Feds Are Spying on Your Bank Transactions

 Today, the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an interim staff report titled, “Financial Surveillance in the United States: How Federal Law Enforcement Commandeered Financial Institutions to Spy on Americans.” The report reveals alarming evidence of federal law enforcement engaging in broad financial surveillance and prying into the private transactions of American consumers. This surveillance, not predicated on specific evidence of criminal conduct, targeted terms and transactions related to core political and religious expressions protected by the Constitution.

… The report also details the existence of a web portal run by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), a public-private partnership led by the FBI’s Office of Private Sector and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. This portal appears to have shared intelligence products with financial institutions that were used to identify individuals who fit the profile of criminal and “domestic violent extremists,” often because of their conservative political views or other constitutionally protected activity. Federal law enforcement used these reports and other materials they shared with financial institutions to commandeer their databases and conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes, without a warrant, in order to identify individuals making certain “suspicious” transactions.