CFL- Senator Mike Crapo, (R-ID) is the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. He sent letters to Bank of America and Citigroup regarding their use of banking power to force citizens to comply with their anti-gun policies…and that’s not all. Some of their practices include using your personal information to track the habits of customers with regard to legal activities.
Senator Crapo issued this report via his constituent email system, emphasis mine:
“In recent weeks, several financial services firms have issued new guidelines that could effectively cut off financial services to law-abiding firearm manufacturers, retailers and firearms purchasers if they do not comply with the bank’s firearms preferences. This raises serious concerns about large financial institutions—that receive significant forms of government support and benefits—using their market power to manage social policy by withholding access to credit from customers and companies they disfavor.
Some are encouraging banks to track and monitor individual credit and debit transactions with respect to firearms. The collection of personally identifiable information (PII) by both the government and private companies is something that has long troubled me. The potential use of Americans’ information to monitor and deny financial services to those engaged in completely legal (and, in this case, constitutionally-protected) conduct is incredibly concerning.
As Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, I contacted those that have issued these troubling directives and sought answers to questions about the collection of personally identifiable information, and how the information is used and protected. Americans have a legitimate interest in protecting their personal privacy against both government and private sector abuse. Congress must get a better understanding of the collection and protection of personal information, and this issue will be a major focus of ongoing Senate Banking Committee oversight efforts.” MORE
If BofA don’t watch their step, I might be forced to close my account with them.
Then they’re gonna miss that $300 average monthly balance.
P.S. – Sometimes it even gets up to tree fiddy.
I haven’t done business with B of A ever and I never will. Their predecessor SeaFirst (Seattle First National Bank) which they bought out yrs. ago wasn’t much better, they had the mortgage on my first house and I wasn’t pleased with the way they treated us. I have been a member of credit unions for the past 40 yrs. + and have always been treated fairly by them.
Replay form BoA, etc: The Senator better be careful. The Financial Institutions may cut off his re-election funding and make his personal financial information public.
Baybank Middlesex>>>Bank Boston>>>Fleet Bank>>>BoA. I never wanted an account with BoA, it’s where the mergers left me. I’d like to go with a local bank/CU, but it’s cumbersome to switch as I have direct deposit of Mr. Paycheck and it takes awhile to switch deposit accounts. Too, though, I’ve made purchases from Sig online recently and they didn’t squawk…
I use a small local bank, they all know me and call me by name, Santa, inside joke.
My life was nearly thrown into utter chaos some years ago when an employee of a BANK located in the united states OF AMERICA handed out my personal information, along with others, out the back door to a ring if ID theives. I was lucky because the first place they tried to use my info at to get a large credit account, called me at home to verify some info. I still had one account get set up in my name, but was quickly closed. After my wife and I found tinkering being done on our savings account, we went to the bank, had the account numbers changed. Seven days later, somebody walked into a branch in LA, transferred $1500 from our savings to our checking, then withdrew the $1500 from the checking account. The thieves were thinking nobody monitors their savings account, so they thought it would not be noticed.
Except my wife is a hawk with watching the accounts. Funny thing was that my wife had the online access and I didn’t, but everything was done in my name. Of course the tip off it was an inside job was how they had the new account #’s 7 days after we switched them. Plus that somebody could just brazenly walk into a branch with no ID and do a transfer and withdrawl like that.
The next day my name was taken off all our accounts there. When talking to bank security on the phone, my wife told them we suspected this was an inside job and their response was “Sometimes these things happen.” The next day we had our money back. Amazing because usually it takes weeks to get your money back since the banks want to investigate to make sure you are not the culprit.
Still I had to go through all the hassels of getting 7 year fraud warnings set up at the credit bureaus, 5 year warnings with Chexsystems so they couldn’t open up fake bank accounts, police reports, online reports, credit monitoring. All of our accounts have long since been moved, my credit bureau reporting is all frozen and we have alerts set up so if so much as a penny is spent on any card or withdrawn from any account, we get text message right away.
Oh and as for the bank employee. They never did contact me about what happened, but months after the incident I saw an article online from a California LA paper that the secret service had busted a large ID theft ring including a bank employee who was handing the info out the back door.
Great, I can’t beat the odds of the million to one to win a big fat lottery ticket, but I get picked out of millions to have my ID stolen. Sigh……
Why would any government entity contract with an institution that discriminates and limits or ignores constitutional rights of their depositors?
Pull all government contracts from BOA and Citigroup !
Bank of America is hugely liberal. Get your money out of there.
Remember when credit card companies were sending out blank checks for you to cash a few years ago? When I moved the post office didn’t forward all my mail and whoever moved into my old apt was using the checks. The credit card company noticed big charges and called me. My account # was changed and they didn’t charge me. I hope the jerk was arrested and sent to prison but the company probably just wrote it off.