04/26/05

Pressured by anti-terror laws, banks will be spending billions of dollars over the next few years on software to counter money laundering. The software will automatically track suspicious financial transactions, but it will also monitor millions of innocuous ones, and may make it harder to cheat on your taxes. ... As a consequence of AML surveillance, even citizens with no criminal intent or ties will have to become more efficient law abiders, bank officials said. Small breaches of the law, or just indifference, will no longer go unnoticed. 'Chances are that most of the time the software will catch not a money launderer, who is always wary, but a regular person,' said one bank official who did not want to be named. 'If you got a fat birthday gift from your brother who works in the Middle East, would you like to get calls from the bank or the government asking for an explanation?

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67249,00.html

from Wired News


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp