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Showing posts from November 9, 2003
The Patriot Act and 'little platoons' Yet another insidious feature of the USA Patriot Act, from today's Review-Journal : It forces banks to pry into the private financial dealings of people who serve in voluntary associations -- the "little platoons" celebrated by de Tocqueville (and later, Charles Murray) that make America a wonderfully compassionate, dynamic society; the law also requires the banks to share that information with John Ashcroft's Big Platoon aka the U.S. Justice Department. This is the story of Las Vegas resident Rebecca Foster, who offered to serve on the board of her homeowners association and discovered that the bank controlling the association's accounts demanded the dates of birth, Social Security and driver's license numbers for anyone who had check-signing privileges. From the story: The personal information was necessary, the bank said in the Aug. 27 letter, "to look for any derogatory banking information" and "