So when I first heard this thing with Governor Spitzer I pretty much ignored it. Northeast governor has sex with someone not his wife. Big deal. At least this time is was a woman. But I was watching hardball earlier waiting for actual election coverage and half listening to their commentary on Spitzer when I suddenly sat up and started to listen. I had thought he was just caught in some investigation through some secondary means. But no. How he was caught should be the story, now what he was doing.
They said that he was caught when his bank sent a routine notification to the IRS about a payment that looked suspicious. Apparantly banks send millions of these things every year. He paid an individual $5,500 and the bank thought that amount was suspicious so it sent it along to the IRS to investigate. Then some bored IRS employee who was looking through the day's submissions by all the local banks noticed Spitzer's name and decided this was juicy enough to follow up on. This led to the wire tap and this whole brew ha ha.
Shouldn't we be a little disturbed that the IRS is able to comb through random bank transactions looking for juicy tid bits that they can investigate? If I send a check to a friend in another country, am I now to expect the IRS or the FBI to open a file on me? How much have we lost our sense of privacy that this is not even looked at as an issue?
I could care less that some governer is porking a prostitute at his hotel room. But I do care that something as private as where and how we spend our money is regularly scrutinized by the government. Am I just crazy in thinking this?