Americans living near the Mexican border now have to report money transactions of $200 or the federal government, following a recent decree from the Treasury Department.
It reduces the reporting threshold from the prior level of $10,000, and no warrant or evidence of a crime is required.
The new rule has raised concerns regarding warrantless surveillance of law-abiding Americans, however.
“This takes a financial surveillance system that is already enormous and intrusive and burdensome, and it expands that system enormously,” Rob Johnson, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told The Epoch Times.
Banks, payment service providers, and other companies that handle money in these zip codes will be “essentially spying on their own customers and filling out reports on the activities of their customers to file with the federal government,” Johnson said. “It’s going to take away the financial privacy of people who use those businesses.”…