Financial data mining vital in war against terrorism, say Treasury officials

The Bush administration yesterday defended its data mining of financial transactions in a program aimed at tracking down financing of terrorist activities. The program, Bush officials said, does not amount to invasion of privacy of Americans.

Treasury Secretary John Snow, while decrying the program’s disclosure by some newspapers, said the surveillance of banking data was ”government at its best”. The CIA-operated program was authorized by the Treasury. It has angered privacy advocates who said the US government was trying to keep a watch on the financial activity of Americans while Democrat leaders said the executive branch of the Bush administration was overstepping its powers.

At a news conference here, Snow said the program was ”entirely consistent with democratic values, with our best legal traditions”.

The program was being secretly run for the past five years since the 9/11 attacks. Shortly after the attack, the Treasury had sought cooperation from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) asking for leads on terrorism financing activity. The information was vital in its war on terrorism, the US government had said then. After initial hesitation (and subpoenas by the Treasury), SWIFT relented and provided the entire bulk of data on financial transactions to the Bush government. Since then, the CIA has been successful in tracking down some key operatives and financiers and bringing them to justice, Snow said.

When asked for specifics about the success achieved by the program, Snow was evasive but said that he had made sure that the program was effective.

Vice President Dick Cheney also defended the program saying it was ”conducted in a way to guarantee and safeguard the civil liberties of the people”. But he decried the disclosure by the newspapers as it could make things ”more difficult for us to prevent future attacks”.

The Belgium-based society SWIFT manages a voluminous traffic of more than 11 million financial messages (money transfers) daily between 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

The program came to light after reports in the web pages of Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on Thursday night.

Source: www.earthtimes.org