Abstract

Minority Report

It might seem to many people that the current battle over the Right to Financial Privacy Act is a minor skirmish, pitting money-launderers against high-priced lawyers and leaving the rest of the people waiting as usual for a vacant teller's window. Recent experience has persuaded the author that this is not so, and that senator Edwin Meese's proposed legislation repealing the act, which would leave bank deposits an open book to every kind of Federal invigilation, is a real threat to civil liberties. As matters stand, banks must report cash deposits of more than $10,000. But agencies of the state cannot simply help themselves to the records of private individuals. And when the agencies are allowed access, the individuals, except in highly unusual circumstances, must be made aware of the fact. The law that embodies these guarantees and that denies a blank check, so to speak, to the state, was passed for excellent reasons.