Whether it be for internet activity or financial transactions, it has become abundantly clear in recent years that Americans want privacy from the government. In fact, early in January, 38 different organizations joined hands to call on Congress to defend privacy.

The open letter was organized by Fight for the Future and featured co-signers from the Blockchain Association, Crypto Freedom Lab, DeFi Education Fund, Electric Coin Company, Filecoin Foundation, and many others. The letter opened with the following statement:

Protecting the privacy of everyday people is key to ensuring safety, self-determination, freedom of the press, and other rights that compose the core of democracy. We applaud recent interest in robust federal data privacy legislation to reinforce such rights. The technologies and software tools we build to preserve user privacy by design are just as essential. Such tools help users to guard against a diverse swath of harms including discrimination, intimidation, and abuse from authoritarian regimes.

As noted in the letter, there is much to be thankful for in this country. The protections in the Constitution and the strength of the American economy have made the United States a world leader. But there is still much to improve. Although it was likely intended to be a warning, the letter also described how the U.S. government has strayed from the Constitution:

Should cybercriminals successfully tempt the United States to abandon the human right to privacy and the U.S. Constitution, everyone will lose.

As I have detailed in a forthcoming paper, the U.S. government has consistently chipped away at Americans’ financial privacy for the past 50 years. From the creation of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 to the surveillance of 150 million money transfer records in 2023, the U.S. government has routinely used the specter of money laundering and terrorism to justify chipping away at financial privacy.

Americans have very much lost for this practice. Financial institutions spent $45.9 billion in 2022 to comply with reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, left the borders to avoid “high-risk areas” under the law, and filed more than 20 million reports in 2019 on Americans for using their own money. Yet all of these costs have only resulted in just 752 money laundering offenders being sentenced to prison in 2021.

This history should serve as a warning of just how important the call to defend privacy is. And some members of Congress have recognized this importance. Representative John Rose’s (R‑TN) Bank Privacy Reform Act, Representative Warren Davidson’s (R‑OH) Keep Your Coins Act, Senator Mike Lee’s (R‑UT) Saving Privacy Act, and other pieces of legislation have all been rooted in the need for greater financial privacy. Yet, there are other members of Congress that would prefer to see financial surveillance only expanded.

It seems right now may prove to be a pivotal point in the history of financial privacy. The public is more aware of the issue than ever before and new financial technology (e.g., cryptocurrencies) has proven that alternatives are possible. Meanwhile, others would like to see financial surveillance get an upgrade for the 21^st century with the introduction of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs—a tool that would expand government surveillance capabilities to track every financial transaction. Which way the future turns is ultimately yet to be seen, but privacy is certainly worth fighting for.