Very quietly, the federal government is poised to take a major step toward its dream of a cashless society, in which your every purchase is traced and perhaps controlled from Washington.

New Federal Reserve Board regulations will require member and foreign banks to compile and share with the fed’s extensive dossiers on every customer. Similar rules are being prepared for nonmember banks, credit unions and other financial institutions.

The expanded “Know Your Customer” program instructs each bank to “determine its customers’ sources of funds; determine, understand and monitor the normal and expected transactions of its customers; and report appropriately any transactions … that are determined to be unusual or suspicious.”

For example, a large deposit from the sale of a car, or increased sales in your home business, could induce your bank’s profiling computer to call up the IRS’s computer, after which, as usual, you’ll be guilty until proven innocent. Take out a lot of cash for some private spending, and the “deviation from your profile” could get your name passed on to the FBI.

Were you thinking of taking computer experts’ advice to withdraw enough in December 1999 for a month’s worth of expenses, just in case your bank isn’t ready for Y2K? It might not be safe.

Under a mandate to “identify unusual or suspicious activities,” banks might end up making note of checks to businesses or charities that Janet Reno dislikes. Isn’t buying a gun an “unusual” transaction? Records, by the way, are to be kept for five years.

Banks also are to “profile” potential customers to identify and reject those who “might” be criminals. How can they produce a “risk assessment” without a transaction history? Just as with airline passenger profiling, we will see racist screening programs that further erode the right of minorities to securely own property.

Potential customers will be required to provide a full personal history. If you are unwilling or unable to provide even one item, for example, your previous addresses or a work telephone, you must be rejected.

Such background information will be demanded only of selected current customers (minorities? the self-employed? political dissidents?) and you may lose your account if you balk.

Your bank and your senators know about this blatantly unconstitutional regulation, but they don’t want you to know. We must have the courage to protest the approach of tyranny while we still can. Send your complaints to Jennifer L. Johnson, Secretary, Board of Governors to the Federal Reserve System, 20th and Constitution Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20551.

The deadline for comments on the FDIC’s virtually identical regulation for nonmember banks is Dec. 27. Write to Robert E. Feldman, Executive Secretary, Attn: Comments/OES, FDIC, 550 17th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20429.

Wendy L. Applequist

Graduate student

Botany