Findings

The Congress finds the following: (1) Pursuant to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the Secretary of the Treasury, acting through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), collects millions of reports annually on the economic activity of ordinary Americans. (2) Since 2001, FinCEN has applied the BSA to collect over 322,000,000 Currency Transaction Reports and more than 36,000,000 Suspicious Activity Reports, as well as nearly 5,000,000 Form 8300 Reports. In addition, FinCEN expects to amass beneficial ownership information (BOI) from 32,000,000 companies in its initial year of collection, plus 5,000,000 additional companies implicated each year thereafter. (3) The mass of reporting collected by FinCEN suggests that, while certain BSA reports might prove useful to combat illicit finance, the bulk of BSA-related data may possess little to no nexus to legitimate law enforcement or intelligence purposes, even as it encompasses highly sensitive details on the everyday lives of Americans. (4) By law, the Secretary of the Treasury must ensure the security and confidentiality of BSA data. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from December 2022, FinCEN acknowledged that BOI is highly sensitive information. FinCEN therefore views it as critical to mitigate the risk of unauthorized disclosure of BOI as much as possible..