Amazon wants to report Bitcoin users to authorities

Amazon has been granted a patent that allows the company to aggregate and track data streams through a data marketplace. This may include Bitcoin transactions.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office clears patent from Amazon subsidiary Amazon Technologies, Inc. on April 17.

Bitcoin transactions and shipping addresses – suddenly assignable

With the help of the patent one can relate data streams and sell the merged data streams in the form of a subscription. In the patent application, Bitcoin transactions were named twice as an example.

Online merchants who accept Bitcoin transactions will also have the appropriate shipping addresses in most cases. It is then possible to combine the data of the traders and publish them as a common record. Telecommunications providers have the option of adding IP addresses to assign the addresses of the transactions to their countries of origin. Government agencies, in turn, can match this data with tax data to identify the transactional participants.

Law enforcement agencies as potential customers of Amazon

The second named example explains how law enforcement agencies can obtain data on global Bitcoin transactions that can connect online and offline addresses.

Law enforcement agencies usually also have interest in the records. However, these may have specific wishes. For example, they do not want any additional available extensions, such as bank records, but only specific transaction data. The adjusted data sets are then billed according to Gigabyte and the authority can make evaluations with the help of an analysis tool.

Possible consequences

This application ultimately creates both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, this makes it possible to catch criminals. On the other hand, one takes another step in the direction of “glassy” man.

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