The mega-bank Bank of America has been giving private information about its customers to the federal government following the mostly peaceful protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, as reported by Fox News.
The report comes from Tucker Carlson’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight, which obtained exclusive documents showing that Bank of America went through the private data and transaction history of all of its more than 60 million customers. This was due to the bank coming to an agreement with the federal government to use this information to identify so-called “extremists” who were present for the Capitol protests.
As Carlson put it, this essentially meant that Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the country, was acting less like a bank and more like an intelligence agency, going through the information of even customers who were not present in Washington D.C. that day. The bank ultimately narrowed down its search criteria to any customers that made “debit card or credit card purchases in Washington D.C. between 1/5 and 1/6,” those who purchased “hotel/Airbnb RSVPs in DC, Virginia, and Maryland after 1/6,” “any purchase of weapons between 1/7 and their upcoming suspected stay in D.C.,” and any “airline related purchases since 1/6.”
When asked about the investigation, Bank of America released a statement saying that they “don’t comment on our communications with law enforcement. All banks have responsibilities under federal law to cooperate with law enforcement inquiries in full compliance with the law.”
Nevertheless, the revelation constitutes a significant breach of privacy, as well as an unprecedented level of cooperation between a private corporate entity and the federal government, since, according to Carlson, the bank is not legally obligated to turn over private information on its customers to the government.