{"id":172172,"date":"2022-12-15T10:33:20","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T15:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=172172"},"modified":"2022-12-15T10:33:20","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T12:43:40","slug":"bank-ceo-peddles-mass-suspicion-on-gun-rights-at-ny-times-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/bank-ceo-peddles-mass-suspicion-on-gun-rights-at-ny-times-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank CEO Peddles Mass Suspicion on Gun Rights at NY Times Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Bank<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Larry Keane<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New York Times conference featured a bank CEO pushing the financial industry to track Americans making purchases at retailers and monitor their \u201csuspicious activity\u201d under the guise of \u201creducing gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amalgamated Bank CEO Priscilla Sims Brown was the special guest<\/strong><\/a> at the Times\u2019 DealBook confab<\/strong><\/a> and was interviewed<\/strong><\/a> by Andrew Ross Sorkin. He\u2019s the Times\u2019 columnist who previously proposed<\/strong><\/a> the gun buying monitoring scheme and spelled out the \u201cnext steps\u201d in a column<\/a><\/strong> highlighting Sims Brown\u2019s efforts after an international financial standards board adopted her petition to create the tracking codes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putting even a little thought to the idea reveals the serious flaws of the plan. Implementing the enormous system to track the private financial transactions will create a myriad of privacy and civil liberty concerns and no doubt is ripe for abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gun Control Dragnet<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sims Brown lobbied the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to create a gun-related Merchant Category Code (MCC) for credit and debit card companies to use to track cardholders\u2019 purchases of firearms and ammunition. The ISO adopted the proposal and banks are beginning to use them. Listening to Sims Brown forecast what\u2019s ahead, her true gun control aim is revealed. It\u2019s a dragnet for law-abiding Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at the very early stages of this \u2013,\u201d Sims Brown told Sorkin and the audience. \u201cBut as this is implemented, those scenarios will be used.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By \u201cthose scenarios,\u201d she means \u201cdetection scenarios\u201d in which a particular purchase prompts a bank to file a Suspicious Activity Report to the Treasury Department\u2019s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Here\u2019s how the MCC tracking will reportedly work. Purchases made at retailers selling firearms or ammunition would be assigned the new code for purchases. The MCC won\u2019t identify what is in the customer\u2019s basket, so it could be a total purchase for a firearm and several boxes of ammunition. It could also include a new tent, sleeping bag, propane stove, waders, decoys, blinds and other outdoor gear. The total cost could be flagged as \u201csuspicious\u201d since it might be an outlier on a customer\u2019s purchase history. That doesn\u2019t make it nefarious, though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media reported the proposal won\u2019t have its intended effect. \u201cThe payment network and its banking partners would have no idea if a gun-store customer is purchasing an automatic rifle or safety equipment,\u201d Bloomberg News\u00a0reported<\/a>.<\/strong>\u00a0Banks aren\u2019t saying what purchases would be \u201csuspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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