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A Congressional investigation committee launched a particularly regarding report this week entitled: “FINANCIAL SURVEILLANCE IN THE UNITED STATES: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WEAPONIZED THE BANK SECRECY ACT TO SPY ON AMERICANS” that particulars how the US authorities has been monitoring Americans by financial institution transactions, with an emphasis on residents who’ve expressed conservative viewpoints.
“Financial data can tell a person’s story, including one’s “religion, ideology, opinions, and interests” in addition to one’s “political leanings, locations, and more,”’ the report begins. This investigation started after a whistleblower who occurs to be a retired FBI agent alerted Congress that the Financial institution of America (BoA) voluntarily supplied the Biden Administration info on prospects who used a credit score or debit card in Washington, D.C., across the January 6 protests. The brand new report has revealed that federal companies have been working “hand-in-glove with financial institutions, obtaining virtually unchecked access to private financial data and testing out new methods and new technology to continue the financial surveillance of American citizens.”
As I’ve mentioned numerous instances, “money laundering” is ALWAYS the excuse for why the federal government should monitor and monitor our monetary transactions. The Financial institution Secrecy Act (BSA) E-Submitting System is a system for monetary establishments to file studies required by the BSA electronically. By regulation, the BSA requires companies to maintain information and file studies to assist forestall and detect cash laundering. That is how the Biden Administration is trying to ignore privateness and weaponize monetary establishments.
US intelligence companies searched by information for phrases like “Trump” and “MAGA” to focus on Individuals who they believed might maintain “extremist” views. The companies looked for Individuals who bought non secular texts, such because the Bible, and likewise labeled them extremists. Anybody expressing disdain for the COVID lockdowns, vaccines, open borders, or the deep state had been positioned on a watchlist. Once more, the BSA was used as a premise to tug transactions positioned by the people on this checklist.
As defined by the investigative committee:
“With narrow exception, federal law does not permit law enforcement to inquire into financial institutions’ customer information without some form of legal process.9 The FBI circumvents this process by tipping off financial institutions to “suspicious” people and inspiring these establishments to file a SAR—which doesn’t require any authorized course of—and thereby present federal regulation enforcement with entry to confidential and extremely delicate info.10 In doing so, the FBI will get across the necessities of the Financial institution Secrecy Act (BSA), which, per the Treasury Division, specifies that “it is . . . a bank’s responsibility” to “file a SAR whenever it identifies ‘a suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation’”11 Whereas no less than one monetary establishment requested authorized course of from the FBI for info it was searching for,12 all too typically the FBI appeared to obtain no pushback. In sum, by offering monetary establishments with lists of people who it views as usually “suspicious” on the entrance finish, the FBI has turned this framework on its head and contravened the Fourth Modification’s necessities of particularity and possible trigger.”
Beneath this premise, anybody who held a viewpoint that opposed the Biden Administration was thought-about a “suspicious” particular person who required monitoring. The Treasury Division’s Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community created a database to rigorously watch potential dissenters. Over 14,000 authorities workers accessed the FinCEN database final yr and carried out over 3 million searches with no warrant. In reality, over 15% of FBI investigations throughout 2023 has some hyperlink to this database. It’s estimated that 4.6 million SARs and 20.8 million Foreign money Transaction Reviews (CTRs) had been filed within the final yr.
The committee famous that the federal government is incorporating AI to rapidly search the online for “suspicious” Individuals:
“As the Committee and Select Subcommittee have discussed in other reports, the growth and expansion of AI present major risks to Americans’ civil liberties.211 For example, the Committee and Select Subcommittee uncovered AI being used to censor “alleged misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election . . . .”212 These considerations should not hypothetical. Some AI techniques developed by Large Tech corporations have been programmed with biases; for instance, Google’s Gemini AI program praised liberal views whereas refusing to do the identical for conservative views, regardless of claiming to be “objective” and “neutral.” With monetary establishments seemingly adopting AI options to observe Individuals’ transactions, a equally biased AI program might end result within the systematic flagging or censoring of transactions that the AI is educated to view as “suspicious.”
That is extraordinarily troubling and goes past authorities overreach and violated quite a few Constitutional protections. The federal government successfully remodeled banking establishments into spy companies, and anybody who might doubtlessly maintain a view that didn’t match the Biden-Harris agenda has been handled as potential terrorist. It’s fully insane that somebody may very well be seen as an extremist for buying a non secular textual content or buying a firearm. That is discriminatory, predatory habits that places hundreds of thousands of lives in danger. Consider governments up to now who’ve rounded up names of dissenters based mostly on faith or ideology. They declare they’re merely observing us, however the aim is to silence us.
The committee mentioned their investigation has simply begun as they won’t permit the federal government’s abuse of monetary knowledge to go unchecked. Moreover, they’re involved that these warrantless searches can result in widespread debanking practices the place the federal government can simply block any dissenter from taking part in society by crippling them financially. That is but one more reason why governments need to push banks to create CBDC in order that they’ll punish residents with a easy click on of a button.
