Dave, I don't think we know for certain what access the NSA has to financial information, but the Federal Government has a financial center known as FinCen to which the banks and other institutions report millions of financial transactions. FinCen has a staggering amount of financial data about Americans. Below you will find a short description of FinCen from Privicilla.org. A big outstanding question about the NSA is the extent to which they data mine or otherwise use the communications data they have obtained from the "program", in conjunction with other data, including financial data, that is in the hands of the Federal Government or is available from the commercial sector. You may recall that the Pentagon's (DARPA's) Total Information Awareness Program (TIA) sought to analyze a vast quantity of public and private data about Americans to identify and profile suspects. http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/14956res20040116.html The Congress shut down the public version of TIA run by Admiral John Poindexter, but allowed significant portions of it to continue to operate applying to non-US persons. That view includes the power to troll through the communications records of hundreds of millions of Americans looking for clues to contact with "foreign terrorists". The NSA may well have a piece of the TIA action or may be a part of a larger effort within the Pentagon to continue the work of TIA. When asked about this in a Senate hearing by Senator Ron Wyden, General Hayden said he could not respond in public. All these matters are classified and we don't know what, if anything ,he told Senator Wyden in private, but this question needs to be very carefully examined. Barry Steinhardt ACLU

From Privicilla.org:

"FinCEN," the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is a network of databases and financial records maintained by the U.S. federal government. Housed within the Treasury Department, FinCEN handles more than 140 million computerized financial records compiled from 21,000 depository institutions and 200,000 nonbank financial institutions. Banks, casinos, brokerage firms and money transmitters all must file reports with FinCEN on cash transactions over $10,000. And FinCen is the repository for "Suspicious Activity Reports" which must be filed by financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act. FinCEN also uses a variety of law enforcement databases, including those operated by the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Defense Department, in addition to commercial databases of public records. FinCEN may also use databases held by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. FinCEN shares information with investigators from dozens of agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the U.S. Secret Service; the Internal Revenue Service; the Customs Service; and the the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Agents from all these agencies can investigate names, addresses, and Social Security numbers through FinCEN. Field agents and state and local law enforcement can access data from FinCEN remotely. On 5/13/06 7:42 AM, "David Farber" <dave@farber.net> wrote:

Begin forwarded message:

From: anitaclaremadsen@netscape.net Date: May 13, 2006 7:16:38 AM EDT To: dave@farber.net Subject: Bank Transactions?

Anyone know if the NSA also is collecting/data mining customer bank/ credit card records under the historic, "Follow the Money" advice give to Woodward by Deep Throat?

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