By: Jeffrey Phelps
A very startling report emerged Wednesday spelling out another example of the loss of ever-dwindling rights and liberties in the US.
According to the report, Obama has decided to allow all US intelligence agencies the ability to “scour American's finances” and dig through the personal financial records of American citizens and anyone else who banks in the country.
Thanks to the USA Patriot Act, the proposal, already being argued by many legal experts as being permissible under US law, allows for the consolidation of federal policing agencies and their ability to combine and compare military intelligence with criminal records and American's financial data.
Billed with the commonly used justification the move is necessary to further enhance the government's ability to track down and find potential “terrorist networks,” the plan would allow multiple agencies the ability to see more private financial information than at any time in US history.
Banks in the United States are already required to report any transactions of $10,000 or more, all labeled “suspicious activity reports,” to the treasury's financial crimes enforcement network (FinCEN) and the FBI already has access to the financial database in question, but the CIA and NSA currently have to file for the information on a case-by-case basis. The Obama administration wants to make sure all federal policing agencies and all US intelligence agencies have easier access to the same information.
Dated March 4 and still in the early stages of planning, it's not quite clear when the action actually goes into affect, but the Obama administration has every intent on seeing the proposal through to its implementation.
Since the Patriot Act became law over 25,000 financial institutions, including banks, securities dealers, casinos and wire transfer agencies have been feeding that gigantic and always growing database with the private financial records of everyone who makes a transaction falling under the “suspicious activity” category with the FinCEN and now every spy agency in the country is going to have access to those records, whenever they wish and without a warrant.
Written during the Clinton administration and implemented under Bush following 9/11, the Patriot Act, which began the process of the total consolidation of all federal policing and intelligence agencies in America, is now almost complete under the Obama administration.