New Bush data piracy scandal
p2p news / p2pnet: That the Cheney /Bush administration has been pirating private citizen information to supposedly guard against Terrorism, the amorphous threat hoisted every time government agencies want to do something they shouldn’t be doing, is by now a well publicized disgrace.
But, “relying on a presidential declaration of emergency,” America has also been secretly, “tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials,” says The Washington Post.
The story has current and former counterterrorism officials saying the program, “works in parallel with the previously reported surveillance of international telephone calls, faxes and e-mails by the National Security Agency, which has eavesdropped without warrants on more than 5,000 Americans suspected of terrorist links.
“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.
“Stuart Levey, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an interview last night that the newly disclosed program – the existence of which the government sought to conceal – has used the agency’s powers of administrative subpoena to compel an international banking consortium to open its records,” says The Washington Post. “The Brussels-based cooperative, known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year.”
The story says “terrorism investigators” have been trying to access the SWIFT’ dbase since the 1990s, “but other government and industry authorities balked at the potential blow to confidence in the banking system.”
‘Narrow slice of information’
After 9/11, Bush invoked his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to “investigate, regulate or prohibit” any foreign financial transaction linked to “an unusual and extraordinary threat,” says The Chicago Tribune, going on, “the Treasury Department sought to enlist a reluctant ally. The world’s banking industry long had been loath to give up data on its customers, so U.S. investigators issued a subpoena for just a narrow slice of information from a worldwide financial consortium. The reply stunned Treasury officials.
“The consortium couldn’t extract the bits of data U.S. terrorism analysts were looking for; instead, it offered something far more generous. They said, ‘We’ll give you all the data,’ Treasury Secretary John Snow said Friday during a news conference in which he defended the program of reviewing confidential information on money transfers.
“And just like that, intelligence teams that once had to scrape for scraps of data from individual banks were given keys to the international banking kingdom – access to a vast database of detailed records on billions of bank-to-bank transfers worldwide.”
Disclosure of the deal with SWIFT prompted complaints from privacy advocates, but, “Vice President Dick Cheney called surveillance of suspected terrorism-related banking activity and similar measures ‘absolutely essential’ to protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack.
” ‘The fact of the matter is that these are good, solid sound programs,’ Cheney said while visiting Chicago on Friday.”
‘We can’t just browse …..’
Access to SWIFT data, “has enabled U.S. agencies to track financial transactions involving individuals, Middle Eastern charities and other organizations suspected of having ties to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups,” says The San Francisco Chronicle.
But officials acknowledged the program, “also allows authorities to review transactions of U.S. citizens when there is a suspected terrorism connection although, “We can’t just browse through this and say, ‘I wonder what U.S. persons are sending money abroad,’ or anything like that,” it has Levey stating.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has known about the operation, the story quotes an anonymous “senior committee aide” as saying, adding:
“The aide noted that lawmakers’ familiarity with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication program, and the checks that are employed, help explain why the operation has not raised the same concerns as recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has eavesdropped on U.S. residents without court warrants.”
“Unlike the NSA program, Congress had been onboard with this all along,” the aide said, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “Everyone thought they had appropriate controls.”
The database is maintained at a CIA facility outside the company’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters.
Digg this story.
Also See:
The Washington Post – Bank Records Secretly Tapped, June 23, 2006
The Chicago Tribune – World’s banks let U.S. plumb books, June 24, 2006
The San Francisco Chronicle – After Sept. 11, worldwide bank data was readily available, June 24, 2006
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June 24th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Too bad Nixon did not have all of Bush’s powers. The Watergate burglary would have been unnecessary. And the damm reporters would have been jailed before any damage ocurred.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
FBI? Oh… for a moment there, I thought it was FSB (Russia).
June 24th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
This is getting worse and worse and WORSE ad infinitum, ad NAUSEUM!!!!
But it’s not just the US…this is a Global thing…
I ran into this while ‘trolling’ CNet News:
>Reader post by: appletoys
Posted on: June 22, 2006, 4:03 PM PDT
Story: AT&T revises privacy policy
The European Commission has just
announced an agreement whereby English will be the
official language of the European Union rather than
German,which was the other possibility. As part of
the negotiations, the British Government conceded
that English spelling had some room for improvement
and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would
become known as “Euro-English”.
In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”.
Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump
with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of
“k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards
kan have one less letter.There will be growing
publik enthusiasm.
In the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will
be replaced with “f”. This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new
spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where
more komplikated changes are possible.
Government will enkourage the removal of double
letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate
speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of> the silent
“e” in the languag is disgrasful and it
should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps
such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with
“v”.
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd
from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer,
ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no
mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi
tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil
finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German
like zey vunted in zeforst plas.
If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pep<
N 1 hnd zs cmpzsn iz fner zan hl…bt n z ozr zs iz NT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THINK about it………………….
June 24th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
In November, just be SURE to REMEMBER ALL that DUmBYA has done “for”…ACTUALLY ___TO___ us while forming his dictatorship!
June 25th, 2006 at 8:47 am
It’ll stop when 1 or the other of 2 conditions come to pass.
1.- When the “War” on terrorism is finally won. At about the same time, the U.S shall have won the War on booze (a.k.a. “Prohibition”), the War on drugs (see “Prohibition”), and the War on “immorality”. What has Dubya been smoking?
2.- When Dubya and others (of which there are MANY!) of his ilk are thrown (voted) the HE** out of office, and some semblence of sanity returns to American social & legal society.
I don’t see #1 (or any of its’ sub-sections) happening any time soon. Let’s hope (yeah right) that the American public will have regained some small measure of sanity come late 2008.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:50 am
“2.- When Dubya and others (of which there are MANY!) of his ilk are thrown (voted) the HE** out of office, and some semblence of sanity returns to American social & legal society.
I don’t see #1 (or any of its’ sub-sections) happening any time soon. Let’s hope (yeah right) that the American public will have regained some small measure of sanity come late 2008. ”
I doubt it.
We’ll all just vote Democrat, just to keep Bush out, which will
keep the status quo exactly where it is now.
There are 2 corporate parties, not one.
God we’re stupid.
June 25th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Last Election, I voted for Michael Peroutka (Constitution Party) for President. I also told people about both the Libertarian and Constitution Party. I can only tell people about real choices, but I am afraid you are right. They are stupid enought to continue voting Democrat-Republican.
June 26th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
The Constitution Party is but a poor substitute for Republicans. NOT a real choice between the two.
The Libertarians are equally a poor substitute for Democrates. NOT a real choice between those two, either.
RESEARCH these two ‘Substitutes’ THOUROUGHLY and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll also see that voting for either one of these parties only takes votes from both the Republicans and the Democrats.
It’s sad that we don’t REALLY have ANY good choices at all. What we NEED to do is research THOUROUGHLY each and every CANDIDATE we vote for…within the Republican/Democratic system and CLEAN them UP!!! Only then will we have a chance of getting OUR Country back.
Otherwise, the only other ‘alternative’ is the status quo. OR a party such as Ross Perot tried to start but was thwarted when it gained enough momentum to “threaten” the ’status quo’ so much so that said ’status quo’ told Ross to drop out or lose the lives of his family and himself and all of his businesses. This type of behavior by the ’status quo’ is why we will alway have them to deal with.
June 28th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
They have to GET to the Primarys in the FIRST place. But, sadly,like you said we do get those “hand picked corporate puppets” instead. We really do need to figure out a way of clearing the way FOR that “representative percentage of the people” by getting rid of the corporate whores. But HOW?