I Beat Da Man

Actually, it was a girl...

Today I went to Bank of America to wire some money from my account to the escrow company. The bank officer, let's call her "Z", asked for my ID, and I gave her my driver's license. She wanted my ATM card, which I provided. I've banked at B of A since 1979, since before Z was born, probably, but I mostly use the ATM. They don't know me.

She wanted to know what I did for a living. That raised my hackles a little, but I told her. Then she wanted to know where I worked.

"Why?" I asked. I'd proven who I was, the money was in my account, why did she need to know where I worked?

"You're not in compliance," she said.

"Compliance with what?"

"You've been a customer a long time. We didn't get much information about you when you established your account, and a lot of the fields are blank. To send this wire, we need to bring your account into compliance."

"Compliance with what?" I don't like bureaucracy, and I don't like revealing personal information to companies when it's not necessary, but I was asking nicely. I wanted to know why she wanted it. Z called over another bank officer and asked him to explain to me what they needed.

"It's because of the Patriot Act," he told me. "We require more information about you than we used to."

I was about to protest further, but then he told Z that all she needed was my driver's license and it'd be fine. So I didn't have to give my place of employment after all. 99 times out of 100, people probably just supply any personal information requested of them, but I'm a rebel. I get it from my father.

I met a guy the other night who said the Patriot Act was not created in response to 9/11. He claimed it had been drafted earlier than that to help the government in its pursuit of the drug wars, but had not been enacted because the public would not have tolerated it. He said you could tell by how intricate it was, too complicated to have been created on such short notice. I'm looking forward to the day when it can be overturned. I think we've gone too far. In the meantime, I try to stand my ground against unnecessary invasiveness. It's probably silly, but that's just me.


Blog Tag: Chatter