff.org/ 
• Protect the Stack: https://protectthestack.org/ 
• Pretty much infra: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/we-need-talk-about-infrastructure 
• Santa Clara Principles: https://santaclaraprinciples.org/ 
• Cryptocurrency 101: https://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2022/06/06/cryptocurrency-101/ 
• The Curse of Cash (book): https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Cash-Large-Denomination-Constrain-Monetary/dp/0691178364 

Further Info

• My book: https://fdsd.me/book 
• My newsletter: https://fdsd.me/newsletter 
• Support the mission: https://fdsd.me/support 
• Give the gift of privacy and security: https://fdsd.me/coupons 
• Get your Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons Merch! https://fdsd.me/merch 

Table of Contents

• 0:00:13: Intro
• 0:02:45: Why did you start FPF?
• 0:08:25: What are some examples of financial censorship?
• 0:14:44: What are the impacts of this?
• 0:20:35: What can you do when this happens?
• 0:23:45: Are you entitled to know why you were cut off?
• 0:26:10: How do KYC laws impact your rights?
• 0:31:14: How might regulators infringe free speech?
• 0:35:56: How might my reputation after me here?
• 0:41:40: Should we codify banking rights?
• 0:46:21: What about using cash or cryptocurrency?
• 0:50:18: What bank practices should we change?
• 0:54:32: What should the government be doing here?
• 0:58:36: What’s next for you and FPF?
• 0:59:47: Wrap-up
• 1:02:40: Patron podcast preview
• 1:04:08: Looking ahead