[lockhouse]

I’m sure all the spooks in the three letter agencies will totally keep their hands out of that cookie jar.

All the commenters here that think the federal government should directly provide their banking services are going to be in for a rude awakening if it ever actually happens.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

At least it would give a private citizen recourse if snooping did happen; it would become private by law. It is currently not.

Maybe it all goes south and people are worse off with their privacy than now but I can't even imagine what "worse off" would be. The particular example you gave ("spooks in three letter agencies") currently happens and I can't exactly expect it to stop. How could it be worse?

[lockhouse]

I’m curious, what recourse do you or anyone else have against the CIA, FBI, or any other Department of Justice or Intelligence agency that you wouldn’t also have with a commercial bank?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

The commercial bank has something called a "privacy policy" in which they explain that they will choose not to respect my privacy. A government entity isn't allowed to do that. There are actually stricter laws for government invasions of privacy than corporate.

To your concern that these three-letter spooks will spy on you: what would they do that they're not already doing? That isn't to excuse the spying; I'm just pointing out that these are separate issues. Tackle the fact that the NSA compiles all unencrypted HTTP traffic separately from the fact that JP Morgan Chase knows my financial history and doesn't have to care about keeping it private per my idea of private.

[omgomgomgomg]

So are ypu saying the constitution and its privacy protections are totally useless?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I'm intending to say the opposite. My point is exactly that a government-run bank affords citizens this constitution-protected privacy because the bank would explicitly be a government entity.

(Unless you're asking whether the protections are useless against corporations. Then yes, they're useless.)