Bank of American snooped through records to help find Jan 6th rioters.. anyone with a purchase in DC

[Demovictory9]

https://nypost.com/2021/02/05/calls-for-bank-of-america-boycott-grow-after-data-given-to-fbi/

Customers are calling for a boycott of Bank of America, after a report that the bank handed over the account information of hundreds of innocent people in connection with the Jan. 6 deadly riots at the Capitol.

At the request of the FBI, the country’s second-largest bank allegedly snooped through information of anyone making certain purchases in and around Washington before and after the riots, and handed over the information of 211 people, according to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

Only one of those 211 people was brought in for questioning, and none of them were arrested, according to Fox’s report.

Federal investigators reportedly asked Bank of America for information on customers who made debit or credit card purchases in DC, reserved hotels and Airbnbs in and around the capital, patronized weapons store and made airline reservations within the timeframe surrounding the attacks.


Bank of America gave the government the information of 211 people who they felt fit the 'criteria' of a suspicious involvement in the Jan 6 riot



The bank had been asked to turn over the records of anyone who used a debit card or credit card on January 5th and 6th in Washington DC

It was also asked for hotel or Airbnb purchases in DC, Maryland and Virginia

Any weapons charges between January 7 and Inauguration Day were included

Airline related purchases since January 6 were also requested by the feds

BoA complied and won't say if they were issued with a subpoena or warrant
One innocent person was hauled in for questioning as a result
Now, people are demanding to know which other banks did the same
There are also calls for people to boycott BoA because of the 'absurd overreach'
The FBI and DoJ have been on the back foot since before the insurrection
Many of the rioters plotted it in plain sight on social media and the FBI even issued an internal memo about it but it still wasn't
prevented

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9228367/BoA-snooped-hundreds-accounts-looking-Capitol-rioters.html

[Celerity]

2. I am against this giant net casting by the surveillance state. nt

[jimfields33]

3. I am too. Big time.

I understand the need to find the people involved. But if they can do it for this, they can do it for many things. A guy kills someone near an ATM. BOA takes everyone who took money that day and investigates them including going to home or employment to take to station for questioning. This might not be a good example, but they will try other situations.

[FakeNoose]

4. The FBI already has phone records of everyone who participated in 1/6/21

Anybody who brought a cell phone with them when they invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6th - the FBI has proof that you were there. The Feds may be looking for corroborating info from the banks, but they already KNOW who was there. How do I know? Because the U.S. Capitol building has its own cell tower and every cellphone pinged through the Capitol transmission network.

If any terrorists left their cell phones home - and that's not likely - they might get out of this. None of them were smart enough to use a burner phone.

[Irish_Dem]

5. If my close relative had been murdered, I would want the FBI to take all legal investigative

actions to catch the murderer.

[unblock]

6. i don't really have a problem with this

this is more or less the electronic version of the police asking hotel night clerks if they saw anyone suspicious, any out-of-towners. going to the gun shops and asking them the same question. which is the sort of thing you'd hope they would do when investigating any serious crime. canvassing the area, looking for witnesses, etc.

do innocent people get caught up in that sort of thing? of course. nothing new there. hopefully, the police figure it out quickly, drop it and more on to others. worst case, there's a hopefully fair legal process that clears them.


everyone knows that you had to go to switzerland (or maybe the caymans) to have your banking activity kept super-secret (and even that's not true anymore), but then they're shocked to find out that other countries aren't as secretive....


on a related note, all banks have to report every single transaction over $10,000 to the federal government. every single one.

and if you don't like it and try to avoid that by splitting your one large transaction into two or more smaller transactions all under $10,000, guess what? that's actually a crime.

so for them to have narrowed a search of all their customers and transactions down to a couple hundred people who were in the area of a major crime scene and the federal government then wanting to maybe interview some of them, i'm really not bothered by that in the scheme of things.



now, scouring bank data to find a crime that you didn't know about in the first place, that's another matter entirely. but using bank data to help investigate a specific crime, i'm ok with that.

[Hekate]

8. Right you are

[relayerbob]

9. Yep. This

[Hekate]

7. You know, I am not going to get overly agitated by this news.Our personal info is already scooped up

...on a massive scale by Big Brother, Inc and Conglomerated — in other words, much more so than Uncle Sam.

What is more, we eagerly give it away to our Health Insurance corporations, Apple, Google, Facebook, you-name-it, and pay them for the privilege.

Think that over.

[HipChick]

10. Any bank is going to snope..

its covered by Patriot act...esp if you are hunting terrorists..