Taking $200 Out Of An ATM Should Not Trigger Federal Financial Surveillance

One of President Donald Trump's Day 1 executive orders designated "certain international cartels" as "foreign terrorist organizations," a classification that according to the State Department "play[s] a critical role in our fight against terrorism and [is] an effective means of curtailing support for terrorist activities and pressuring groups to get out of the terrorism business."

To that end, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced a new rule cracking down on cash transactions this week, but only in certain geographical regions. No matter the administration's intent to target cartels, the rule will expand government surveillance of its citizens.

"More than one million Americans are about to face a new level of financial surveillance," writes Nicholas Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. "Financial surveillance in the United States has long needed reform, but this move is in the wrong direction."

Anthony says rather than lowering the threshold, the $10,000 baseline is overdue to be raised.

The federal government first began requiring banks to log and report all cash transactions of $10,000 or more in 1952. The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 established CTRs as we know them today, and Treasury regulations enacted in 1972 set the threshold at $10,000.

As Anthony points out, the $10,000 threshold has remained since that time. If it had been raised even just to keep up with inflation, the current minimum for filing a CTR would be anywhere between $80,000 and $180,000, depending on whether you start from the pre-CTR rules in 1952 or the adoption of the current rules two decades later.