Obama Draws Up Plans To
Grant Spy Agencies Complete Access To Financial Data On Every American.
- - - - 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.
The proposed plan
represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down
terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial
databanks, criminal records and military intelligence.
The plan, which legal
experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger
intense criticism from privacy advocates.
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Source - Reuters
- - - - - Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required
by law to file reports of "suspicious customer activity," such as
large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury’s
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
The Federal Bureau of
Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence
agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security
Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.
The Treasury plan would
give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have
ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots
or criminal schemes.
The planning document,
dated March 4, shows that the proposal is still in its early stages of
development, and it is not known when implementation might begin.
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.
"For these reports
to be of value in detecting money laundering, they must be accessible to law
enforcement, counter-terrorism agencies, financial regulators, and the
intelligence community," said the Treasury planning document.
A Treasury spokesperson
said U.S. law permits FinCEN to share information with intelligence agencies to
help detect and thwart threats to national security, provided they adhere to
safeguards outlined in the Bank Secrecy Act. "Law enforcement and
intelligence community members with access to this information are bound by
these safeguards," the spokesperson said in a statement.
Some privacy watchdogs
expressed concern about the plan when Reuters outlined it to them.
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.
Despite these concerns,
legal experts emphasize that this sharing of data is permissible under U.S.
law. Specifically, banks’ suspicious activity reporting requirements are
dictated by a combination of the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA PATRIOT Act,
which offer some privacy safeguards.
National security
experts also maintain that a robust system for sharing criminal, financial and
intelligence data among agencies will improve their ability to identify those
who plan attacks on the United States.
"It’s a war on
money, war on corruption, on politically exposed persons, anti-money
laundering, organized crime," said Amit Kumar, who advised the United
Nations on Taliban sanctions and is a fellow at the Democratic think tank
Center for National Policy.
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY
The Treasury document
outlines a proposal to link the FinCEN database with a computer network used by
U.S. defense and law enforcement agencies to share classified information
called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.
The plan calls for the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence – set up after 9/11 to foster
greater collaboration among intelligence agencies – to work with Treasury. The
Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
More than 25,000
financial firms – including banks, securities dealers, casinos, and money and
wire transfer agencies – routinely file "suspicious activity reports"
to FinCEN. The requirements for filing are so strict that banks often
over-report, so they cannot be accused of failing to disclose activity that
later proves questionable. This over-reporting raises the possibility that the
financial details of ordinary citizens could wind up in the hands of spy
agencies.
Stephen Vladeck, a
professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, said privacy
advocates have already been pushing back against the increased data-sharing
activities between government agencies that followed the September 11 attacks.
"One of the real
pushes from the civil liberties community has been to move away from collection
restrictions on the front end and put more limits on what the government can do
once it has the information," he said.
Michael German, senior
policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that U.S. officials
had floated a similar scheme to pool such data a decade ago, but that funding
for the plan was later withdrawn by Congress.
He said one of the
problematic aspects of the plan is that there is "wiggle room" on how
the information will be used. In the past, the National CounterTerrorism
Center, which is supposed to ensure that critical threat information is shared
among various agencies, was obliged to "promptly identify and purge any
innocent U.S. person information."
But the guidelines were
subsequently loosened so that "not only can they keep the data for a
number of years, but they can continue to use it," German said.
Once spy agencies get
such data, German said, "it’s in a black hole. Time and again, we have
evidence, unfortunately well after the fact, that somebody’s civil rights have
been violated, that the intelligence community simply ignores the rules."
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