The Bank Secrecy Act is failing everyone. It’s time to rethink financial surveillance.

The United States is on the lips of the bases of digital assets, with the growing momentum of the two parties to modernize our financial system. But amid all the talk about innovation and global competitiveness, there was a starkly absent issue: financial privacy. While building digital infrastructure in the twenty -first century, we need to talk not only what is possible but what is acceptable. This means facing the expanding observation powers quietly in our financial system, which can today follow almost every treatment without a judicial order.

Many Americans may link financial monitoring with authoritarian regulations. However, due to the Nixon Testament law called the BSA Law (BSA) and the financing of financing over the past half of the century, financial privacy is increasingly serious threat here at home. Most Americans do not realize that they live under a large -scale monitoring system that probably violates their constitutional rights. Each purchase, deposit and treatment process, from the smallest Venimo batch of coffee to a large hospital bill, creates a data point in a system that monitors you – even if you do not commit a wrong thing.

As a former federal prosecutor, I am very interested in giving the law the tools it needs to maintain our safety. But the current situation does not make us safer. It creates a false sense of safety as it erodes quietly and permanently the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.

When the congress BSA enact in 1970, Cash was the king and organized crime was the goal. The law has established a plan, where, since then banks were asked to keep specific records on their customers and hand them over to the application of the law upon request. Unlike the inspection order, which a judge or a judge must issue when offering a possible reason committed a crime and that there is a specific evidence of that crime in the place to be searched, this authority is practiced without any checks or balances. The Public Prosecutor can “reduce a summons order” – and it raises all your banking records over the past ten years – without any supervision or judicial restrictions on a scale, and the lack of government cost. The entire burden is located on the bank. On the other hand, an appropriate inspection note should be tightly designed, with a possible reason and a judicial license.

in United States against Miller (1976), BSA Supreme Court supported with the mind that citizens have no “legal expectation of privacy” on joint information with third parties, such as banks. Thus, the doctrine of the third party began, allowing the law enforcing access to financial records without a judicial order. BSA has been modified several times over the years (the most famous in 2001 as part of the Patriot Law), and a constantly increasing list of obligations to save the books in the list of increasing financial institutions is constantly. Today, the ordinary Americans are inevitable.

In the seventies of the last century, when BSA was enacted, bank and non -banking payments were often through material means: checking checks, visiting bank branches, and using corridors. For cash transactions, BSA requires reporting transactions on the royal amount of $ 10,000, a number that has not been linked to inflation and is still as it is today. Given the nature of banking services and technology available at the time, only individuals conducted a handful of non -vibrant payments per month. Today, consumers pay at least one banking or treatment per day, and estimated at 16 % of these cash.

Meanwhile, emerging technologies increase financial data emissions. Add to that the huge complexes of personal information that were already collected by technology platforms – recruitment date, research activity, and communications definition data – and create a world that can be linked to financial monitoring with all aspects of your identity, movement and behavior.

BSA does not seem effective in achieving its goals. In the fiscal year 2024, financial institutions submitted about 4.7 million SARS activity reports and more than 20 million currency transactions reports. Instead of stopping the major crime, the system immerses the law enforcement through low -valuable information, overwhelming agents, and withholding real threats. Collective monitoring often reduces the effectiveness of law enforcement in noise. But while it does not stop the infiltrators, BSA creates a set of permanent information on everyone.

Worse, the incentives are asymmetric and asymmetty. To avoid responsibility, financial institutions must report anything remotely suspicious. If they fail to present SAR, they risk serious penalties – even an indictment. But they do not face any consequences for reporting. Excessive alliance of data is the unanimous result. These practices, which were developed according to the regulations, require a clearer handrail in order for the actors in the executives to use the security sources safely in monitoring duties to private institutions.