Regulations
By James Thorp
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Two Cases That Show How This Works. Kyle William Olson got stopped in Montana. DHS's PITT team had flagged him based on what an…
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FinCEN's Role and the Bank Secrecy Act. A big chunk of this surveillance runs through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — FinCEN.
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Civil Liberties vs. Security: The Ongoing Fight. The tension here isn't new. Law enforcement has always wanted more data.
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The Department of Homeland Security is watching your bank account. And it's making decisions about you before you've done anything wrong.
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DHS runs what it calls the Border Patrol Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team — PITT, for short.
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Kyle William Olson got stopped in Montana. DHS's PITT team had flagged him based on what an internal memo called "financial activity patterns" linked to drug activity.
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Alek Schott's case is maybe even more troubling. He was stopped for erratic driving. His vehicle was searched. No drugs found.
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These aren't isolated glitches. They're the system working as designed.
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The scope of what financial data can reveal is vast. Spending habits, political donations, travel patterns, religious affiliations — it's all potentially visible.
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Related: CLARITY Act Faces Uncertain Future Amid Senate Ethics Battle and Trumps Crypto Earnings
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Historical parallels aren't comforting. Canada used financial controls to freeze accounts linked to the 2022 trucker protests.
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In California, local police departments have reportedly pulled energy consumption records to identify illegal marijuana cultivation. Innocent people got swept up.
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That's the core problem. There's no clear line between legitimate anti-money-laundering work and blanket financial surveillance.
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The tension here isn't new. Law enforcement has always wanted more data. Civil liberties advocates have always pushed back. What's changed is the scale.
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Political groups on both sides have been caught in these nets. Conservative groups, liberal groups — financial surveillance doesn't really care about ideology. It flags patterns.
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