On August 10, 2026, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Warren Davidson (R-OH), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wrote a letter to the Acting Comptroller General for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Orice W. Brown, requesting “a comprehensive review of federal agencies’ surveillance of Americans’ bank accounts and financial records” and identification of “ways to strengthen safeguards for Americans’ financial privacy.”
The letter rightfully points out the various ways that financial surveillance endangers everyday Americans due to their beliefs, associations, and other sensitive details conveyed through their financial activities. Coin Center has long expressed these concerns in defense of financial privacy and the Fourth Amendment, and we applaud the bipartisan effort to demand accountability on the matter.
The letter lists four specific issues for the GAO to investigate, and while these issues vary to some degree, they all concern warrantless surveillance. The first issue concerns federal law enforcement’s ability to subpoena bank records “without a court review or approval.” The catch is that “the government is generally required” to notify Americans when their financial records have been obtained under the Right to Financial Privacy Act, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) has previously indicated to Senator Wyden that it cannot meaningfully demonstrate compliance. (The DOJ’s response is attached to the letter.) Therefore, Senator Wyden and the three Representatives request that the GAO review federal law enforcement’s compliance with these requirements and “identify the extent to which Americans are being left uninformed when their records are seized.”
The second issue concerns the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) ability to “obtain historical financial records using National Security Letters (NSLs) without prior judicial review.” NSLs are written demands to financial institutions to provide financial records for a national security investigation, without prior court approval. The FBI may prohibit a financial institution from disclosing the NSL’s existence, and the letter asks the GAO to examine whether the FBI has followed the safeguards governing nondisclosure.
The third issue revolves around federal law enforcement agencies forcing financial institutions to report every new transaction stemming from a targeted account. The letter states that although Congress has never explicitly authorized “real-time financial surveillance,” the DOJ has relied on the All Writs Act to do just that. For background, the All Writs Act authorizes federal courts to issue orders needed to make their existing authority effective, providing an avenue for the government to argue that third-party assistance is necessary or appropriate to effectuate authority the court already has. The DOJ’s use of this avenue for new transaction monitoring is in dispute in this letter, which is why the lawmakers request a GAO investigation into “the scale, frequency, and legal justifications relied upon” by the DOJ to obtain these court orders.
The fourth and last issue is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and FBI’s use of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to go beyond ordinary reporting to “facilitate dragnet searches that sweep up unsuspicious American customers.” Specifically, the letter alleges that FinCEN and the FBI may have used informal “SAR directives” to circulate broad characteristics or search criteria and encouraged institutions to search for customers matching those criteria and report them through SARs—instead of going through the Section 314(a) process that these searches resemble.
Under Section 314(a) of the USA PATRIOT Act, law enforcement must submit requests through FinCEN identifying subjects reasonably suspected, based on credible evidence, of engaging in terrorist activity or money laundering; financial institutions then search for matching accounts or transactions, and any positive matches provide only “lead information,” and not the underlying account records. But according to the letter, the agencies may be conducting broad criteria-based searches through SARs directives instead of following the Section 314(a) process. Thus, the letter requests the GAO to investigate the extent to which FinCEN and the FBI conduct these dragnet searches, and whether or not the agencies are circumventing Section 314(a) when they should actually be subject to its requirements.
This letter is a promising bipartisan act from members of Congress. A GAO report will be something to watch for in the future. Its revelations may be disturbing but crucial for demanding greater accountability from the federal government. As the letter expresses, financial privacy is vital for the freedom and security of all Americans. Without it, we risk a nation not founded on the rule of law, but on the whims and prejudice of those in authority. Senator Wyden and Representatives Davidson, Jayapal, and Biggs deserve our support in this matter.