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Thursday, June 22, 2006

It's not just your phone records they're spying on
Posted by Jill | 8:53 PM
It's your bank transactions too. Do YOU believe this Administration when they say they are ONLY monitoring bank records of suspected terrorists, especially after we find out that AT&T is running secret surveillance rooms for them?

I don't.

More:

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

That access to large amounts of sensitive data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "The potential for abuse is enormous."

The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies. But all the programs grew out of the Bush administration's desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike, and all reflect attempts to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers to the government's access to private information about Americans and others inside the United States.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other organizations under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift's records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.


So now the government claims the right to examine, in minute detail, every aspect of your life at any time. And they have the nerve to call us a free society?

The terrorists, if indeed it was foreign terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, which every time the Bush Administration pulls another stunt like this because less and less believable, have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. It was never about "they hate our freedom" -- unless by "they" you're referring to the Bush Administration, not the shadowy Arabs they've used as boogeymen to gain the totalitarian, centralized, all-powerful dictatorship for which they've lusted for a generation.

In other news, AT&T has now updated its privacy policy. You have none. They now say YOUR data is THEIRS to do with as they wish -- sell it to brokers, give it to the government, use it against you in any way they like.

Back in the 1960's, there was a movie called The President's Analyst. James Coburn starred as the eponymous shrink, and the plot, via Wikipedia, is as follows:

Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn), a psychologist, is chosen by the U.S. Government to act as the President’s personal analyst. He is constantly telephoned at any/all hours to go to the White House and listen to his client’s daily problems, and quickly becomes overwhelmed by stress. Schaefer begins to feel that he is being watched everywhere and his paranoia grows to an almost insane degree; he even suspects his sweet girlfriend (Joan Delaney) of spying on him. Eventually, he goes on the lam and manages to narrowly avoid several assassination attempts by tiny agents from the “FBR”, who are trying to kill him due to his having been pegged as a risk to national security. At the same time, spies from every corner of the world attempt to kidnap him because of all the secret information the President has provided to him. Two of Schaefer’s previous clients, a “CEA” assassin (Godfrey Cambridge) and a Russian spy (Severn Darden), come to his aid and help him expose a major conspiracy involving The Phone Company and world domination.


The climactic scene features a creepily affable Pat Harrington, later to go on to "Schneider" fame on the sitcom One Day at a Time, explaining the phone company conspiracy with a bland, Ralph Reed-type smile. It's a film that didn't do well outside of psycniatry nerds like most of my family, and fans of James Coburn from the Flint movies. But while it's as dated as most 1960's paranoid spy movies, its relevance to today is quite shocking.

There are films like Dr. Strangelove that are classic social satires, but since the deliciously-named director Theodore J. Flicker is probably not a household name and spent much of his career directing Barney Miller, this film has been largely forgotten outside of spy movie cultists. But if you have Netflix, give it a look. You'll find that old Ted Flicker was on to something back in 1967.
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