This is getting into the weeds a bit, but it's another landmark in our journey to Totalitarianism.
...the most startling admission by the FBI Director were his responses to the FBI’s collection of transaction records from US financial institutions. During Wray’s appearance, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie advised Wray,“George Hill, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston field office, told us that the Bank of America, with no legal process, gave to the FBI gun purchase records with no geographical boundaries for anybody that was a Bank of America customer. Is that true?”
“A number of business community partners all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity, and my understanding is that that’s fully lawful”, Wray responded. Wow....
Notice that Wray Wormtongue first shifted the focus of Massie's question from a clear 4th Amendment violation to a 'possible criminal activity' focus. Then he declared that '.....it's legal.'
But that was not what Massie asked, and Wormtongue was desperately trying to hide the FEEBS' potentially criminal conduct--and that of the "co-operating" banks.
...Pursuant to the Department of Treasury’s Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions and banks are required to make formal referrals to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), when, after conducting due diligence, the bank believes that a crime such as fraud or money launder may have occurred at their institution. These routine referrals are called SARs or Suspicious Activity Reports....
...But the circumstances in this instance with Bank of America’s alleged behavior are completely different, and troubling. Whistleblower George Hill told congressional investigators that the FBI’s D.C. field office leaned on other field offices to predicate investigations on US citizens based on nothing more than the transactions records Bank of America provided to the FBI. Further, Bank of America highlighted customer transactions of apparently lawful firearm purchases by Americans, Hill said....
BoA wants to be a Too Big To Fail Suck-Up bank, and if that means criminal customer-privacy violations are required, then they'll do it.
But the question you have to ask is this: Does my Bank roll over like this rotten whore BoA?
If you think that using the ATM/Cash machine at your gun store is smart, think again. Even the dumbest FEEB can match an address 7 of 10 times, ya'know.
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