Love Requires Privacy

Why nothing to hide is a dangerous lie

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

This phrase is often attributed to figures ranging from Joseph Goebbels to George Orwell, though its true origin is unclear. What is clear is that the logic behind it has been used by authoritarian governments for centuries to justify surveillance and control.

Many people are convinced that safety requires maximum government surveillance of financial activity. Over the last fifty years, the U.S. federal government has expanded financial surveillance through both laws and agencies. In 1970, Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), ¹ mandating the collection and retention of financial data. After 9/11, the Patriot Act dramatically expanded those requirements.

The result is a financial system built on extensive data collection and long-term storage of sensitive personal information. In exchange, Americans have given up a significant amount of privacy. The question worth asking is simple: are we any safer?

Are We Safe?

Has this kept Americans safe from financial crime? In 2021, about 9% of U.S. residents were victims of identity theft. ² Modern identity theft operates at mass scale because institutions like banks are required to collect, retain, and centralize sensitive personal and financial data. ³

These centralized databases are the modern equivalent of a gold wagon crossing the Old West. Every outlaw knows where the money is and waits for an opportunity to strike. The difference is that today’s data servers are worth far more than gold, and a single breach exposes millions of people at once.

Private companies collect more than legally required, but the government mandated the foundation. Under the BSA and Patriot Act, financial institutions must collect Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and transaction histories. They must store them indefinitely. They face massive fines for collecting too little. The government created these honeypots by law.

Ever heard of “Have I been Pwned”? It’s a website that tells you if your email has been exposed in a data breach. Check it now. I guarantee you won’t like the results. Emails, passwords, names, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, all leaked. The breaches are inevitable. It's not if. It's when.

At this point, some of you are doubling down. Maybe your information was exposed or even used for identity theft, but you still believe the trade off is worth it because authorities are catching bad actors. Maybe. But the same exposure that enables surveillance also allows criminals to identify, track, and target vulnerable people who depend on privacy for their safety.

My Valentines Day Tie In

Have you ever had a crazy ex? Or known someone with a crazy ex? Or had a stalker? It was bad enough in the 1980s, when someone could look you up in a phone book (anyone remember those). Now all they have to do is type your name into Google.

As the government demands more information about our digital lives, it opens the door for stalkers and abusers to exploit leaked or aggregated data, including information about spending habits and personal details.

I’m aware of a nonprofit dedicated to helping women exit the adult entertainment industry. Part of that work involves keeping these women hidden from ex-boyfriends, pimps, and drug dealers. Privacy is not optional for them. It is a prerequisite for safety and recovery. Yet government rules and pervasive data collection by large technology companies make remaining hidden increasingly difficult.

Some people respond by saying, “The police will protect them.” But the Supreme Court has ruled that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect individuals from harm, even in cases involving restraining orders. ⁴

If the state has no obligation to protect vulnerable people, then the only remaining defense is privacy. If you love someone, you give them privacy.

Endless Data Breaches

In June 2025 alone, researchers reported the exposure of approximately 16 billion login credentials associated with major platforms including Google, Apple, and Facebook. This wasn’t a single breach but a massive aggregated credential dump compiled from malware info stealers and numerous prior breaches, many involving reused passwords. That’s just one example from one search. There are thousands more.⁵

Throw the Government a Bone

Let’s throw the government a bone and look at what financial surveillance has actually accomplished in terms of investigating crime.

• Tax enforcement
  Financial surveillance is used primarily for tax enforcement. In FY2024, IRS Criminal Investigation spent about two-thirds of its investigative time on tax evasion, identifying $2.1 billion in tax fraud out of $9 billion in total financial crime. ⁶

• Arrests and investigations associated with BSA data
  Financial surveillance data supports tens of thousands of federal investigations and is associated with roughly 29,000 arrests in a recent reporting year, usually as supporting evidence rather than the primary cause. ⁷

• Asset seizures and compliance enforcement
  Financial surveillance has led to asset seizures and civil penalties, largely in tax and regulatory cases. Most high-profile enforcement actions end with banks and financial institutions being fined for regulatory compliance failures, not with criminals being taken off the street. ⁸

At best, financial surveillance caught tax evaders, helped fine banks, and supported about 29,000 arrests, assuming generously that roughly one-third of those arrests would not have happened without BSA reporting.

Has Government Surveillance Improved Our Lives?

Let’s do a basic cost and benefit analysis using 2024 data.

Pros

• Approximately $5 billion in tax fraud was identified, largely through financial surveillance and reporting requirements.

• Financial surveillance data was used as supporting evidence in roughly 29,000 arrests across federal law enforcement. Even assuming generously that around 10,000 of those arrests would not have occurred without Bank Secrecy Act reporting, this represents the upper bound of its direct impact.

• Banks and financial institutions were fined for failing to comply with surveillance and reporting laws, tightening regulatory controls and compliance.

Cons

• The American public lost approximately $25 to $30 billion to consumer fraud and identity theft in 2024. These crimes are enabled by the mass collection and centralized storage of sensitive financial and personal data mandated by the federal government through the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act. ⁹

• In 2024, hundreds of millions of Americans had personal data exposed through data breaches, much of it originating from banks and bank-adjacent industries required by law to retain sensitive customer information.

• There were 3,158 publicly reported data breaches in the United States in 2024. With an average cost of roughly $4.9 million per breach, this resulted in an estimated $15.4 billion in direct economic damage, borne by consumers through higher costs, fees, and financial losses. ¹⁰

The Math

Do the math: Americans lost $40 to $45 billion while the government recovered $5 billion. That’s a 9-to-1 loss. For every dollar of fraud the government caught, this surveillance system cost you nine dollars.

Fifty-two thousand government employees can search your financial records without a warrant. They did it 3.4 million times in 2023. ¹¹

And what did that buy us? Women fleeing pimps can’t stay hidden. Your purchases are watched. Donate to the wrong cause, and it’s logged. This isn’t safety. This is surveillance that empowers criminals while monitoring citizens.

Do you feel safer?

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Final Word

Your government does not love you.

“Love and say it with your life.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo

Note on Sources
All figures cited in this article are drawn from publicly available government reports, court rulings, industry studies, and nonprofit research organizations, including FinCEN, the IRS, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Identity Theft Resource Center, and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Where direct causation cannot be proven, generous assumptions were made in favor of government effectiveness.

1. https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-and-regulations/bank-secrecy-act

2. https://bjs.ojp.gov/press-release/victims-identity-theft-2021

3. https://www.idsalliance.org/blog/5-identity-security-challenges-in-the-finance-industry/

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

5. https://guardz.com/blog/top-recent-data-breaches/

6. https://www.fedortax.com/blog/2024-irsci-annual-report

7. https://www.fincen.gov/system/files/2025-08/FinCEN-Infographic-Public-2025-508.pdf

8. https://www.fincen.gov/news/speeches/prepared-remarks-james-h-freis-jr-director-financial-crimes-enforcement-network-us-0

9. https://javelinstrategy.com/research/2025-identity-fraud-study-breaking-barriers-innovation

10. https://www.idtheftcenter.org/post/2024-annual-data-breach-report-near-record-compromises/

11. https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/2024-12/2024-12-05-Financial-Surveillance-in-the-United-States.pdf