https://financialregulation.linklaters.com/post/102l2qm/uk-drafts-changes-to-money-laundering-regulations

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proposed-amendments-to-the-money-laundering-regulations-draft-si-and-policy-note/the-draft-money-laundering-and-terrorist-financing-amendment-and-miscellaneous-provision-regulations-2025-policy-note

These measures are framed as fighting crime. But similar rules in tradfi have existed for years and haven’t stopped fraud or money laundering.

What they do create are honeypots of personal data, risks for law-abiding people, and deeper state oversight. This is about normalising authoritarian tools, not AML or safety.

Decades of KYC and financial surveillance show how control creeps in rule by rule. That same authoritarian logic already governs speech, from the Online Safety Bill to Graham Linehan’s Heathrow detention over tweets.

And now digital IDs are back on the table, linking finance, identity and turning everyday access into a system of control.

Add in programmable money and street surveillance, and you have a panopticon, a 1984 scenario darker than Orwell imagined.

https://99bitcoins.com/news/bitcoin-btc/new-uk-crypto-aml-rules-target-ownership-banking-and-trusts/

The UK has offically sleepwalked into authoritarianism.