"Transactions of $10,000.00 or more have been tracked by the Fed for at least 20 years. I am not sure of the legislation that allowed for this; but I know from friends in the banking industry that this has existed for quite a while."
Exactly. Democrats are just using it to show the vast oppresion they endure under George Bush.
They simply ignore the fact that the rules were already in place.
Yeah, the ACLU ran these ads last fall, showing "ordinary American" types all worried that the PATRIOT Act would allow the feds to come into "my house," and they said the Act would be renewed "without debate, without review." For some reason, the Left is desperate to make Americans believe we're under some sort of fascist regime (I love the photos of the lefty rent-a-mobs carrying the "we don't have free speech anymore" signs) and the PATRIOT Act is their favorite ruse. They'll tell you all the nasty things the feds can do...but not mention that they could already do it and that they can only do it with a proper warrant. They'll even pretend (as they did in the aforementioned ad) that there's no Congressional oversight, that in september of '01 Congress just said, "What, you want to be the Fuehrer? Okey-dokey!"
And Freepers take the bait, without even considering what the real world implications are.