Two times the government
used its anti-terrorism powers to target Americans not engaged in terrorism
Daily Caller – Jamie Weinstein
– 6/11/2013
The powers granted in the Patriot Act aided law
enforcement officials in uncovering former New York Democratic Gov. Eliot
Spitzer’s dalliances with high-class prostitutes, which isn’t exactly a
terrorism-related offense. Mark Hosenball explained how in Newsweek magazine in 2008:
The Patriot Act gave the FBI new powers to
snoop on suspected terrorists. In the fine print were provisions that gave the
Treasury Department authority to demand more information from banks about their
customers’ financial transactions. Congress wanted to help the feds identify
terrorist money launderers. But Treasury went further. It issued stringent new
regulations that required banks themselves to look for unusual transactions
(such as odd patterns of cash withdrawals or wire transfers) and submit SARs —
Suspicious Activity Reports — to the government. Facing potentially stiff
penalties if they didn’t comply, banks and other financial institutions
installed sophisticated software to detect anomalies among millions of daily
transactions. They began ranking the risk levels of their customers — on a
scale of zero to 100 — based on complex formulas that included the credit
rating, assets and profession of the account holder. …
The new scrutiny resulted in an explosion of
SARs, from 204,915 in 2001 to 1.23 million last year [2007]. The data, stored
in an IRS computer in Detroit
Spitzer’s transactions were tagged, which ultimately led
to suspicions he was accepting bribes, according to ABC News.
“We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with
Spitzer led us to learn about it,” a Department of Justice official told
ABC News.
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