[IP] Bank Transactions?

[Barry Steinhardt]

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 at farber.net> wrote:

>
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>From: anitaclaremadsen at netscape.net
>Date: May 13, 2006 7:16:38 AM EDT
>To: dave at 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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