Big Brother Wants to Look in Your Bank Account: The U.S. Government is Constructing a System to Track All Financial Transactions in Real-Time – Ostensibly to Catch Criminals. Does That Leave You With the Warm Fuzzies – or Scare You Out of Your Wits? | Imagining the Internet

The prediction, in brief:

Such a database … would provide a wealth of information … Like the baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams,” build this database and they will come. Eventually, whether legally or illegally, they will gain access to this database.

Predictor: American Bankers Association

Prediction, in context:

In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Anthony Kimery, an editor at American Banker Newsletters, outlines the U.S. government’s efforts to keep a handle on private financial transactions. Kimery writes about the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network – FinCEN, quoting an unnamed American Bankers Association spokesman:”The American Bankers Association (ABA) voiced … serious concerns [about the possibility of the government utilizing a Deposit Tracking System]. The ABA doubts ‘whether there are any privacy safeguards that would be adequate to effectively protect this database from use by government agencies and, eventually, private parties,’ an ABA spokesman explains. ‘It is inconceivable to the ABA that such a database could be used only by the FDIC in deposit insurance-coverage functions. Such a database … would provide a wealth of information for investigations being conducted by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the IRS, to name but a few. Like the baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams,” build this database and they will come. Eventually, whether legally or illegally, they will gain access to this database.'”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1993

Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues

Subtopic: Privacy/Surveillance

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Big Brother Wants to Look in Your Bank Account: The U.S. Government is Constructing a System to Track All Financial Transactions in Real-Time – Ostensibly to Catch Criminals. Does That Leave You With the Warm Fuzzies – or Scare You Out of Your Wits?

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/big.brother_pr.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney