According to a recent report from the House Judiciary Committee and iWeaponization Subcommittee, the federal government engaged in “broad” and “unjustified” surveillance of Americans' private financial data via financial institutions.
The report also indicates that banks may have utilized information from lists of “hate symbols” compiled by anti-conservative organizations to identify potential individuals of interest.
Fox News Digital was the first to obtain the committee's report, titled “Financial Surveillance in the United States: How Federal Law Enforcement Commandeered Financial Institutions to Spy on Americans.”
“Financial surveillance was not predicated on any specific evidence of particularized criminal conduct and, even worse, it keyed on terms and specific transactions that concerned core political and religious expression protected by the Constitution,” as stated in the report.
Fox News Digital initially disclosed that in the aftermath of the events on January 6, 2021, federal law enforcement officials from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI held numerous discussions with financial institutions.
Fox News Digital first disclosed that federal investigators instructed banks to scrutinize and filter customer transactions using terms such as “MAGA” and “Trump.” Additionally, they cautioned that purchases of “religious texts” might signal “extremism.” Fox News Digital also revealed that officials recommended that banks examine transactions containing keywords like Dick's Sporting Goods, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, and others.
Additional terms included, as Fox News Digital also first reported: “White Power,” “Camp Auschwitz,” “Antifa,” “Proud B,” “Storm, the,” “Capitol,” “Groyper Army,” “Biden,” “Kamala,” “Pelosi,” “Schumer” and “Pence,” “Threepers,” “boogaloo,” “civil war,” “last sons,” “kill,” “shoot,” “gun,” “death,” and “murder.”
Per the report, “Despite these transactions having no criminal nexus, FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors and subject to surveillance.”
View the report here.
