A Cloud of Self-Righteous Smugness Turns Sanctions on Russia Into an Assault on Privacy of Millions

What we need is a fiscal equivalent of Pierre Trudeau’s famous statement that, ‘There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.’

Civil Guards stand by the yacht called Tango at Palma de Mallorca, Spain, on Monday. The yacht is owned by a Russian oligarch. AP Photo/Francisco Ubilla, file

The imposition of sanctions on Russia is being cited as an excuse for another massive assault on the remaining tatters of the privacy of the people of the entire politically organized world. Officially, we are all urged to acquiesce to public revelations of every conceivable connection we may have to assets of any kind that may be connected to Russian oligarchs, but this is the pretext for a thickening of the gigantic cloud of self-righteous officious smugness that has turned routine banking into the financial equivalent of compulsively frequent colonoscopies.

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