Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Secretly Tapping Bank Databases
The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has tapped into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. Relying on a presidential emergency declaration made under the International Emergency Economic Powers, the administration has been surveilling the data from the SWIFT database, which links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year. From the article:
Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.The NYTimes goes on to say that the joint CIA-Treasury program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia. Still, the access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, and concerns were raised about legal and privacy issues.
The Washington Times had it right when it said in it's editorial of June 26 that what the New York Times and LA Times did was "an extraordinary commandeering of public policy from elected officials and the government they administer, committed ostensibly in the name of "the public interest" but more likely stemming from hostility to government as administered by George W. Bush. There is no other persuasive explanation...This is another unnecessary leak, six months after the New York Times revealed a secret National Security Agency terrorist surveillance program."
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It's clear this program worked and that it was legal. It was a primary source of knowledge about Islamo Fascism and was responsible for the capture of the terrorist known as "Hambali." Hambali, or Riduan Isamuddin, masterminded the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 innocent men and women.
When I read many of the reactionary complaints (from inferior types addicted to being judgmental as a way of maintaining a false superiority)its easy to detect that many of the criticisms don't stem from any virtuous concerns but are the mutterings of people with a seething nature more sympathetic to criminal elements they share an identity with.
Good editorial from The Washington Times - no conservative bastion:
( http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060623-085054-65
Let the BDS posts begin:- bush-derangement-syndrome.html= 9173d romea uthammer/2003/12/05/160406.html
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/11/lets-discuss
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syn
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/charleskr
You guys really need to grow up and start thinking.
waiting for the flamebait mod from a lib...
-john
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
Seriously, nearly every western government has had a sort of financial big-brother police state already in place, so that it can tax you! A total loss of privacy is the price you pay in order to have a powerful central government and welfare state. Why start complaining now when it comes to terrorism?
Instead of going after terrorists for terrorism, they should go after them for some tiny insignificant infraction of the tax code. That way it would be politically correct and "progressive" to deny them their rights.
Fair's fair. My opinion is my own and I don't owe it to anyone to offer justification for it, particularly when my comments were not addressed to anyone else. ...
By the way, another opinion that I have is that you've tried to make a mountain out of a molehill.
And my opinion is that if you don't have anything to contribute to a discussion, it is a good idea to just stay out of it. If you don't then you better be prepared to motivate what you are saying.
Last time I checked the ol' Constitution, the checks and balances didn't include unelected newspaper reporters deciding what gets classified and what doesn't.
I'm sooo glad that Mr. Keller feels that he is qualified to sit in judgement and wave the almight "public right to know" just so that they can sell a few more papers on their way to bankruptcy.
Former official both Democratic and Republican urged them not to publish, but NOOOOO, Mr. Keller apparently knows better.
Too bad he didn't publish earlier, maybe Hambali would still be free...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.