ACLU renews attacks on SWIFT
Posted on September 27, 2006
If you remember SWIFT is NSA program to track financial exchanges to find links with terrorist funding. It is the same program that the New York Times leaked in late June.
The ACLU is renewing attacks against the SWIFT program, this time attacking the 3rd party set up to audit the program.
A more detailed commentary is available on Revealing the ACLU.
The original report, from UPI, can be found here.
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The european union article 29 working group recently found problems with swift, also focusing on the oversight. The program may have violated european law.
The claim that the New York Times “leaked” the existence of this program was a lie back in June, and it’s still a lie today. The existence of the SWIFT program was not “leaked” by the Times, because it was already public knowledge.
FACT: A UN report published in December 2002 stated:
“The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. 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.”
FACT: An August 1998 Washington Post story entitled “Bin Laden’s Finances Are a Moving Target” revealed that:
“The CIA and agents with Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network also will try to lay tripwires to find out when bin Laden moves funds by plugging into the computerized systems of bank transaction monitoring services — operated by the Federal Reserve and private organizations called SWIFT and CHIPS— that record the billions of dollars coursing through the global banking system daily.”
Repeating a lie does not magically transform it into the truth.