Bitcoin Forum

The Japanese National Police Agency is reportedly installing a system to track the flow of crypto transactions in order to aid investigations of cryptocurrency-related cybercrime. The system is expected to be limited to major cryptocurrencies, according to local media.

Tracking Crypto Transactions

Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) announced on August 30 that it “has mapped out a policy to introduce software next fiscal year to visualize the transaction history of virtual currencies in the face of increasing money laundering, massive theft and other cases related to cryptocurrencies,” the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

“Traditionally, many criminal offenses concerning virtual currencies involve transactions via multiple accounts,” Fisco news outlet conveyed, adding that the police “had to trace [an] enormous [amount of] records during investigations.” Elaborating on the new crypto tracking system, the publication described:

'The service target is limited to major currencies such as bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH), and it is expected to be available for use by the National Police Agency, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Osaka Prefectural Police Department next fiscal year.'

Continue reading >> https://news.bitcoin.com/japans-national-police-crypto-transaction-tracking-system/

has it never ocurred to them that the best idea would be spending like 1/10 of the designated funds
and simply create a couple of mixers for coins and advertise them thouroughly
this way you will have your hands on many coins that are stolen,tainted etc.
*gifts the idea for free to all the cybercrime agencies out there

Maybe they are doing this already. You can´t really know,
who is actually running the popular mixers. It is entirely possible
that they already know way more about cryptocurrency transaction
tracking than they admit.

This reminds me of the TOR exit nodes where it is also widely suspected
that government agencies control a non-negligible percentage of all nodes.

This is in any case worth doing, as hackers and all sorts of scammers are massively engaged in crypto currency in order to steal more of it. It just becomes like a natural disaster. It is necessary to unite the efforts of different countries, the Japanese police here will not do much themselves, because such crimes are committed all over the world. And criminals migrate to many countries and track them very difficult. Here, most likely, you need to create a large structure in the Interpol system.

https://www.coindesk.com/irs-using-bitcoin-tracking-software-since-2015/ The Internal Revenue Service is using bitcoin transaction tracing tools developed by startup Chainalysis and this is what they are doing, https://www.chainalysis.com/

The law enforcement agencies must keep up with the changing trends and currencies being used in crime, so this was to be expected. We should welcome the fact that law enforcement would be in a position to track criminals, if they use Bitcoin and other Crypto currencies in crimes. <We might be their next victim and we want them to be in a position to help us, when that happens>   ::)

Hopefully this will be more effective if they finally have designated wallets for each of their citizens who are using cryptocurrencies as payment also they need to require KYC for this method to work. Money laundering has been a big problem to this countries who have successfully accepted cryptocurrencies in their country now the problem they are facing is from people who are taking advantage of it, which unfortunately all parties will suffer from their wrong doings.

The NSA probably already are. If a government is already doing this then most probably won't announce they're doing so so they can catch more people with it. If it becomes public knowledge that they're doing this then people will change their behavior to try avoid detection.

I can only wish them luck. With increased use of Bitcoin mixers, CoinJoin transactions and privacy focussed altcoins, the Japanese government is going to face a tough job. But they cannot stop trying. It might be easier to fight the non-monetary leg of crime.

Which crime  ;D ?

Check out this article from The Economist from last year:
As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do (https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/05/18/as-crime-dries-up-japans-police-hunt-for-things-to-do)

Japan has a rapidly aging population and a very low percentage
of immigrants. Its almost as if this combination is a recipe for a
society without much crime.

Back to the original topic I think that if they really want to introduce something
like this, they should include more cryptocurrencies than just BTC and ETH.
Otherwise it would be trivial for criminals to simply use one of the cryptocurrencies
that they are not tracking.

This is a pretty interesting proposal.

Obviously they are saying that they are using this to monitor money laundering activities, but we all know that sometimes, these tools can be used for mass surveillance purposes, whatever their ultimate aims are, and if misused, can really pose a threat to privacy.

If you want to not be tracked like this in the future, use a bitcoin mixer to increase your privacy (not trying to advertise anyone here), or we could even see some surges in usage for privacy centered coins. But to be honest, this whole scheme to me is pretty much useless. You're very unlikely to track down anyone using addresses and transactions alone, it's like trying to track down the flow of cash.

I agree, this is a good news overall. Criminals should be tracked down and brought to justice.

I support veleten's idea on creating mixers and want to add that targeting only major currencies is not enough. Criminals will adjust quickly by switching to other, not targeted, coins. The process may has been started already. I think Japan’s National Police Agency should keep in secret which coins are targeted for the sake of the efficiency of the operation. Maybe they do, who knows? Maybe they reveal just a part of their plan.

In any case, we should always assume that intelligence agencies are trying. And you might be surprised how sophisticated their tools are -- blockchain analytics companies are extremely well-funded and are working closely with governments.

Even with the use of Coinjoin, mixers, TOR and/or VPN, etc. there are many potential privacy vulnerabilities (not to mention honeypots) that governments exploit that can be used to identify you and link coins to you. The NSA has some scary capabilities. I'm less worried about the Japanese police, but who knows... :-X