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Under the money-laundering act of 1986, they should have been collecting this information from you for many years. Perhaps you bought more traveler's checks than you have in the past, or perhaps you had your SSN on your driver's license in the past, so you didn't realize that they had collected the data when they were making copies of your driver's license.
As a part of the money laundering act, they are ALWAYS required to file a CTR report to the Treasury Department when you buy more than $10,000 in traveler's checks. They are supposed to file a suspicious transactions report when you buy an amount that looks like you are trying to get around the CTR report -- say you bought $8,000 or $9,000 worth. Really blatant offenders have been known to buy $9,999 worth of traveler's checks at a clip, why not just hang out a sign stating, Yeah, me, I'm a money launderer, yep, just trying to get around the CTR requirement here. However, even if you buy as little as $3,000 worth of traveler's checks in cash, then the federal government recommends that AAA or any other seller make a good faith attempt to get your information, such as a copy of your driver's license and/or your SSN.
In some situations, for example, you got cash from Western Union or another "wire service," a CTR must be filed for as little as $750.
From the point of view of the federal gov't, traveller's checks are the same as cash -- they are cash that only you can use -- and they have been subject to the same requirements as cash since the late 1980s. I used to be in a cash business (gambling), and we ran up against this law sometimes every single 24 hour period.
It is nothing new, although it may be new to you.
If you don't want to comply with the federal laws regarding cash instruments, then I strongly recommend using credit cards/ATM in your travels instead. If you are traveling to a casino resort, it may be worth your time to arrange for a line of credit to avoid carrying traveler's checks or cash. Outside of North America, traveler's checks are really becoming a thing of the past anyway.
Don't forget to enjoy your vacation. AAA is not trying to "track" you, they are trying to keep their clerks out of federal prison for failing to negotiate a rather tricky paperwork requirement. I'm sure if it were up to AAA, the casino industry, and others in the travel industry, this hassle would have been repealed years ago.
My local office of AAA has been in compliance with federal law for at least 10 years, although they try to make compliance "invisible" so that most people don't notice that their driver's license has been photocopied as proof of who is buying the checks.
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