What the Documents Show
In August, Trump signed an EO attacking the same institutions for using the BSA to debank him and his family. Now he's demanding they expand the very surveillance infrastructure he called weaponized. The timing is the first tell. Congress was about to hear testimony on BSA inefficiency. Nick Anthony from the Cato Institute was scheduled to present data showing the BSA operates as regulatory theater.
Follow the Money
In 2025, financial institutions filed 28.7 million reports with FinCEN—the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Of those millions: 275 opened investigations. That's a 0.00096% conversion rate. The BSA doesn't have an information problem. It has a signal-to-noise problem. More data doesn't fix broken systems; it obscures them.
What Else We Know
Treasury's fact sheet frames this as closing "gaps in customer identification practices" to stop "terrorists, drug traffickers, money launderers." But the data tells a different story. Banks are already drowning in identification information. They're drowning so thoroughly that federal agents can't sort signal from noise. The solution proposed—strengthen customer due diligence, require more information about beneficial account owners, scrutinize foreign consular IDs—adds more noise to an already dysfunctional system. This is where follow-the-money becomes essential. Who profits from an expanded BSA?
Primary Sources
- Source: Hacker News
- Category: Corporate Watchdog
- Cross-reference independently — don't take our word for it.
Disclosure: NewsAnarchist aggregates from public records, API feeds (Federal Register, CourtListener, MuckRock, Hacker News), and independent media. AI-assisted synthesis. Always verify primary sources linked above.