[IP] more on Financial privacy, Bank Secrecy Act, and laws mandating snooping [priv]
Begin forwarded message:
From: Tom Goltz <tgoltz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 13, 2005 9:53:24 AM EDT
To: Ethan Ackerman <eackerma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Financial privacy, Bank Secrecy Act, and laws
mandating snooping [priv]
At 09:03 AM 10/13/2005, Ethan Ackerman wrote:
(*) the "patriot act effect" describes the tendency of anyone with
some
element of authority to cite onerous govt. rules as a justification
for
everything, from TSA groping grandma to landlords denying
apartments to
Muslims - "...because its in the Patriot Act."
Your message made it's way from Politech to Dave Farber's Interesting
People list, where I read it.
It's not just the banks using the Patriot Act to justify overly
invasive snooping:
Recently I called Dell to order a 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch.
This is the same technology that you can buy at your local CompUSA
for cash with no questions asked. Not only did they want the normal
billing and shipping information required for any mail-order
transaction, but they also demanded that I tell them the location
where the equipment was going to be used, and the name of the end-user.
I refused to answer these questions, and was informed that this
information was "required by law" and that they wouldn't sell me the
unit without the information.
When I asked "What law?", the reply was "Patriot Act." However Dell
wouldn't (or couldn't) provide a precise citation to the law that
required them to gather this information. My response to this
obvious piece of nonsense was to inform Dell that I would be taking
my business elsewhere.
I had no trouble buying a comparable unit from another vendor with no
questions asked.
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