Banking On Privacy

A check printed on dark red paper? That bright idea is not some new Christmas Club banking gimmick but an imaginative scheme for making a little money and protecting the confidentiality of personal banking records at the same time. As a two-year federal study into the abuses of privacy showed earlier this year (TIME, July 18), the microfilm records kept by banks of all the checks written by their customers are being made available, not only to the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service but to an army of local and private snoops as well.

Such easy access to intimate financial dealings disturbs many people,* but it made James M. Blackley, 30, president of the Charlotte, N.C., Libertarian Society, see red--literally--and then think green. Learning that ordinary microfilm is unable to distinguish between certain shades of red and other colors, including blue and black ink, Blackley decided to start printing checks on red paper. When the checks were made out, the ink would be perfectly visible against the rosy-hued ground. But when the draft was microfilmed, he figured, it would become a blank; anything written or printed would disappear.

And so it proved in practice. Early this year Blackley formed a company, Liberty Graphics of Charlotte, to make and market red checks. To date he has sold some 60,000 (at a nickel apiece for orders of 500), Except for the color, the check is a blushing copy of the personal checks that his customers send in to be reproduced; the red-faced checks even include the bank's magnetized numbers for automatic sorting. It is possible to microfilm the checks with special equipment, but most banks find that regular processing produces a gray blur. Bankers speculate that since banks are required by law to keep microfilm records, a time may come when an individual's use of Blackley's checks might require legal challenge.

Blackley concedes that a few scoundrels eager to cloak their financial transactions from prying eyes may be among his customers, but he insists that most buyers are reputable people. So far, Blackley says, he has not heard of a single case where anyone has refused to cash a red check. Adds Blackley: "It's not devious; it's just red paper. It's for privacy."

*Not the Supreme Court: in a 7-to-2 decision, it upheld the Government's use of microfilmed checks as evidence against a Georgia moonshiner. It explained that under the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the man had no right of privacy, since his checks were instruments in a commercial transaction.

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