When the Trading with the Enemy Act, predecessor to the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, established a $10,000 surveillance threshold in 1945, the sum that would trigger snooping was roughly equivalent to $180,000 today. If the threshold had been adjusted for inflation, few of us would ever have to concern ourselves with it. As a recent Cato Institute article expressed it,
…the Bank Secrecy Act regime is swallowing up more transactions every year as inflation decreases the value of the dollar. No bills are passed; no regulations are open to the public. Yet, the wheel is turning, and financial surveillance increases without any checks or balances. When the Supreme Court effectively signed off on the Bank Secrecy Act, it only did so because $10,000 was considered “abnormally large” in the 1970s…[the] point [at which spying on such small transactions ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment] was crossed a long time ago…and…beyond [that, the government] has dramatically expanded financial surveillance at the southern border through geographic targeting orders by lowering the $10,000 threshold to just $200. One small business estimated that it would likely go from filing nine reports per week to filing 50,000 reports per week…an impossible standard…[which] a Texas court [said]…“defies common sense”…
Nor can the government’s lust to snoop into every financial transaction be easily circumvented by the use of cash, because currency denominations larger than pocket change have been banned. The largest bill you can have in your purse/wallet is a Hundred, which has the buying power of just over what a Five had in 1945. Coupled with bank transaction surveillance, the result is that the vast majority of financial transactions are subject to surveillance. If you watch old shows (’60s and earlier) like I do, you’ll see large cash transactions being made discreetly in envelopes containing $1000 bills; the government hated that, so it banned them, and today a large cash payoff takes suitcases of teeny-tiny Franklins. Imagine a payoff in a Bogart movie being made with a suitcase full of Fives, and you’ll understand just how little financial privacy you have in comparison with your grandparents.
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