Civil rights advocates may be saying, “stop bank spying” – but authoritarian-presenting governments are sure to be thinking, “who better to spy on you with?”
Banks not only have fine-grained information about their clients’ financial situation, but also their behavior and habits – and as recent incidents, for example in Canada, but also the UK in different circumstances show, they are not above using their power to debank and therefore censor people. On behalf of governments.
This time in the UK, the Labor cabinet looks set to bring back a legislative plan that would give financial institutions new mass surveillance powers. Now as before, the premise, activists say, is combating welfare fraud.
But the result would be mass bank spying – and “a severe intrusion into the nation’s privacy,” as Big Brother Watch put it.
In a letter to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall, the privacy group and a number of like-minded allies informed the official that they oppose the Fraud, Error and Debt Bill, and refer to it as work to usher in mass financial surveillance powers in the UK.
This time via banks, with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as the government actor.
“These Orwellian new powers will force banks to flag people who meet secret criteria to the government,” Big Brother Watch says in its call to action to citizens to protect their financial privacy and freedom.
The group also pointed out that when it comes to fraud involving taxpayer money, the authorities already have sufficiently strong powers to go after suspects and access their bank statements.
The controversy is in many ways similar to how governments push for the erosion of online encryption, which gives them massive surveillance powers, but portrays it as a necessity for law enforcement to do its work.
Yet, law enforcement is empowered enough as it is.
Here, one also can’t help but feel that this is a bit of a case of, “Perfidious Albion’s subjects find out about Perfidious Albion.”
“A very worrying, duplicitous habit of DWP is to publish straw man rebuttal statements,” Big Brother Watch reacted to the ministry’s response, saying the government wouldn’t access bank accounts “or use AI.”
