Anonymity

GGM: WJC lost 'two most fundamental rights of man: to sleep with a woman other than his wife and the right to lie about it.' Spitzer similarly- keeping it secret is, in and of itself, an offense, and here the original/primal offense. Note that most don't even know it is monitored and illegal; Spitzer should have known otherwise and still screwed up. This is the result of the SAR. Prior to '96, this was only 'if you move more than $10K, we report'; now there is a whole layer of reporting on transfers other than that. Program was originally called 'know your customer'. Knowledge does have some legitimate uses- can do simple fraud monitoring, for example. Needs very comprehensive data mining to get good data for this, though- e.g., you get less false positives if you combine plane ticket purchases with location of the credit card purchases. Used to be that the most extreme scrutiny only happened in the bank system if you were 'politically exposed'- i.e., you were the governor. But now it is cheap so it happens all the time.

Effectively what has happened here (if the charge ends up being structuring) is that it is illegal to try to be anonymous.

"I feel like Spitzer has been mangled by broken machinery" (comparing privacy protection laws to early product safety laws)