Governments force banks to report your activity, judge whether you are being suspicious, and close your accounts when you step out of the norm.
How? It dates back to 1970.
President Richard Nixon had not yet been caught surveilling his political opponents. Instead, Oct. 26, 1970 marks when Nixon signed the Bank Secrecy Act and set the foundation for a new regime of financial surveillance.
Often abbreviated as “the BSA,” the Bank Secrecy Act was originally enacted over fears that the rise of air travel in the late 1960s would lead to Americans hiding their money in Swiss bank accounts.
As the times changed, so did the concerns. Congress initially targeted tax evaders, but the Bank Secrecy Act was later expanded to also go after drug traffickers. Later, it would be expanded again to go after terrorists.
Most recently, Congress has been weighing where and how to apply it to cryptocurrencies.
https://www.cato.org/blog/warren-misses-details-bank-secrecy-act
Yet, it hasn’t just been the targets that have changed. Congress has also steadily expanded who must report their customers under this regime.
Even the @USPS and pawn shops are defined as "financial institutions" here.
This ever-growing list of both targets and informants is partly why more than 27.5 million reports were filed on customers last year. https://www.cato.org/blog/reporting-fincens-suspicious-activity-again
Congress has prioritized ever-increasing financial surveillance over protections for people’s privacy for 55 years now. It’s time for that to change.
It’s time to respect financial privacy and stop treating ever-expanding surveillance as the norm. Reform needs to happen before the Bank Secrecy Act gets to celebrate its next big milestone.
For more on how, check out my latest in @CoinDesk
55 Years of Financial Surveillance
Reform needs to happen before the Bank Secrecy Act gets to celebrate its next big milestone, argues Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato ...
55 Years of Financial Surveillance
Reform needs to happen before the Bank Secrecy Act gets to celebrate its next big milestone, argues Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato ...
The issue dates back to 2022 when President Biden placed “the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.” As part of this effort, President Biden instructed the Department of Justice to put together an “assessment of whether legislative changes would be necessary to issue a United States CBDC.”
Yet, the report never saw the light of day.
When it became clear that the report wasn't going to be published, I submitted a FOIA request and members of Congress wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Still, nothing.
