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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.
No it works this way: An individual tells his bank to send data to another account cross-border. The bank uses Swift messages to transmit the payment order to the other bank. The data includes account details, name etc. So why it is not used by individuals, it often concerns transactions (payments, securities) by individuals.
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
After identifying a suspect, Levey said, "you can do a search, and you can determine whom he sent money to, and who sent money to him."
"The way the SWIFT data works, you would have all kinds of concrete information -- addresses, phone numbers, real names, account numbers, a lot of stuff we can really work with, the kind of actionable information that government officials can really follow up on," Levey said.
Doesn't sound like purely institution-related data. And this from the "undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence," whatever the hell that is.
I can assure you that that will not happen. I work for an Aussie bank and SWIFT is very tightly integrated into all our systems and the systems of our clients. Even if we wanted to leave we couldn't. I'm not even sure if there is a decent, viable alternative.
It already happend. Echelon was used to get Boeing an advatage over Airbus.
http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/sislock.htm
http://www.meta-religion.com/Secret_societies/Con
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2000/07/irp-000724-ec
http://tinyurl.com/zuxan (google link)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Cheney's predictable response: anyone who criticises mass surveillance is helping terrorists.
What has not been stressed is that SWIFT is not used for individuals. It is used for processing money transfers, stock transfers and bond transfers from companies, governments, banks, insurance companies and NGO's.
WAAAAAHAHAHAHA! That's hysterical. Absolutely hysterical It's amazing just how far some people can warp their perception of reality when they so desperately need to perceive reality as supporting some political position.
In related news, the also recently exposed federal phone wiretapping program is never used for individuals. Those wiretaps are used for the recording of audio communications between phone companies, and logging the associated source and destination phone numbers records on each voice communication.
If someone argues that the current federal program is legal and that it is a a good and acceptable activitity in trying to persue terrorists... well that is a perfectly rational arguement with which one can argue the factual truth or falsity of the claim that it is a legal, and with which one can reasonably agree or dissagree with the oppinion of it being good and acceptable.
However when someone tries to argue that this new program is only about companies and banks, and tries to suggest that it has no impact or relevance on individuals... well that is just plain DELUSIONAL reasoning.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Scared that the US might do it? That is standard practice in countries like France who use their intelligence services to pass information directly to French corporations.
Privacy is controlled on a national level here in yrp, with the EU 'human Rights' legislation as a sort of umbrella over that. Levels of legal protection vary and so do levels of compliance/enforcement. But in Theory every countries Spook squad looks harder at foreign threats than at domestic ones. In Practice the politicians and the spooks are totally paranoid about domestic threats to their power and spend huge resources spying on their own citizens (and I think the US is going the same way, the Homeland Security BrownHats are now the third largest US gvt. department.)
:-) is that it is short and to-the-point. They tried to get a 'constitution' passed here, hungreds of pages of waffle designed to promote the intrests of beaurocrats. It was so bad that even the French voters rejected it. Personally I will never vote in favour of any constitution longer than 2 A4 pages of 12pt type. And even then only if it takes power -from- the state, as much as giving power -to- it.
The advantage the US has is it's constitution, which is something I admire a lot. I think it is interesting that your administration is trying to change it (gay marriage). Is this because they want to get people into the 'habit' of changing it in response to perceived 'threats to the American Way(tm)'; so that it can then be changed for 'the war on terror' (think more spooks with more powers, and probably stuff to buy off corporations).
The beauty of your constitution (apart from being drafted on hemp paper
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Or, you could consider the 500 sarin and mustard gas shells recently disclosed
Um, don't you mean the pre-Gulf War shells that were found in 2003, reported on in 2004, and waved around last week in a poor attempt to justify the war in an election year? Just sayin'...
It's what he did with them that remains hard to hammer out, and that's what he was spending so much time and energy trying to hide from everyone, despite signing an agreement allowing full inspection.
Just a wild suggestion... Maybe he actually destroyed them?
He didn't want a war because he knew he'd end up dead.. as will hopefully soon happen. Actually destroying these weapons, which he had no realistic prospect of using without instant obliteration now he was no longer a US ally against Iran, would certainly have been in his best interests.
But I do not dispute his desire and willingness to make and use them.. nor his future intention to do so either! Just his practical ability.
PS: The '500' mustard and sarin shells (disclosed in 1999, only wight ring prats call it recent, although the real figure is more like 650+) should be set against 50,000+ which the UN accepts were destroyed..
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
"Do your reasearch and don't believe everything you read in the papers. This program DID have congretional oversight and is perfectly leagal as a practical extention of the Patriot Act."
Show me the article that verifies this claim. The interview I heard yesterday with Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levy mentioned nothing of the sort. This program, like a startling number of Bush's post 9/11 "anti terrorist" intelligence initiatives, has NO court oversight. Levy described a situation in which SWIFT agents and "an outside auditing firm" could monitor database searches in real time and could halt the search if they felt it was suspect or needed further justification from the government. That's it. If your name is on a list of suspected terrorist / collaborators, correctly or incorrectly, the the White House has given itself the privledge of sifting through your financial data. And your phone calls. And god knows what else we don't know about. And it all happens without the courts being aware.
Who puts a stop to programs like this if it's being abused? The "gang of 8" senators that had been informed about the domestic wiretapping program have admitted that the reports they get about that program don't go into any great detail. Are we just supposed to trust the Bush White House to say, "Gee, we've sepped over the line here, please shut us down?" These are the same people that selectively chose intellegence reports that supported their desire to invade Iraq. Once they got their, they retroactively changes their justifications for being there and then capped it all by saying "Well, is it a bad thing that Sahdam is gone? Would you prefer he be in power?"
This is a democracy with explicit checks and ballances between the three branches of government setup to prevent precisely what is occuring. Why should we trust him to be the final arbitar of what programs are legal and which would be overstepping his bounds within the law when he and his team have shown such a knack for the creative justification of every questionable looking program they've enacted that has come to light?
The news program All Things Considered interviewed the undersecretary responsible for the program yesterday (6/24/06). The interviewer didn't really pull any punches and the answers were pretty interesting. I highly recommend going to NPR's web site and listening to it.
When asked what layers of security were in place to prevent misuse, the reply was that in order to perform a search, the analyst had to show that the individual or group being queried had been identified as having a potential terrorism link. That request had to be vetted by a supervisor, then by a representative from SWIFT. Then, when the query is performed, if no evidence is found, then the information is discarded at the analyst's level. A government auditing team reviews the information that is gleaned and a third party auditing team (from Booz Allen) audits the government.
The undersecretary said that they did remove an analyst earlier this year for abusing the system. The auditing system caught him.
The undersecretary also said that about 10% of the searches performed provided evidence of links to terrorist organizations. That, he said, was a very high rate compared to other intelligence methods.
For me, personally, if that's the way that the government is using the SWIFT database, I don't have a problem with it. If the queries are targeted, as opposed to a broad sweep, it strikes me as a legitimate use of an intelligence asset.
Interestingly enough, the general attitude of the security and privacy experts that ATC interviewed was fairly positive about the program.
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First of all, I do agree about the danger you are warning against, but I also think you are not entirely appreciating that you fell into the trap yourself as well.
For those who don't believe this just test a few facts. These people know full well that Al Qaeda doesn't use the modern banking system. These people know full well that their efforts have little or no effect on Al Qaeda. At the same time these people refuse to do border enforcement or any of the requested security measures already law in the USA which would protect the people from real terrorism. Where for example is the phone number where a US Citizen may call and have an illegal or undesirable alien (One who is acting badly for those who don't understand) promptly and properly dealt with under law. Where I live, if I call the Sheriff I may see an officer in 1 hour or so depending on the time of day. If I called about a real live Al Qaeda member to the US Border Patrol or ICE the call would never be responded to. There are only 65 ICE agents actually empowered to make arrests in the USA as a whole. Surely this tells the truth about the real intent here. It is pretty undeniable.
If you actually look at the 9/11 attacks as well as to other similar situations, you'll find that the only terrorists you are going to catch at the border are those trying to flee the country afterward, and even that is extremely unlikely. You'd also see that those who planned and executed the attacks were not illegal foreigners. Hence, similar to the situation you pointed out yourself, such actions would have virtually zero effect on terrorism.
All the screaming and arguing about illegal immigrants is really yet another way to divert attention away from what is really happening.
Here's a quote from David Kay on the topic: "It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point."
In other words, these finds do not vindicate the president---which is probably why he didn't make a big deal about them.
Now, I agree with you the CNN should have covered it. The Los Angeles Times also appears not to have covered it. But your criticism of the entire "liberal media" is not realistic: NPR, CBS, MSNBC, and the New York Times all covered it. I could look for more, but what's the point?
I am a physicist and I consult on national vulnerability, and I can tell you that a terrorist will not come through an airport with any radionuclides. That is patently ridiculous. What is far more likely to happen is that someone with a bunch of money will find someone in Russia with little to no money (who formerly worked for the Strategic Rocket Forces) to provide them with a working (if decrepit) tactical nuke. Then, they would have some shipping company bring the container to New York or Miami and set it off. That's just to let you know about what OUR nightmares are -- and in the future, post about what you know.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.