Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights

For Immediate Release: http://www.financialprivacy.org
Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights applauds Rep. Sue Kelly (NY), chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, for her leadership reversing the lack of Congressional oversight of our anti-money laundering programs.

“We should honor the principles of good government and end policies that don’t work,” said J. Bradley Jansen, executive director. “Flooding law enforcement with a deluge of reports of normal behavior by law-abiding citizens undermines our security.”

The Center urges the subcommittee to recognize the benefits to security of stronger privacy policies. Today’s newspapers report both bank and state government employees selling information to identity theft rings—a mode of terrorist financing. The subcommittee should examine the cost to benefit analysis of our policies. The additional regulations of Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act place a disproportionate burden on smaller institutions that contributes to a consolidation of assets in the financial system and limits consumer choice. Care must be taken to protect innocent victims against abuses reporting inherently subjective “suspicious” behavior.

For more information, please contact:
J. Bradley Jansen
bjansen(at)financialprivacy.org

The Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, a non-governmental advocacy and research organization, was founded in 2005 to defend privacy, civil liberties and market economics. The Center is the only non-profit human rights and civil liberties organization whose core mission recognizes traditional economic rights as a necessary foundation for a broad understanding of human rights.
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