Is any of this even legal?
The short answer here is, it’s still unclear. Though many of the private money transfer firms named in the report agreed to hand over the implicated transaction data willingly, civil liberties advocates argue this massive database of records grants law enforcement wide access to sensitive information they otherwise would have needed a warrant to view. At the very least, the workaround looks like a loophole to sidestep proper oversight. The thousands of authorized law enforcement officers, according to documents reviewed by the ACLU and The Journal, were able to parse through the database without a warrant to search for evidence of money laundering or similar crimes in the U.S.
At the same, the ACLU claims the 140 administrative subpoenas issued to money transfer companies by Arizona’s attorneys general between 2014 to 2021 requesting customer transaction records “knowingly” violated federal law.
