Court Opinion

ID: 9425673
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:24.08965+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.878843
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
I
The Court expresses a doubt that the California Bankers Association has standing to litigate the claims it asserts. That doubt, however, should be dissipated by our decisions.
Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 739, stated unequivocally that “an organization whose members are injured may represent those members in a proceeding for. judicial review.”
Appellants in No. 72-1196 are a national bank, a bank customer and depositor, a membership organization which is a customer of banks and receives money through banks for its members, a businessman who has engaged i:.i and expects to engage in foreign financial transactions, and individuals having interests in or authority over foreign bank accounts. There can hardly be any doubt that these persons — at least the individuals and the membership organization — have standing. I think the same is true of the national bank in No. 72-1196 and the California Bankers Association in No. 72-985.
*80The claims the associations litigate in these cases are not only- those of its members but also those of the depositors of those member banks. This will cost the banks, it is estimated, over $6 million a year. Certainly that is enough to give the banks standing. Moreover, they must spy on their customers. The Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to record and retain the details of their customers’ financial lives. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, the Couft upheld the right of a representative litigant, a parochial school, to have standing to raise questions pertaining to the rights of parents, guardians, and children. See Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 257. In Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438, we upheld the standing.of a distributor of contraceptives to assert rights of unmarried persons, since they were denied “a forum in which to assert their own rights.” Id:, at 446. The question of standing has been variously described. But the “gist” of the question, we said in Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204, was whether the party has “such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues.” There is that “concrete adverseness” here; and that doubtless is the reason the Solicitor General does, not raise the question which the Court now stirs.
II ■
The Act has as its primary goal the enforcement of the criminal law.1 The recordkeeping requirements orig-*81mated according to Congressman Patman, author of the measure, with the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service in response to two problems: (1) “A. trend was developing in the .larger banks away from their traditional practices of microfilming all checks drawn on them.” 116 Cong. Rec. 16953. (2) As respects the •identification of depositors, “[a] typical example might involve a situation where a person with a criminal reputation holds an account but1 does not personally make deposits or withdrawals.” Ibid.
The purpose of the Act was to give the Secretary of the Treasury “primary responsibility” under Title II “to see to it that criminals do not take undue advantage *82of international trade and go undetected and unpunished.” Id., at 16954. He added: “I would be the first to admit that this legislation does not provide perfect crime prevention. However,, it is felt that the legislation will substantially increase the risk of discovery of any criminal who undertakes to hide his activity behind foreign secrecy.” Id., at 16955.
The same purpose was reflected in the Senate. Senator Proxmire, the author of the Senate version of the bill, stated: “[T]he purpose of the bill is to provide law enforcement authorities with greater evidence of financial transactions in order to reduce the incidence of white-collar crime.” 2 Id., at 32627.
Customers have a constitutionally justifiable expectation of privacy in. the documentary details of the financial transactions reflected in their bank accounts. That wall is not impregnable. Our Constitution provides the procedures whereby the confidentiality of one’s financial affairs may be disclosed.
A
First, as to the recordkeeping requirements,3 their announced purpose is that they will have “a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations, or proceedings,” 12 U. S. C. §§ 1829b (a)(2), 1953 (a). The duty of the bank or institution is to microfilm or otherwise copy every check, draft, or similar instrument drawn on it or presented to it for payment and to keep *83a record of each one “received by it for deposit or collection” 12 U. S. C. §§ 1829b (d)(1) and (2). The retention is for up to six years unless the Secretary determines that “a longer period is necessary,” 12 U. S. C. § 1829b (g). The regulations4 issued by the Secretary *84show the depth and extent of the quicksand in which our financial institutions must now operate.5
It is estimated that a-minimum of -20 billion checks— and perhaps 30 billion — will have to be photocopied and that the weight of these little pieces of paper will approximate 166 million pounds a year.6
It would be highly useful to governmental espionage to have like reports from all our bookstores, all our hard*85ware and retail stores, all our drugstores. These records too might be “useful” in criminal, investigations.
One’s reading habits furnish telltale clues to those who are bent on bending us to one point of view. What one buys at the hardware and retail stores may furnish clues to potential uses of wires, soap powders, and the like used by criminals. A mandatory recording of all telephone conversations would be better than the recording of checks under the Bank Secrecy Act, if Big Brother is to have his way: The records of checks — now available to the investigators — are highly useful. In a sense a person is defined by the checks he writes. By examining them the agents get to know his doctors, lawyers, creditors, political allies, social connections, religious affiliation, educational interests, the papers and magazines he reads, and so on ad infinitum. These are all tied to one’s social security number; and now that we have the data banks, these other items will enrich that storehouse and make it possible for a bureaucrat — by pushing one button — to get in an instant the names of the 190 .million Americans who are subversives or potential and likely candidates.
It is, I submit, sheer nonsense to agree with the Secretary that all bank records oj every citizen “have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings.” That is unadulterated nonsense unless we are to assume that every citizen is a crook, an assumption I cannot make.
Since the banking transactions of an individual give a fairly accürate account of his religion, ideology, opinions, and interests, a regulation impounding them and making them automatically available to all federal investigative agencies is a sledge-hammer approach to a problem that only a delicate scalpel can manage. Where fundamental personal rights are involved — as is true when as here the *86Government gets large access to one’s.beliefs, ideas, politics, religion, cultural- concerns, and the like — the Act should be “narrowly drawn” (Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310. U.S. 296, 307) to meet the precise evil.7 Bank accounts at times harbor criminal plans. But we only rush with the crowd when we vent on our banks and their customers the devastating and leveling requirements of the present Act. I am not yet ready to agree that America is scpossessed with evil that we must level all constitutional barriers to give our civil authorities the tools to catch criminals.
Heretofore this Nation has confined compulsory record-keeping to that required to monitor either (1) the record-keeper, or (2) his business. Marchetti v. United States, 390 U. S. 39, and United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, are illustrative. Even then, as Mr. Justice Harlan writing for the Court said, they must be records that would “customarily” be kept, have a “public” rather than a private purpose, and arise out of an “ ‘essentially noncriminal and regulatory area of inquiry.’ ” Marchetti V. United States, supra, at 57.
Those requirements are in no way satisfied here, and yet there is saddled upon the banks of this Nation an estimated bill of over $6 million a year .to spy on their customers.
*87B
Second, as .to the reporting provisions of the Act, they require disclosure of two types of foreign financial transactions and relationships. One provision requires a report of transportation into or out of the country of monetary instruments exceeding $5,000.8 Another requires parties to any transaction or relationship with “a foreign financial agency” to make such reports or make and keep such records as the Secretary may require.9 Civil10 and criminal11 penalties are sanctions behind these reporting provisions.
The Act also requires the Secretary to make the reported information concerning transactions “available for a purpose consistent with the provisions of this chapter to any other department or agency of the Federal Government” upon request.12 And to overcome any claims of self-incrimination it requires the grant of use immunity.13
*88As respecté domestic transactions the Secretary established two reporting requirements. (1) Routine reports are, with some exceptions, required concerning any transaction of more than $10,000 in currency from each financial institution involved.14 The signature of at least one principal party to the transaction is required.15 (2) The Secretary at the time of the trial reserved the right to grant exemptions from the requirements, impose additional recordkeeping or reporting requirements authorized by statute, or otherwise modify, the requirements of this part.16
We said in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351— 352: “What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. . . . But what he seeks to pre*89serve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” As stated in United States v. White, 401 U. S. 745, 752, the question is “what expectations of privacy” will be protected by the Fourth Amendment “in the absence of a warrant.” A search and seizure conducted without a warrant is per se unreasonable, subject to “jealously and carefully drawn” exceptions, Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 499. One’s bank accounts are within the “expectations- of privacy” category. For they mirror not only one’s finances but his interests, his debts, his way of life, his family, and his civic commitments. There are administrative summonses for documents, cf. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523; See v. City of Seattle, 387 U. S. 541; But there is a requirement that their enforcement receive judicial scrutiny and a judicial order, United States v. U. S. Listrict Court, 407 U. S. 297, 313-318. As. we said in that case, “The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates. Their duty and responsibility are to enforce the laws, to investigate, and to prosecute. . . . But those-charged with this investigative and prosecutorial duty should not be the sole judges of when to utilize constitutionally sensitive means in pursuing their tasks. The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech.”- Id., at 317.
Suppose Congress passed a law requiring telephone companies to record and retain all telephone calls and make them available to any federal agency on request. Would we hesitate even a moment before striking it down? I think not, for we condemned in United States v. U. S. District Court “the broad and unsuspected gov*90ernmental incursions into conversational privacy which electronic surveillance entails.” Id., at 313.
A checking account; as I have said, may well record a citizen’s activities, opinion, and beliefs as fully as transcripts of his telephone conversations.
The Fourth ■ Amendment warrant requirements may be removed by constitutional amendment but they certainly cannot be replaced by the Secretary of the Treasury’s finding that certain information will be highly' useful in “criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings.” 12 U. S. C. §. 1951 (b).
We cannot avoid the quéstion of the constitutionality of the reporting provisions of the Act and of the regulations by saying they have not yet been applied to a customer in any criminal case. Under-the Act and regulations the reports go forward to the investigative or prosecuting agency on written request-without notice to the customer. Delivery of the records without the requisite hearing of probable cause17- breaches the Fourth Amendment.
I also agree in substance with my Brother Brennan’s view that the grant of authority by Congress to- .the Secretary of the Treasury is too broad to pass constitutional muster. This legislation is symptonmtic of the *91slow eclipse of Congress by the mounting Executive power. The phenomenon is not brand new. It was reflected in Schechter Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495. United States v. Robel, 389 U. S. 258, is a more recent example. National Gable Television Assn. v. United States, 415 U. S. 336, and FPC v. New England Power Co., 415 U. S. 345, are even more recent'. These omnibus grants of power allow the Executive Branch to make the law as it chooses in violation of the teachings of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, as well as Schechter, that lawmaking is a congressional, not an Executive, function.

 The Senate Report, No. 91-1139, is replete with the same philosophy. See pp. 1, 5, 7, 8.

 The Act authorizes the Secretary to issue regulations to carry out it's purposes, 12 U. S. C. § 1829b (b). It empowers him to define institutions or persons affected, 12 U. S. C. §§ 1953 (a), (b) (5), to make exceptions, exemptions, or other special arrangements, 12 U. S. C. §§ 1829b (c), (f); to seek injunctions, 12 U. S. C. § 1954; and to assess and collect civil penalties, 12 U. S. C. § 1955.

 Title 31 CFR § 103.34 at the time this litigation was commenced provided that banks shall:
“(a) .. . secure and maintain a record of the taxpayer identification number of the person maintaining the account; or in the case of an account of one or more individuals, such bank shall secure and maintain a record of the social security number of an individual having a financial interest in that account.
“(b) Each bank shall, in addition, retain either the original or a microfilm or other copy or reproduction of each of the following:
“(1) Each document granting signature authority over each deposit or share account;
“(2) Each statement, ledger card or other record on each deposit or share account, showing each transaction. in, or with respect to, that account;
' “(3) Each check, clean draft, or money order drawn on the bank or issued and payable by it, except those drawn on accounts which can be expected to have drawn on them an average of at least 100 checks per month over the calendar year or on each occasion on which such checks are- issued, and which are (i) dividend checks, (ii) payroll checks,' (iii) employee benefit checks, (iv) insurance claim checks, (v) medical benefit cheeks, (vi) checks drawn on governmental agency accounts, (vii) checks drawn by brokers or dealers in securities, (viii) checks drawn on fiduciary accounts, (ix) checks drawn on other financial institutions, or (x) pension or annuity checks;
“(4) Each item other than bank charges or periodic charges made pursuant to agreement • with the customer, comprising a debit to a customer’s deposit or share account, not required to be kept, and not specifically exempted, under subparagraph (b) (3) of this section;
“(5) Each item, including checks, drafts, or transfers of credit, of more than $10,000 remitted or transferred to a person, account or place outside the United States;
“(6) A,record of each remittance or transfer of funds, or of currency, other monetary instruments, checks, investment securities, *84or credit, of more than $10,000 to a person, account or place outside the United States;
“ (7) Each check or draft in an amount in excess of $10,000 drawn on or issued by a,.foreign bank, purchased, received for credit or collection, .or otherwise acquired by the bank;
“(8) Each item, including checks, drafts or transfers of credit, of more than $10,000 received directly and not through a domestic financial institution, by letter, cable or any other means, from a person, account or place outside the United States;
“(9) A record of each receipt of currency, other monetary instruments, checks, or investment securities, and of each transfer of funds or credit, of more than $10,000 received on any one occasion directly and not through a domestic financial institution, from a person, account or place outside the United States; and
“(10) Records prepared or received by a bank in the ordinary course of business, which would be needed to reconstruct a demand deposit account and to trace a check deposited in such account through its domestic processing system or to supply a description of a deposited check. This subparagraph shall be applicable only with respect to demand deposits.” 37 Fed. Reg. 6914.
During this litigation the above provision was amended by the Secretary making it unnecessary to microfilm copies of checks “drawn for $100 or less,” 31 CFR § 103.34 (b) (3) (1973). Since banks must copy all checks it is hard to see how this new exemption is meaningful.

 Like requirements are placed on brokers and dealers in securities, 31 CFR § 103.35.

 Hearings on Foreign Bank Secrecy and Bank Records (H. R. 15073) before the House Committee on Banking and Currency, 91st Cong., 1st and 2d Sess., 320 (1969-1970).

 And see Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, 155; Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 101; Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U. S. 518, 522; Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, 394 U. S. 147, 151; Cameron v. Johnson, 390 U. S. 611, 617; Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241, 250; White-hill v. Elkins, 389 U. S. 54, 62; Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U. S. 195, 201; Elfbrandt v. Russell, 384 U. S. 11, 18.
The same view is often expressed in concurring opinions. See Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179, 216 (Douglas, J., concurring); Gregory v. Chicago, 394 U. S. 111, 119 (Black, J., concurring); United States v. Robel, 389 U. S. 258, 270 (Beennan, J., concurring in result).

 31 U. S. C. §1101.

 31 U. S. C. § 1121. The Secretary requires reports in yearly tax returns of any “financial interest in, or signature or other authority over, a bank, securities or other financial account in a foreign country,” 31 CFR § 103.24.

 31 U. S. C. §§ 1056, 1102-1103 ; 31 CFR §§ 103.47-103.48.

 31 U. S. C. §§ 1058-1059 ; 31 CFR § 103.49.

 31 U. S. C. §1061. The regulations read as follows:
“The Secretary may make any information set forth in any report received pursuant to this part available to any other department or agency of the United States upon the request of the head of such department or agency, made in writing and stating the particular information desired, the criminal, tax or regulatory investigation or proceeding in connection with which the information is sought and the official need therefor.” 31 CFR § 103.43.

 31 U. S. C. § 1060. The Court in Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441, held .that “use immunity” satisfies the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment. I disagreed then and persist in my view that it is “transactional” immunity, not “use” immunity, *88that is.required to lift this constitutional protection. See 'id., at 462-467 (dissenting opinion). But since “use” immunity is “the law” of the present Court — though I doubt if it can long survive — I do not wri(e this dissent against the narrow immunity that is granted.

 31 CFR § 103.22.

 31 U. S. C. §1082.

 At that time 31 CFR § 103.45 read as follows: “(a) The Secretary, in his sole discretion, may by written order or authorization make exceptions to, grant exemptions from, impose additional record-keeping or reporting requirements authorized by, statute, or otherwise modify, the requirements of this part.- Such exceptions, exemptions, requirements or modifications may be conditional or unconditional, may apply to particular persons or to classes of persons, and may apply to particular transactions or classes of transactions. They shall, however, be applicable only as expressly stated in the order or authorization, and they shall be revocable in the sole discretion of the Secretary.
“(b) The Secretary shall have the authority to further define all terms used herein.”
Since then, the language “impose additional recordkeeping or reporting requirements authorized by statute, or otherwise modify” has been deleted from § 103.45.

 A criminal prosecution in this country for not reporting an overseas transaction is still a criminal prosecution under the Bill "of Rights; and to these the Fourth Amendment has been applicable from the beginning. Cases of immigration officers stopping people at the border who are leaving or entering the country are obviously inapposite and certainly the Court cannot be serious in saying that the monetary value of the article being seized is relevant to whether the search and seizure without a warrant was constitutional. As said in Katz it is “persons” not “places” that the Fourth Amendment protects; and it would labor the point to engage in lengthy argument that “things” as well as “places” are not the object of the Fourth Amendment’s concerns.