FINANCIAL ACTIVITY PATTERNS PICKED THE CAR — A COVERED PLATE WAS THE REASON GIVEN — A RECORD THAT EXISTS CAN BE QUERIED

A Homeland Security document, handed to Kyle William Olson in discovery and shared with 404 Media, says a Border Patrol agent on the Spokane Sector “Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team” gave Montana Highway Patrol “information contained within law enforcement-sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity.” The trooper’s stated reason was an obstructed license plate. Which system, CBP will not say; 404 Media reports it “declined to answer what financial activity the agency was monitoring, and whether it obtained a warrant or not.” Coin Center, which advocates for crypto, says FinCEN “could be the culprit,” which is a guess. What is not a guess is that the file exists. Under 31 U.S.C. 5318 a bank must run procedures for “verifying the identity of any person seeking to open an account” and must report “any suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation.” FinCEN’s review of fiscal 2022 counts the result: about 4.3 million suspicious activity reports and 20.6 million currency transaction reports, 472 agencies with access, over 25,000 authorized personnel, and over 2.3 million searches that year on a tool named FinCEN Query. Whether Border Patrol is among the 472 is not in the record. A record that exists can be queried. Bitcoin held in your own keys writes no bank record to query. On-chain activity is public, but the law ties no name to an address. A ledger is not a file with your name on it.