At 10:16 AM 1/12/99 -0700, you wrote:

>John:
>Got your email regarding snooping by the FDIC and their expansion of power.
> I wrote a letter to the editor here and now they have contacted me for a
>follow  up as to what happened on this.  I have not been able to find out
>anything.  Do you have any more info as to whether or not this plan was
>implemented?  Thanks, Ron Barrett,  Farmington, NM.

We're in a public comments period on the proposed "Know Your Customer" rule until March 8th. FDIC is required by law to examine all comments from the public and the banking industry and other concerned parties and to respond to these comments in the Federal Register when either abandoning the proposed rule (which is what they should do) or if they publish a final rule.

Did you read the comments that I submitted? I emailed them to everyone. You should use them as a basis for filing your own comments. I'm including them again, below.

Today I gave a copy of my comments to the manager of my bank who I had a meeting with about this.

I asked her if she could tell me what the 4th amendment to the Constitution entailed.

She didn't even know that it pertained to protection against illegal searches (no surprise regarding her ignorance unfortunately) so I read her the entire 4th amendment out of my comments.

I then explained how the proposed rule didn't even CONSIDER the many 4th amendment implications, and I informed her that the FDIC was endeavoring to turn the banks into an arm of law enforcement, and that that was arguably illegal in and of itself.

I explained to her that the 4th amendment guarantees us protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and that for the Feds to go through our papers (or bank accounts) they had to have probably cause that we'd committed a crime, and get a search warrant- they don't have a legal right to conduct fishing expeditions.

I also told her that it would be a serious pain in the ass for any bank to comply with the proposed rule due to the red tape involved, and that the bank would be forced to raise fees to customers to cover the costs involved with this red tape, and that I expected Nations Bank's officials to review my comments carefully and to give serious consideration to filing their OWN comments against the proposed rule (some other banks have), and to send me a copy.

If enough bank customers did what I just did, the banks would be VERY concerned about losing customers, and they'd report back to FDIC that the proposed rule would just have to be SCRAPPED.

Here are My comments on the proposed rule. If you just put your own personal info in place of mine at the beginning, you can use the rest verbatim, just make it from you and sign your name at the end. Email it in or fax or mail it. Best to do all 3 so as to really be EMPHATIC. Always good to jam their fax machines.

**************************************************************
IAHF website maintained by webmaster, Jan Rosenstreich, 
Mystic Gateway Holistic Center - http://www.castle.net/~mystic/

Donations needed for trips to Washington to Secure Congressional Oversight
Hearing: IAHF 2411 Monroe St. Hollywood, FL 33020 USA
800-333-2553, 954-929-0507 fax, http://www.iahf.com,jham@iahf.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++