I just recieved my quarterly statement from my 401k and there was a notice attached. Has anyone else got this? And why does the government need to know anything about my 401k?
I know it's a cliche, but this is a slippery slope. This group of people will keep pushing things on us as if we're the proverbial frog in the pot with the heat being turned up slowly. There's no compromise in privacy or civil liberties... if you compromise, it's gone.
I've often wondered that. The buggers have a data base on all the thingy jigs i've bought from them over the years. And they know where i live.
Government is a compromise. I think the Patriot Act goes too far, but I don't want anarchy and terrorism. On the radio shack thing, I must apologize to my parents one day because I still "live" there in the eyes of radio shack and every other corporation that asks for information it doesn't need.
I read an article a while back indicating that Radio Shack was no longer going to do this. It was one of the things that peeved me about shopping there. It was also their biggest customer complaint.
I got the exact same mail. It was no big deal to me. They already had all of that information. It was required when the account was opened. The SS# is needed for tax purposes.
F.B.I.'s Reach Into Records Is Set to Grow By ERIC LICHTBLAU, NYTimes WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.'s power to demand financial records, without a judge's approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday. Traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions are frequently subject to administrative subpoenas from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to produce financial records in terrorism and espionage investigations. Such subpoenas, which are known as national security letters, do not require the bureau to seek a judge's approval before issuing them. The measure now awaiting final approval in Congress would significantly broaden the law to include securities dealers, currency exchanges, car dealers, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other institution doing cash transactions with "a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters." Officials said the measure, which is tucked away in the intelligence community's authorization bill for 2004, gives agents greater flexibility and speed in seeking to trace the financial assets of people suspected of terrorism and espionage. It mirrors a proposal that President Bush outlined in a speech two months ago to expand the use of administrative subpoenas in terrorism cases. Critics said the measure would give the federal government greater power to pry into people's private lives. "This dramatically expands the government's authority to get private business records," said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "You buy a ring for your grandmother from a pawnbroker, and the record on that will now be considered a financial record that the government can get." The provision is in the authorization bills passed by both houses of Congress. Some Democrats have begun to question whether the measure goes too far and have hinted that they may try to have it pulled when the bill comes before a House-Senate conference committee. Other officials predicted that the measure would probably survive any challenges in conference and be signed into law by President Bush, in part because the provisions already approved in the House and the Senate are identical. The intelligence committees considered the proposal at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, officials said. Officials at the C.I.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment on Tuesday about the measure. A senior Congressional official who supports the provision said that "this is meant to provide agents with the same amount of flexibility in terrorism investigations that they have in other types of investigations." "This was really just a technical change to reflect the new breed of financial institutions," the official added. Asked what had prompted the measure, the official said: "This is coming from 3,000 dead people. There's an ever-expanding universe of places where terrorists can hide financial transactions, and it's only prudent and wise to anticipate where they might be and to give law enforcement the tools that they need to find them." Christopher Wray, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, also addressed the issue last month at a Senate hearing. Mr. Wray said that compared with the antiterrorism law that allowed agents to demand business records with court approval, the F.B.I.'s administrative subpoenas were more limited. The administrative subpoenas "do provide for production of some records," he said, but "they don't cover as many types of business records."
Excellent points. The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act neither protects us from boogeymen terrorists, nor makes us safer. It's just a sorry excuse to spy on us and toss us in jail without legal recourse. It's a fascist's wet dream. This country belongs to *US*, not the government. We tell them what to do, not the other way around. And until we tell them to shove the draconian P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act up their fascist butts, they'll continue to hammer away at our most basic rights.
TheFreak, they ask. I always say no. They don't care. It's to build up their mailing list. This is something else.
What do you say to the news that Senator Barbara Boxer and the ACLU have no instances to report of abridgement of US citizens' rights via the Patriot Act?
If this isn't liberal lunatic fringe, I don't know what is. Do you honestly think that lawmakers in Washington dreamt up this elaborate scheme 'as an excuse to spy on us and toss us in jail"? How absurd is this? I'd like to remind you that this was a *bipartisan* bill that only one senator (Feingold) voted against.
T_J does it not bother you at all that people have disclose their personal financial transactions to the government?
Well, if your name is, say, Mustafa, and you suddenly divert all your savings from US-based mutual funds to savings bonds, that might be of interest. I'm not just being sarcastic. This is the sort of data that some people believe could help us predict an attack. Apparently, there were some interesting financial transactions in the weeks leading up to 9-11.
you think this is new? the government insures every one of your deposits in any financial institution. there are reporting statements directly to the government for any transaction above a certain amount of money. none of that is new. the birth certificate thing is new to me...but i've never seen that among my bank clients anyway.
And yes I understand that we file taxes and whatnot. I just think that as a Republican (if that's what you are) that you'd be all for the government staying out of our personal lives as much as possible.
