More American Freedoms Removed.
From WSJ.com:
by Jason Zweig
In December, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees how investments are sold, proposed what it calls Cards, an electronic system that would regularly collect data on balances and transactions in brokerage accounts.
If adopted, Cards would revolutionize how regulators do their jobs and could make it harder for unscrupulous brokers to bilk customers.
Right. Let’s — again — trade freedom for alleged security.
But some critics think it could endanger the privacy and security of investors’ confidential data. And the proposal ups the ante for Finra, which often has been criticized for letting wrongdoers slip through the cracks.
Under Cards (which stands for Comprehensive Automated Risk Data System), Finra would collect—probably weekly—a record of activity at all of the more than 4,100 brokerage firms nationwide.
It means this: the federal government being able to scan your investment portfolio, any time, for any reason, unimpeded and — of course — unmonitored and unchecked.
Benjamin Franklin, you rake, take it away:
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have,
nor do they deserve, either one.”
Under CARDS you will not have fiscal privacy or fiscal freedom, nor will you have digital or personal security when the government can sift through your financial records wholesale. And when that said security, conglomerated in one place, can be hacked at will by insiders or those paid by outsiders.
BZ
But there’s a certain elegance to this, doncha see. They want electronic health records, for which you can make the same argument, which could allow the ability to access/hack one’s private and personal medical information by a higher legal authority. And, suspicious little me, could this possibly allow information to be manipulated? Removed? Added to? Someone comes up on the radar and ‘mental health’ issues, for example, suddenly appear in the health record? And the patient goes off into a looney bin void. Nah, never could never happen. Then the idea of a hate crime reporting act to scour the internet. (Ooh, you used a derogatory word in a blog, you’ve fostered hate and violence, good bye to you) Then the idea of a federally verifiable cyber id which is in testing already. (Sorry your access to any conservative/environmental/traditional living forums is blocked)
And now this idea. More prying, more intrusion and more power to the agencies of the government. It has to stop, somehow.
But, silly me, the government is all benevolent and knows what is best. After all, they are here to help. Aren’t they?
If I only HAD a portfolio… 🙁