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| -Land of the Free | |
| How Government Makes Your Bank Spy on You - Banks are not allowed to let individuals know that this type of report is being filed on them | |
| 2022-11-05 | |
Today, the answer is yes. The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA) and subsequent amendments mandated that your bank must inform the federal government about any customer’s transactions that they consider suspicious, however broadly defined that may be, in the form of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). How often do banks think their customers are doing something suspicious? According to the U.S. Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, there were approximately 20 million bank reports of suspicious activity in 2019. An August report by the Cato Institute titled “Government Surveillance Doesn’t Stop at Your Bank’s Door” states that this reporting requirement doesn’t just apply to banks but also to currency exchanges, payments companies, broker-dealers, casinos, pawnbrokers, travel agencies, and car dealerships. All of this would seem to be illegal under the U.S. Constitution; the Fourth Amendment, for example, prohibits “unreasonable search and seizure” by our government and establishes the requirement for the government to obtain a warrant and show “probable cause” of a crime. But according to Jennifer Schulp, co-author of the Cato report, one reason that government surveillance-by-proxy has been allowed by U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, is something called the “Third Party Doctrine.” Schulp told The Epoch Times that the Third Party Doctrine is a legal principle that “essentially removed the expectation of privacy that an individual has from information that they share with a third party, including their banks. So under current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the information that you give to your bank is no longer private.” | |
| Posted by:NoMoreBS |