Slashdot Mirror
Obama Administration To Allow All Spy Agencies To Scour Americans' Finances
New submitter KrisJon writes "The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters. Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of 'suspicious customer activity.' A move like the FinCEN proposal 'raises concerns as to whether people could find their information in a file as a potential terrorist suspect without having the appropriate predicate for that and find themselves potentially falsely accused,' said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a non-profit watchdog group."
Hope and "look at all that change left in your bank account"
I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
sudo make me a sandwich
What's it going to take for people to realize that Obama is just as bad as and in many ways worse than Bush?
I swear, Obama could issue an executive order mandating that they suck a dick and the apologists would just shrug and say "Yeah, but Bush would have made us swallow!"
It would be grand if people only had to live with the consequences of the policies they support.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
While I don't really approve of this change it's not nearly as bad as the headline suggests. This doesn't mean that the CIA will have instant access to your bank transactions. Banks are required to file reports for specific suspicious conditions that are associated with money laundering and other financial scams. What they're talking about is giving the other agencies unfettered access to the database (FBI already has unfettered access).
Not good news, but not nearly as bad as it sounds.
From TFA:
Financial institutions file more than 15 million "suspicious activity reports" every year, according to Treasury. Banks, for instance, are required to report all personal cash transactions exceeding $10,000, as well as suspected incidents of money laundering, loan fraud, computer hacking or counterfeiting.
They've been able to get this data through the IRS since before any of us were born. If you've ever made a transaction over 10k, they make you go through a bit of a process sometimes. This is the database of that process. It won't have yesterday's starbucks purchase, but it'll have something like the deposit withdrawal you made to put a down payment on your house. So it's not quite entire lives type stuff, but I could've sworn the IRS already did what these agencies are proposing to do, maybe they just suck at it, but the title of the article is over-dramatized in typical slashdot fashion.
I realize facts are anathema to political discourse, but the president doesn't operate in a vacuum. Congress has just as much, if not more, blame than either Bush or Obama have. The sooner people see this, the sooner the messes can be cleaned up. Too bad it won't happen as long as The People are more concerned with Facebook, Twitter, et al.
Certain interesting financial transactions have been reported on for quite some time. This predates both Obama and Bush II. The only thing new here is perhaps the idea that people are actually looking at the information we've been collecting pretty much forever.
You're pretty tardy if you are trying to get your panties in a bunch over this situation.
Yeah, if they collect it they are going to data mine it sooner or later. That's pretty obvious. That's why you don't create the data to begin with.
Horse left the barn and the barn burned down there a long time ago.
Although I wouldn't mind getting back the $500 and $1000 bills what with inflation being what it is.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I agree with your statements. The answer to your question on where am I going to get my supplies is 'from my neighbor who doesn't believe in gun ownership and thinks the cops will show during a crisis.'
What makes you think that Eisenhower was honest and sane?
The military-industrial complex speech. That alone tells me the man worked for his country, not for money or power, that he had the insight to pinpoint the danger to the country, and the balls to denounce it publicly.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
When Obama ran for President the first time around, he promised repeatedly to end warantless wiretapping and protect our privacy. During the same campaign, he actually voted as a senator to extend warantless wiretapping. When called out on this outright lie, he said he no choice, because the bill would pass either way. Frankly, this is a stupid excuse. If it would pass either way, what harm would there be in being honest and voting against it like he said he would?
Then once in the White House, one of his first Executive Orders was actually to extend the power of the program. We also know have warrantless GPS tracking and spy drones over US soil.
The argument for voting for Obama was in theory that we couldn't afford a Republican candidate because they would do these things. The reality is that blinding voting either party often turns out bad.
Look at the records of the past three Presidents and you'll see that they don't fall into traditional party stereotypes:
George W. Bush
* He spent like mad and created new government bureacracy (Homeland Security). A Republican spent more and supported Bigger Government.
* Created a tax credit for solar panels and hybrid cars. A Republican was anti-oil and pro-environment.
* Increased stem cell research. Pro-science (and Republicans are supposed to be anti-stem-cells!)
* Increased NASA budget. Pro-science!
* Passed clean air and water acts in his first 100 days (after Clinton promised to for 8 years and didn't)
* Penalized US automakers who didn't make hybrids
* Pushed for higher fuel economy standards (Democrats pushed a much weaker version that Bush called for and oddly enough Obama fully supported Bush as a senator on this)
* Helped prevent a war in Liberia and negotiated for a dictator to step down without bullets being fired
* Argued immediately after 9/11 that we not blame Iraq and argued that people who were calling for war in Iraq should wait for facts to come out
* Supported an open/transparent commission to study 9/11 with the full report being released to the public
Before him, Clinton:
* Bombed 4 countries without asking Congress for approval
* Compromised with Newt Gingrinch to cut government spending to balance the budget. Yep, a Democrat worked towards smaller government.
* Refused to push through clean air/water acts that were written and just waiting for a push despite promising to do so
* Declared "banks were too big to fail" and pushed for what was then considered an illegal merger with Citbank and Travellers Insurance (by getting rid of the Glass-Steagall law thusly now making it legal). After this, Citigroup hired a bunch of politicians as lobbyists, and Clinton appointed Citigroup employees to government positions. Seriously.
* Was accused of undisclosed massive donations not only from corporations that he hid, but also from the Chinese government. Hillary Clinton was then later also caught taking donations from the Chinese government. Seriously.
Obama:
* Refused to release the White House emails he promised to release when in office (despite all these claims of transparency)
* Filled his cabinet with lobbyists after promising no Washington old-guard and no lobbyists
* Screams about paying taxes when half his cabinet has been busted for not paying taxes
* Supported an additional bail out with no real controls on how the money was handled by big banks, allowing CEOs who created the crisis to steal tax payer dollars
* Refused to disclose where his big online campaign donations came from and won't support campaign transparency
* Created warrantless GPS tracking and has spy drones on US soil
* Promised to close Gitmo
* His means of ending detainee torture was to order prisoners to be killed rather than kept in war. Real humane there.
* Sent troops to Libya and Yemen when both Congress and the public opposed it
* Cut NASA funding and cancelled missions
If you dig deeper into other politicians, you'll see this all the time. Harry Reid is one
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
He's more than Bush 2.0. He took what was radical under GWB, and made it the "New Normal." Before Obama, there was hope that the abuses of the previous administration could be rolled back. That is no longer possible because those abuses are now firmly ensconced in those issues that form the bipartisan consensus. As a result, expect to hear virtually nothing about them from most of the cheerleader/stenographer "press" corps. It's sickening the way Democrats as whole have just clammed up during the Obama administration, and proof that their rhetoric during the GWB administration was nothing but hot air designed to fraudulently attract liberal voters so that they, like the GOP, could go agro-neo-con on America. There is no way back now -- only through to what comes next.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Bush was a jerk, BUT a little history is important...
In 2006 the Democrats took over both the House and the Senate. In Nov 2006, after the election but while Republicans still held the House, Democrats announced that they would not cooperate with Republicans any further (since they were getting total congressional power in only 2 months) and they pronounced the FY2007 budgets (all the congressional financial work of 2006) "dead".... the nation ran those next several months on a "continuing resolution". Pelosi became Speaker of the House and she put Barney Frank in charge of the committee responsible for overseeing the finance industry. Harry Reid became Senate Majority Leader and he put Chris Dodd in charge of the Senate committee responsible for financial oversight. The 2007 and 2008 budgets were the ones the Democrats wrote in Congress. In 2007 The Bush Administration saw problems brewing in the home loan markets and the danger of crazy irresponsible actions over at the Government's home loan entities "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" but Bush had no legal authority to intervene... so Bush sent hes people to capitol hill to ask for legal authority to intervene. Chris Dodd led the Senate charge to deny Bush any control over Fannie and Freddie. EVERY democrat (including Senator Obama and Senator Biden) voted not to allow Bush any ability to regulate Fannie or Freddie. In The House, Barney Frank berated, belittled and insulted the Bush representatives who were asking for legal authority... Frank insisted nothing was wrong in the home mortgage business and particularly not at Fannie and Freddie. A year later, the mortgage mess exploded and the economy melted down. Barack Obama and Joe Biden had a bigger say in the meltdown (THEY got to vote to avoid it and THEY voted the wrong way) than Bush had (He had no vote and no legal power to intervene before the meltdown).
Romney is a tool; he would have only been marginally better than Obama, at best
Obama, however, is a nasty piece of work. His policies lead to the need for ever increasing government power, control, and money.... so he cannot avoid the continual drive to spy on the people, pry into their finances, examine their health, dig into their businesses, etc
The first sentence is a lie; First, this was not just coming to his attention, and second it was not a new question... Eric Holder had been asked repeatedly and kept dodging a straight answer. His people told congress moths ago that Obama had authority to kill Americans with drones (and Obama had done it) that this included people in non-combat situations (like the US citizen teenage son of an American who Obama had killed with a drone) and they had also (separately) said that the entire world was now the modern battlefield; all of this led to the very natural question about drone-striking an American within the US.... and administration officials were first asked about drone-striking Americans within the US about 3 months ago. Every Obama admin person who responded to the questions in congress either gave a different answer or pointed at some other official ("ask him...") so Holder is just being a dishonest jerk when he pretends this is a new question or that it has just come to his attention.
This is what we get for putting a terrorist's lawyer (Eric Holder sought-out and voluntarily represented terrorists who'd killed Americans before becoming Obama's Atty Gen) in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice
BTW: Obama does lots of things he has no authority to do (like taking over car companies, voiding their stocks, and replacing their CEOs) safe in the knowledge that his buddy Harry Reid will block any attempt to stop him in the Senate...... So the Holder letter is essentially meaningless
McCain made himself unelectable when he picked Palin as a running mate. Then the republicans shot themselves in the foot by offering Romney. All the while, the republican congress was doing its best to give us as many reasons as possible to not respect the republican brand. Your convention cheated Paul out of his moment in the sun, insignificant as it was in the light of the political atmosphere. On the other side, Obama was offering healthcare to a bunch of people who really needed it and had a record of doing a number of other things people liked.
You had enough advantages among the swing voters -- particularly with those who don't care about the health of others, and the homophobes, and those who would declare a fertilized egg a "baby" -- to win. But you pissed it away with bad choices, congressional malfeasance above and beyond the usual, and a running mate as crazy as anyone I've ever seen proffered for office.
It's that simple.
Obama, for all his faults (and I could go on and on) still seems to me to be better than the alternative was. That was all we had to go with, you know. There was nothing "good" out there. There rarely is. Paul would have been best for civil liberties, but he would have rocked the economy, rolled back civil rights to a ridiculous degree, and put a bullet in what little progress we've been able to make with health care. He just wasn't electable. McCain might have been, until they inflicted Palin on him. We'll never know, now. The rest were clown-shoes-of-the-week, all competing with one another to see just how far they could shove their own feet down their throat.
Plus, they're all either pretending to be, or actually are, religious crazies. I honestly don't know which is worse, but both are really bad.
If -- somehow -- you can get the republicans in congress to act responsibly -- you know, pass laws, get rid of bad law, undertake some moderation of their fringe drooling, muzzle the idiots who keep saying batshit crazy things about rape and pregnancy -- you could still win the next election. The signs aren't hopeful at this point, but the American people have extremely short memories, so it could still happen. I would vote republican; all they have to do is convince me they'd do better for the people than the democrats. I just... don't see any signs of that right now.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
you have such a short attention span that you do not see trends if they advance slowly enough.
This nation is already NOTHING like what it was in the 1960's.