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The federal government conducted “broad” surveillance of the private financial transactions of millions of Americans “without legal process” in the wake of events that took place on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The report details how government officials asked major banks to search financial transactions for key terms, like “Trump” and “MAGA.” It also suggested they identify transactions related to firearms or sporting goods stores, such as Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
“Americans doing nothing other than shopping or exercising their Second Amendment rights were being tracked by financial institutions and federal law enforcement,” according to the report.
The “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,” the report said.
Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” said the searches violated fundamental constitutional rights.
Rectenwald told The Defender:
“The willing cooperation of these financial institutions, without due legal process, demonstrates that these otherwise non-state actors are acting as what I have called ‘governmentalities,’ or apparatuses of the state. They are not merely private companies, per se. They are state assets colluding with the government in a system that can best be described as fascism.”
According to the report, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI held backchannel discussions with some of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. They asked them to voluntarily share people’s private financial information, without a subpoena.
The institutions included Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, PayPal, Wells Fargo, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and others.
The report also detailed how law enforcement and approximately 650 high-grossing companies and financial institutions shared non-public intelligence documents through a web portal run by a public-private partnership called the Domestic Security Alliance Council.
The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran the portal, which was accessible only to members of the private-public partnership.
Through this portal, the government shared reports with financial institutions about people who allegedly fit the profile of “domestic violent extremists” and who may be “emboldened” in the wake of Jan. 6 — focusing on people holding certain viewpoints.
One report shared in the portal noted that “those Americans who expressed opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the ‘deep state’ may be potential domestic terrorists.”
BREAKING: The federal government has been illegally surveilling and building profiles for Americans in secret portal called DSAC for those who oppose firearm restrictions, lockdowns & vaccine mandates, and or support border security and are labeling them as domestic extremists. pic.twitter.com/4QAEov4jay
— Patrick Webb (@RealPatrickWebb) March 7, 2024
“These illegal searches suggest that the criminal justice agencies have been turned into weapons for the persecution of political opposition,” Rectenwald said.
Labeling dissenters as domestic violent extremists is “the most egregious example of government overreach” highlighted in the report, said Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable.
“It basically means that if you question anything the government says or does, you may be marked as a potential domestic terrorist, which opens the door for the government to pry even deeper into your life and violate your freedoms,” he added.
Hinchliffe told The Defender:
“Today, they’re going after Americans who oppose open borders, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc., but who will they go after tomorrow? Will they go after people who express opposition to U.S. funding in Ukraine? What about opposition to sending troops on the ground? Who will become the next domestic terrorist based on which side they support in the Middle East?”
W. Scott McCollough, former Texas assistant attorney general, told The Defender it was important to realize this is not a partisan issue.
“The story is that we — the people — are in an abusive relationship with our government because the government thinks that everybody is a threat or can be a threat at some point. Everybody,” he said.
“A particular subset of people who are thought to be right-wing, conservative or whatever have been deemed to be the enemy today,” he said. “But that could change tomorrow,” and the same thing could happen to “people who thought they were immune…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
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