A U.S. senator is alleging that the Department of Homeland Security has mass-collected financial information on Americans in bulk and very likely in violation of privacy laws and the Constitution.
Sen. Ron Wyden unveiled the existence of DHS' financial surveillance program in a March 8 letter to the agency's inspector general in which he also called for an investigation into the activity, which was not previously known.
The Oregon Democrat said he only recently learned that a law enforcement component of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, was operating an "Indiscriminate and bulk surveillance program that swept up millions of financial records about Americans."
"After my staff contacted HSI about the program in January 2022, HSI immediately terminated the program," Wyden noted in his letter to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, adding that his office was briefed by the agency on Feb. 18, which was the first time that Congress was informed about the program's existence.
"HSI should have known that this authority could not be used to conduct bulk surveillance, particularly after the Department of Justice inspector general harshly criticized the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2019 for using subpoenas to conduct a bulk surveillance program involving records of international phone calls," he continued.
The senator noted that the HSA database also provided hundreds of law enforcement agencies "Unfettered access" to those same financial records, and all without any court order or supervision.
"I write to request that you thoroughly investigate the program to determine whether HSI's surveillance of Americans was consistent with DHS policy, statutory law and the United States Constitution," Wyden's letter said.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-03-26-dhs-spied-on-americans-collected-financial-information.html
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