Caught by the Patriot Act

Over the last two weeks I've had two accounts at separate institutions flagged for review, and three checks frozen, under the guise of the Patriot Act. In both occurrences, I was flagged due to large deposits (in the tens of thousands). In both cases, these large transactions were NOT out of my normal usage pattern - I often move money around to chase rates and take advantage of 0% balance transfer offers. In one case, I had three checks, all from CitiCard, held until the funds could be verified. One of the questions I had to answer was related to our income. It doesn't make sense to me that they correlate income to account balances (anyone who reads personal finance blogs knows that cash, net worth, and total assets isn't directly related to a person's income). These weren't personal checks, nor cash deposits, nor were they hand-written checks, but rather checks from a credit card company, complete with amount and payee preprinted. In addition to flagging these checks, my account was frozen until the "income verification" took place. This was at a local credit union. The second institution that put a hold on one of my deposits did so until I provided a photocopy of my drivers license, as well as a statement from the account the deposit originated from. They did not freeze my entire account, however they threatened to if they didn't hear from me within a week. Thank goodness my spam filter didn't filter out the email from them. This was from a large online bank, one which has received much larger deposits from me in the past. I just don't understand the amount of scrutiny. I'm sure there are many other legitimate reasons for moving around tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars at any given time (real estate transactions, rate chasing, moving money into/out of the stock market, etc). I don't appreciate the government meddling in personal affairs without a more concrete reason, and I don't look forward to the day when an opportunity is missed because some bank was told they need to put a hold on my money due to security reasons.