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-- You Ready for This?
You Ready for This?
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| June 23, 2006 Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, June 22 � Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials. The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database. |
Yes, Im watching CSPAN about this right now actually
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| Originally posted by Sunflower Yes, Im watching CSPAN right now actually |
Wow!!! I wonder if I am in there, I mean I by a shite load of vinyl from over seas.... I guess this means as well as credit card transactions or just big monies... 
That one record store in Syria ALWAYS HAS THE CHOICE TUNES... ha ha
Between the NSA looking at the phone calls and now the bank data and everything else you'd expect them to have produced results with it by now. I mean this program in particular has been going on since 2001 and as far as we know has produced zero results.
Freedom should be sacrificed in the name of freedom. Any pinko who complains should stop reading so much George Orwell.
Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by Q5echo >link< hey, the man said he'd do anything to protect his country. this is incredible. |
Does this mean I have to cancel my order of midget porn from Thailand?
I have nothing to worry about unless I'm a terrorist, right? Right?
So anyway, now that library books, phone calls, and bank records are checked off the list, we should have a poll to see what privacy issue gets attacked next.
Internet use
Credit cards
Purchases at the store
Which way we wipe our asses
I dunno, I can kind of see the government being interested in all of them.
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| Originally posted by occrider Does this mean I have to cancel my order of midget porn from Thailand? I have nothing to worry about unless I'm a terrorist, right? Right? So anyway, now that library books, phone calls, and bank records are checked off the list, we should have a poll to see what privacy issue gets attacked next. Internet use Credit cards Purchases at the store Which way we wipe our asses I dunno, I can kind of see the government being interested in all of them. |
Oops I thought that thread was just about wiretapping. Missed the internet use part. I guess that's one less area we have to worry about being attacked then ...
Re: Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Well I know how you feel about the wiretapping issue, so am I to gather that you feel the same about this issue, or is this starting to get a little bit wierd for you yet? |
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| It's blackmail, pure and simple. Either let a Democrat into the White House, or we will continue to sabotage American security and, in effect, kill Americans. We will keep secrets when a Democrat is in office, but not a Republican. So we offer the American people a choice: Let the politicians we favor run the country, or we will help Al Qaeda murder you. |
Re: Re: Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by Q5echo well. since you will never be able to begin to find anything illegal about this, let me put it to you this way woman... go wipe your vagina. |
Well since our dear Q5 gave us a short ride down that tangential road, I hope we can stear things back on track. Froomkin's press briefing is pretty good today. Some choice quotes:
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| Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisers had �staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He�s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President�s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world�s a battlefield � according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It�s got the sense of Louis XIV: �I am the State.� (from a New Yorker piece not yet available online) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5041100879.html |
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| As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances. How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won�t say. In fact, it can�t say. By contrast, it does matter to us. This column has documented, again and again , that when faced with a potentially damaging political problem, White House strategist Karl Rove�s response is not to defend, but to attack. The potentially damaging political problem here is that the evidence continues to grow that the Bush White House�s exercise of unchecked authority in the war on terror poses a serious threat to American civil liberties and privacy rights. It wasn�t that long ago, after all, that an American president used the mechanisms of national security to spy on his political enemies. The sum total of the administration�s defense against this charge appears to be: Trust us. Trust that we�re only spying on terrorists, and not anyone else. But what if the trust isn�t there? And what if they�re breaking the law? That�s why it�s better to attack. It makes for great soundbites. It motivates the base. And perhaps most significantly, it takes attention away from Bush�s own behavior. |
Well the secret as to why bush never fights to veto a bill has come to light. He simply ignores the laws he signs by using special signing statements ...
As can be expected, some unpatriotic republican members of congress are upset.
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Bush ignores laws he inks, vexing Congress By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 52 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday defended President Bush's frequent use of special statements that claim authority to limit the effects of bills he signs, saying the statements help him uphold the Constitution and defend national security. Senators weren't so sure. "It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," said Arlen Specter, a Republican whose Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the issue. "There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview." At the White House, Press Secretary Tony Snow said, "There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions." The bill-signing statements say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds. Some 110 statements have challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act. Snow said presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton have issued such statements. "The president has done the same thing that his predecessors have," he told reporters. "Presidents generally had the same concerns about defending the presidential prerogatives when it comes to national security." In addition to Specter's objections, Democrats called the signing statements an example of the administration trying to expand executive power. "I believe that this new use of signing statements is a means to undermine and weaken the law," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) of California. "If the president is going to have the power to nullify all or part of a statute, it should only be through veto authority that the president has authorized and can reject � rather than through a unilateral action taken outside the structures of our democracy." Defending Bush, a Justice Department lawyer said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had made it prudent for the president to protect his powers with signing statements more than did his predecessors. "Even if there is modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events," said lawyer Michelle Boardman. "The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11." "Congress has been more active, the president has been more active," she added. "The separation of powers is working when we have this kind of dispute." The exchange came during a midterm election year in which Specter, some fellow Republicans and many Democrats are highlighting concerns about the administration's use of executive power. Specter's personal list includes Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, the administration's checking of phone records and the sending of officials to hearings but saying they cannot answer lawmakers' questions on national security grounds. The session also was aimed at countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas., a former state judge. "The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is," he said. "I don't know why the issue of presidents issuing signing statements is controversial at all." Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is trying an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto, which could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house. "The president is not required to," Boardman said. "Of course he's not if he signs the bill," Specter snapped back. Other presidents have used signing statements for administrative reasons, such as instructing an agency how to put a certain law into effect. They usually are inserted quietly into the federal record. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060627...ning_statements |
I love it when Specter pretends like he actually gives a shit about this Administration pushing the Constitutional boundaries, then turns around and gets bitchslapped by Cheney into submission.
It happens every fucking time. Quotes like these are always his preliminary words:
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| "It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," said Arlen Specter, a Republican whose Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the issue. "There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview." |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 I love it when Specter pretends like he actually gives a shit about this Administration pushing the Constitutional boundaries, then turns around and gets bitchslapped by Cheney into submission. It happens every fucking time. Quotes like these are always his preliminary words: And he'll say other shit like their actions are "questionable", "troubling", and then he'll throw around the threat of a subpoena or two. And when it's all said and done, his vote, his words written in new bills, and sometimes his words right out of his mouth clearly say otherwise. I think bastards like these piss me off more than any extremist. At least with an extremist you will always know where they stand. But bastards like Specter who want so desparately to appear like they are moderate or can come to compromises and seemingly are not afraid to challenge authority, only to fall right in line when the whip is cracked are beyond frustrating. They're just pathetic. So in short, sorry Arlen, we've heard it all before. And we also know where you will be in the end of all this. |
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| Originally posted by occrider Huh? I think Specter has taken a moderate stance on a number of issues and stood up when he didn't have to at all on the basis of diminishing returns. This is no small issue to deviate from party lines considering the complexity of it all unlike the easy PR issues. Easy PR issues where I've seen many democrats blow in the wind as opposed to holding to principle. But I'm curious, what exactly do you have on specter that demonstrably indicates that he has not strived for compromise? |
Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by Q5echo >link< hey, the man said he'd do anything to protect his country. this is incredible. |
I think that they just blew a good weapong used against the terrorists, hmmm I wonder.....
Re: Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by LazFX You know something and this is the conservitive coming out of me, but that was pretty stupid to let this out. NYT did a stupid thing. After thinking about this in a cloud of smoke, I think that they just blew a good weapong used against the terrorists, hmmm I wonder..... |
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| But a search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT. "There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. "The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before." Indeed, a report that [former State Department official Victor] Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...ome_say/?page=1 |
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| Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. ``A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task. ``Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume" their transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist groups. ``We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing." |
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| ndeed, a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into. The system, which handles trillions of dollars in worldwide transactions each day, serves as a main hub for banks and other financial institutions that move money around the world. According to The New York Times, SWIFT executives agreed to give the Treasury Department and the CIA broad access to its database. SWIFT and other worldwide financial clearinghouses ``are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information," according to the 33-page report by the terrorist monitoring group established by the UN Security Council in late 2001. ``The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries." Some worry that the new disclosures will nonetheless hamper US counter-terrorism efforts. ``I worked this stuff and I can guarantee that [revealing the SWIFT] information made a difference," said Dennis Lormel, a retired FBI special agent who helped establish the bureau's Terrorist Financing Operations Section before leaving government in 2003. ``The disclosure will have an adverse impact on investigations. It was used in two specific instances where it helped to track terrorists. We also used it for lead value." But the White House has also been very public about its efforts to track the overseas banking transactions of Americans and other foreign nationals. Less than two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed an executive order calling for greater cooperation with foreign entities to monitor money that might be headed to terrorist groups. The executive order was posted on the White House website. The document called for ``cooperation with, and sharing information by, United States and foreign financial institutions as an additional tool to enable the United States to combat the financing of terrorism." Richard Newcomb , the head of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control at the time, later publicly credited the president for enabling US law enforcement and intelligence agencies to nab suspected terrorists, including followers of ``Hambali, " Al Qaeda's leader in Southeast Asia. The New York Times report said Hambali's capture in 2003 came with the aid of information gleaned from SWIFT. Administration officials have said this week that the disclosure of such details were particularly damaging to US security. Nevertheless, in July 2003 -- a month before Hambali was captured -- Newcomb told the Senate Government Affairs Committee in detail about a program initiated after 9/11 between his office and the Pentagon to track Hambali's financial network in Southeast Asia. The scope of the project included Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, focusing on the finances of Jemaa Islamiyah , the Al Qaeda group run by Hambali that was responsible for deadly bombings in Bali in 2002. He said the operation ``identified the key leaders, fund-raisers, businessmen, recruiters, companies, charities, mosques, and schools that were part of [Jamaa Islamiyah] support network. Thus far, we have imposed sanctions against two of these key nodes, and are coordinating action against several others," Newcomb told the committee. Other public documents have also detailed post-9/11 efforts to follow terrorist money. The Patriot Act approved by Congress after the attacks emphasized providing new authorities for the Bush administration to track and choke off terrorist funds around the world. One part of the act, dealing specifically with terrorist money, was described by the Treasury Department as the most ``significant [anti-money-laundering] law" since a 1970 law requiring banks to report cash transactions over $10,000. That section of the Patriot Act required the Bush administration to ``adopt regulations to encourage further cooperation among financial institutions, their regulatory authorities, and law enforcement authorities" to track terrorist-related money laundering. In testimony before Congress in early 2002, Juan C. Zarate , deputy assistant Treasury secretary in charge of terrorism and violent crime, discussed how the global exchange of information was a key element in choking off their source of funds. He cited a special international meeting hosted a month after the attacks by the international Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, ``to eliminate existing impediments to exchanging information" between financial institutions and to find solutions to the challenges of tracking terrorist funds. |
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| Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times� revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years? Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists � including this one � were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent. I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned by Customs' public affairs office, and came at a time when the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the government was targeting. (These are details, it should be noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were published: �Operation Green Quest is focusing on the informal, largely paperless form of money exchange known as hawala, which is Arabic for �to change.�� �Few undercover agents can penetrate Middle Eastern communities and money laundering rings because they look like outsiders and don't speak the language�. As a result, Green Quest has to be more clever, by setting traps on the Internet and working to flush currency traffickers out of their hiding places.� �Treasury and FBI investigators have identified hawala as a means by which the alleged Sept. 11 terrorists may have received money from overseas.� �Green Quest investigators, who've spent their careers dismantling money laundering rackets, were blindsided by the existence of the system. �Most of us couldn't spell hawala� before Sept. 11,� Forman said.� �The agencies' [involved in Green Quest] cooperative efforts have recently culminated in raids of alleged money laundering operations that aid suspected terrorist networks.� �Green Quest also wants to lower the threshold at which bank deposits and electronic funds transfers must be documented. Dropping the ceiling from $10,000 to $750, Forman said, may force money traffickers to try to get their cash out of the country by hand. They would then be subject to capture by a beefed-up cadre of Customs Service officers at border crossings, airports and seaports.� http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002546.html |
Re: Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by LazFX You know something and this is the conservitive coming out of me, but that was pretty stupid to let this out. NYT did a stupid thing. After thinking about this in a cloud of smoke, I think that they just blew a good weapong used against the terrorists, hmmm I wonder..... |
Re: Re: Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by Groundhog Boy Oh, wait, it's to single them out because they criticize the administration all the time. |
Re: Re: Re: Re: You Ready for This?
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| Originally posted by Q5echo this is now a pattern with the NYT, for one. |
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| One tool that has been especially important to law enforcement is called a roving wiretap. Roving wiretaps allow investigators to follow suspects who frequently change their means of communications. These wiretaps must be approved by a judge, and they have been used for years to catch drug dealers and other criminals. Yet, before the Patriot Act, agents investigating terrorists had to get a separate authorization for each phone they wanted to tap. That means terrorists could elude law enforcement by simply purchasing a new cell phone. The Patriot Act fixed the problem by allowing terrorism investigators to use the same wiretaps that were already being using against drug kingpins and mob bosses. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050609-2.html |
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| Before the Patriot Act agents could use wire taps to investigate a person committing mail fraud, but not specifically to investigate a foreign terrorist carrying deadly weapons. Before the Patriot Act, investigators could follow the calls of mobsters who switched cell phones, but not terrorists who switched cell phones. That didn't make any sense. The Patriot Act ended all these double standards. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050720-4.html |
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| The judicial branch has a strong oversight role in the application of the Patriot Act. Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, or to track his calls, or to search his property. |
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| Before September the 11th, law enforcement could more easily obtain business and financial records of white-collar criminals than of suspected terrorists. See, part of the way to make sure that we catch terrorists is we chase money trails. And yet it was easier to chase a money trail with a white-collar criminal than it was a terrorist. The Patriot Act ended this double standard and it made it easier for investigators to catch suspected terrorists by following paper trails here in America. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20040419-4.html |
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| Third, we need to renew the critical provisions of the Patriot Act that updated the law to meet high-tech threats like computer espionage and cyberterrorism. Before the Patriot Act, Internet providers who notified federal authorities about threatening e-mails ran the risk of getting sued. The Patriot Act modernized the law to protect Internet companies who voluntarily disclose information to save lives. It's common sense reform, and it's delivered results. In April 2004, a man sent an e-mail to an Islamic center in El Paso, and threatened to burn the mosque to the ground in three days. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could have spent a week or more waiting for the information they needed. Thanks to the Patriot Act, an Internet provider was able to provide the information quickly and without fear of a lawsuit -- and the FBI arrested the man before he could fulfill his -- fulfill his threat. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050609-2.html |
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| That's what Mike Chertoff recommended to me after the London bombings. In other words, he took a look at the situation and said, let's enhance our security and infrastructure points, and he raised the threat level. We're widening the use of explosive detection teams and nearly doubling the number of rail security inspectors. We're targeting assets and resources to our infrastructure. We're accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies to rapidly detect biological, radiological and chemical attacks. That's what Mike announced last week. We're going to continue to make sure that we assess our weaknesses and strengthen our transportation systems. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050720-4.html |
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| two, they-NYT-were the ones that broke the story online before the WSJ. the L.A.T. got the scoop also but was not approached by arguments not to, neither the WSJ. in effect it was a race to them. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...62701708_2.html |
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| House vote slaps news organizations Resolution blasts stories on terrorist tracking program WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing, saying the disclosure had "placed the lives of Americans in danger." The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, did not specifically name the news organizations, but it was aimed at The New York Times and other news media that last week reported on a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorists. Most Democrats opposed the measure, protesting language in it that asserts that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was "rooted in sound legal authority" and that members of Congress had been appropriately briefed on the program. ... http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06...s.ap/index.html |
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| Originally posted by josh4 This is ridiculous. So basically the government is telling the media its bad and wrong to give the American public the right to know. |
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