Amazon Awarded Patent To Be A Police Informant Ratting Out On Crypto Crimes

Crimes committed using cryptocurrency has been a source of concern for law enforcement agencies ever since Bitcoin started gaining popularity. It turns out that being able to conduct online transactions anonymously using a complex network that is nearly impossible to crack called Blockchain is something that irks authorities. Recently, Amazon managed to win a patent that would basically allow it to cash in on this issue by being an informant.

As Motherboard notes, the patent was bought by Amazon in order to provide law enforcement officials with the means to actually “identify [Bitcoin] transaction participants” via subscription feed. The patent was filed back in 2014 and on Tuesday, it was finally granted to the merchant giant.

This development is rather appropriate for several reasons. One is the fact that along with the cosmetic products, food items, and electronics available at Amazon, it’s now also selling information on people who work really hard to hide such details. This makes CEO Jeff Bezos something of an Information Shadow Broker.

Another reason for why the awarding of the patent is so apt is because authorities have run up against the wall of anonymity of cryptocurrency. This means that they are unable to find the people who might be laundering money or transferring finances for criminal enterprises.

On the one hand, this is exactly what the people behind cryptocurrency designed the system for. On the other, it only makes the reputation of the industry, along with Blockchain, in general even worse.

The technology basically works by using the shipping address and the IP address of any transactions that involve cryptocurrency, Futurism notes. All law enforcement officials would then have to do is subscribe to the service so that they’ll be able to make use of that information in order to find the people they are looking for.