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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't extend to financial transactions generally, just ones flagged by banks as "suspicious."

"Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of "suspicious customer activity," such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)."

I find it a little bit hyperbolic that people are calling the end of the republic at the proposal that intelligence agencies have broader access to financial records they already have access to anyway--financial records that only cover certain kinds of suspicious transactions.

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American's don't know the intense surveillance that they are already under because these laws are slowly expanded over time with little democratic debate. You are telling the frog in the boiling pot that it is being hyperbolic for complaining that the temperature just went up another degree because the water was already hot.

Ahhhhhh

thank you

So, if for example, HSBC is helping drug money launderers to move money around for years, and never flagging it as suspicious (they are regular customers) then the CIA does not get the SP.

Ah well, nothing to see here.

My apologies for the earlier rant

From what I understand of the case, the cash was smuggled from the US to Mexico and deposited into accounts with HSBC based in Mexico. Consumer goods were then purchased in Mexico and shipped to Colombia and elsewhere (but not the US). While there should have been a lot more local oversight for money laundering, why should US government agencies have access to bank accounts in Mexico to determine if there has been money laundering activities?

This is a local matter, as it is in other jurisdictions, and the US can formally complain through the established channels, treaties, and agencies which allow for sanctions to be placed on banks and jurisdictions where there is excessive money laundering activities and low oversight.

Would you believe me if I said the DEA was doing the money laundering?

Fact. Don't be surprised when it comes out. 10% haircut for cash into Mexico.

Yes, this model, like any other system in existence, has failure modes in situations where the banks are in on it.

Given that the TSA considers every single citizen boarding a plane "suspicious", and that the Obama administration had to be pressed for months to concede that droning American citizens on US soil without trial would not be within its power, exactly what limits are there on flagging something as "suspicious"? Along with TSA's VIPR, FINCEN is just part of the not-so-stealth rollback of our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

I do believe however that American citizens should have the power to audit any government official's finances at whim. Let's start with that. If they aren't doing anything wrong, nothing to fear.

We really want some kind of open source Palantir to train on government officials who propose things like this, and people who lobby for them, just to give them a taste of what it's like to be under the microscope. Somewhat reminiscent of CNET publishing the address of Eric Schmidt's house; sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

This is like saying, "The police could get a warrant for your house anyway. I don't see why people get mad when they just walk in."

The other agencies could get FinCEN data. They just had to show cause for it.

Isn't a 'large money transfer' in this context $10k?

Only if it's cash:

"Banks, for instance, are required to report all personal cash transactions exceeding $10,000, as well as suspected incidents of money laundering, loan fraud, computer hacking or counterfeiting."

The article mentions there are about 15 million such reports every year. Compared to the volume of financial transactions it's tiny.

Also, the only way to submit such reports is via snail mail! So the latency for pickup is a joke.

You can get flagged for much less. (I believe the single transaction limit is more like 5k)

But they can also flag smaller transactions that appear to fit 'structuring' patterns. So fairly small innocent transactions can and do get erroneously flagged.

(Structuring being the practice of breaking up 'large' transactions explicitly to avoid being flagged.)

ISTR that Eliot Spitzer was pushing for more aggressive treatment of structuring, and that's exactly how he got caught. No one ever accused politicians of being consistent, though

I've always known ten grand as the number at or over which they are required to report (or other obvious things like $9999), but they are free to report any transaction.

As far as I can tell that $10,000 limit was introduced in 1970(http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/aml_history.html) and never adjusted for inflation. In today's dollars that would be about a $60,000 cash transaction(http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2410%2C000+1970+in+201...)

I had a bank investigate and flag my account as suspicious because they thought I was involved in online gambling, even though I wasn't.

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