Two U.S. senators take another run at banning online gambling

Notorious anti-online gambling US politicians Sens. Diane Feinstein and Lindsey Graham are persistent if nothing else in their attempts to impose a federal ban on internet gambling at the expense of individual states’ autonomy, although to date they have been unsuccessful.

This week the duo launched another attempt, trying to leverage the recent passage of online gambling legalisation in Pennsylvania as a justification for federal interference.

In a letter to the US Department of Justice the Adelson acolytes regurgitated the usual misinformation, speculation and downright inaccuracies regarding online gambling, trying to undermine the Office of Legal Counsel opinion in 2011 that the 1961 Wire Act came long before the internet and is applicable only to sports betting.

Our readers will recall that Sen. Graham was at the centre of the unsuccessful attempts by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to ride roughshod over states’ rights in seeking to federally ban online gambling through the failed Restoration of Americas Wire Act proposals.

Feinstein and Graham make some dubious assertions in their letter, reiterating claims that have been repeatedly rebutted and discounted, among them the allegation that the FBI has concluded that ‘online casinos are vulnerable to a wide array of criminal schemes,’ including money laundering and ventures by transnational organized crime groups.”

This is not an accurate interpretation of what the FBI actually said in a 2013 response to a Congressional enquiry regarding the potential dangers of money laundering. What the FBI actually said in its response was that illegal, offshore online gambling could (ie potentially/hypothetically) be used for criminal activity.

What Feinstein and Graham omitted to include were further passages in the correspondence from the FBI which assessed the threats as “largely preventable and detectable”, going on to comment that most of such illegal activity could be “detected and thwarted by a prudent online casino.”

Many experts have concluded that the FBI’s response four years ago was not cautionary but instead represents a case for regulation rather than prohibition in response to a political question..

The senators additionally, and perhaps deliberately, conflate illegal online gambling without US licensing with the entirely different animal that is US state-legalised and regulated online gambling, where strict regulation and consumer protection is strongly enforced at state level.

Finally, Feinstein and Graham stretch credibility in claiming that the four (so far) US states that have regulated online gambling, by association along with the eleven or so that have permitted online state lottery activity, are prejudicing the rights of those US states that do not want to follow the legalisation route.

This dubious claim appears to disregard the widely proved practical success of geo-location technology in Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey which ensures that online gambling action is constrained within the borders of those states.

The US industry will certainly be interested in the Justice Department’s response to this apparently last-ditch attempt to derail the online gambling legalisation trend, which many believe will be given additional momentum by the recent decision of Pennsylvanian lawmakers to legalise.

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