The Massachusetts Congressman claims the BSA is "highly useful" to combat terrorism. The data says otherwise.

Every year, Americans are subjected to more financial surveillance. It doesn’t require a new bill from Congress or even a secret program from law enforcement. Rather, financial surveillance increases every year because of an arbitrary dollar threshold set in the 1970s that has never been adjusted for inflation.

As prices rise, ordinary financial activity is increasingly swept into a system designed for criminals, not the public at large. Recognizing this quiet expansion of government monitoring, several members of Congress have proposed reforms to the Bank Secrecy Act. Their goal is modest: stop inflation from turning millions of law-abiding people into default surveillance targets. Yet some policymakers insist that even this limited reform goes too far.

The opposition rests on the claim that existing Bank Secrecy Act reporting is indispensable to law enforcement—a claim frequently repeated but rarely examined. For example, Representative Stephen Lynch (D-MA) said that Bank Secrecy Act reports tip off 87 percent of investigations. He argued that these reports are therefore highly useful for combating heinous crimes like terrorism.

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