Guys

a few replies to your questions:

1) Deposits - withdrawals fees:  To put things into perspective a customer can now withdraw or deposit 30,000 usd and be charged a fee of 30 usd.
I frankly speaking don't believe this is even a problem to talk about in case you move money in and out once in a while.
Bitcoin is not a treasury bond yielding 3% a year, it is highly volatile and I believe we are making much ado for nothing.
Please understand our current financial system is based on checks and parameters.
The more we move in and out of our accounts, the more banks will be likely to notice our flows, the more attention we will get.
What we are trying to discourage here is not an occasional deposit or withdrawal, it's people moving money in and out daily as there was no tomorrow.
This behavior is putting our system under stress and is representing a potential threat to our security.  

2) KYC-AML:  Once again, we didn't suddenly get crazy or bought up by the Big Brother.
If you don't have a passport, you surely have a driving license, if you don't drive you can go to a public notary and have your identity verified on a piece of paper with your picture and your name and address written on it (auto declaration of identity).
For any exception I'm sure we will find a solution.
 
Due to the recent bankruptcy of MtGox we are facing increased attention by local authorities and regulators.
In the last days we went thru an audit performed by the Custom and Excise Department, which went well.
We always observed AML/KYC procedures, but we were kindly required to step up one notch due to the "particular nature" of Bitcoin.
I completely disagree upon the fact that Bitcoin or any other Cryptocurrency is the ideal mean for criminal actions (cash is a much safer mean for criminals) , but nevertheless we need to comply with the rules if we want our business to prosper and our customers' money to be safe.  

Platforms are centralized entities and they can either decide to comply with rules or end up like Liberty Reserve.
Not much we can do about it, at least for the time being.

I hope that this helps

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team