by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
The federal government conducted “broad,” “unjustified” surveillance of the private financial transactions of millions of Americans in the wake of events that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
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The federal government conducted “broad” surveillance of the private financial transactions of millions of Americans “without legal process” in the wake of events that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The report details how government officials asked major banks to search financial transactions for key terms, like “Trump” and “MAGA.” It also suggested they identify transactions related to firearms or sporting goods stores, such as Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
“Americans doing nothing other than shopping or exercising their Second Amendment rights were being tracked by financial institutions and federal law enforcement,” according to the report.
The “financial surveillance was not predicated on any specific evidence of particularized criminal conduct and, even worse, it keyed on terms and specific transactions that concerned core political and religious expression protected by the Constitution,” the report said.
Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” said the searches violated fundamental constitutional rights.
Rectenwald told The Defender:
“The willing cooperation of these financial institutions, without due legal process, demonstrates that these otherwise non-state actors are acting as what I have called ‘governmentalities,’ or apparatuses of the state. They are not merely private companies, per se. They are state assets colluding with the government in a system that can best be described as fascism.”
According to the report, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI held backchannel discussions with some of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. They asked them to voluntarily share people’s private financial information, without a subpoena.
The institutions included Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, PayPal, Wells Fargo, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and others.
The report also detailed how law enforcement and approximately 650 high-grossing companies and financial institutions shared non-public intelligence documents through a web portal run by a public-private partnership called the Domestic Security Alliance Council.
The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran the portal, which was accessible only to members of the private-public partnership.
Through this portal, the government shared reports with financial institutions about people who allegedly fit the profile of “domestic violent extremists” and who may be “emboldened” in the wake of Jan. 6 — focusing on people holding certain viewpoints.
One report shared in the portal noted that “those Americans who expressed opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the ‘deep state’ may be potential domestic terrorists.”
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