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.

Comments

Re:seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

You americans can do whatever the fuck you want to your own citizens.

But please keep us europeans out of it.

We'll keep that in mind the next time you ignore a threat for so long that you have invading armies marching through your capital cities.

Re:seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you write "please"? Shouldn't that be "European accounts are none of your business, asshats"? The USA are the only country who sent their team to the Worldcup and doesn't name the country on the team bus. They know why. I'm glad they're out. Go home and take your snoops with you, fuckers.

Good

[SQL Error]

This is exactly the sort of thing they should be doing.

Thanks a bunch for blowing it, NYT.

Re:mindphuking nazi hypenosys leads to fatal loop

[LordKaT]

What the fuck? Am I drunk again?

Re: Wow

[HardCase]

And before you dismiss this as a troll...

I don't dismiss it as a troll, but rather as the ravings of a paranoid wingnut.

-h-

Re:Corporate advantage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. We all know that the US government subsidizes Boeing and the like through military contracts and the like, so get off your frigging high horse.

It's not the same thing, sorry eurotrash.

At least in Europe we're up front about subsidies, rather than the hypocritical US position of paying lip service to free market principles, while being protectionist as hell in reality.

The US isn't even close to being protectionist, or else you wouldn't see jobs and whole industries getting outsourced. There are rare cases where the US takes protectionist measures, but on the whole the US doesn't do ENOUGH to protect it's own industries.

The US is one of the few countries in the world that could be entirely self sufficent if they really were into protectionism. The only thing the US subsidises is the UN, and hopefully they will stop that one day. I'd laugh if the US ever pulled out of the UN, because that would just make Euroarabia come about even sooner. The only blessing about fuckwits like you is that you will be gone in 3-4 generations, and the US will only have to put up with the muslim fucktards and it's probably a better trade off since they aren't quite as pretentious as you liberal eurotrash fuckwads. You people can't even figure out how to make babies anymore. LAWL.

Re:quick success

[JavaLord]

They did find 500 WMD's in Iraq and announced it just last week. CNN refused to cover the story along with other liberal outlets. It's pretty funny that someone in the senate could hold a press conference, annouce something like that, and it doesn't get covered by the US press.

The weapons were a clear violation of the peace treaty Hussain signed in 1991. The war was justified.

As you say, Mod me down all you want. It's still true.

Media Bias

[Brandybuck]

Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has...

For those of you still doubting the existance of media bias, compare and contrast the following two snippets. The first is from the story blurb. The second is written with an effort towards political neutrality:

Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has [done a bad thing].

Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Treasury Department initiative that has [done a bad thing].

See the difference? While both are accurate and truthful, the first is clearly biased. The quote above is from Slashdot, but the original Washington Post makes the same bias.