This week, in a virtual replay of the recent NSA data mining disclosures, major newspapers, including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, disclosed that the federal government has been accessing the SWIFT database to identify potential terrorist financing activities.
Politicos and pundits on both sides have expressed their outrage, yet when you peel away a few layers, there’s not an awful lot to be outraged about.
First, Democrats, moderate Republicans and civil libertarians have expressed their concern at the idea that the Government was using this private database to gather information. Meanwhile, White House supporters (and Republican Congressmen up for reelection), have criticized the newspapers for making this information public, claiming that it threatens the usefulness of the program. Some, like Representative Peter King have charged the Times with treason.
I think that both sides need to stop politicizing this issue and look at the facts.
First, in terms of the program itself, I think that most Americans would support the idea of using data mining of the SWIFT database to identify potential terrorist financing activities, provided that there was adequate oversight, controls and reasonable disclosure to Congress. After all, the PATRIOT Act and the Bank Secrecy Act have provisions requiring banks to report any suspicious movements of cash to the Government, and new provisions on foreign correspondent banking have brought much greater scrutiny to the issue of wire transfers.
For the exact same reasons, it’s disingenuous at best for the government to claim that these recent newspaper articles have “blown their cover”, allowing the terrorists to know that their transactions are being monitored. The PATRIOT Act has been in effect for almost five years. There are thousands of articles in industry publications and on federal government websites, instructing financial institutions on their KYC requirements and provisions for SARs for suspicious wire transfers. During this period, the government has boasted of how it's efforts in this area have led to arrests. According to experts in the field, in recent years terrorists have stopped using electronic transfer for their funds because of these changes, resorting to hawala - the use of informal money brokers and couriers to move money around. To think that the terrorists were unaware that banking transactions could be monitored is simply naïve.
As with the NSA’s data mining of telephone records, there are a few core principles that we should all be able to agree upon:
- First, issues of homeland security should not be politicized by either side.
- Second, advanced technologies such as data mining and text mining can be extremely useful, but require oversight so that security does not trump our civil rights.
- Third, transparency is always a good idea, even in issues of national security. The reason that the media and others were quick to condemn this data mining is that this administration has cloaked too many things under the guise of national security, giving them little credibility on such matters.
If the Administration would engage the Congress in an honest, meaningful way, I believe they would get Congressional approval to utilize advanced technology to strengthen our national security. A healthy debate would educate, inform and, in my opinion, rally support. Unfortunately, with midterm elections just a few months away, that’s unlikely to happen.
UPDATE: Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey's editorial in today's NYTimes "The Secret the Terrorists Already Knew", provides further insights on the inappropriate politicization of this issue.
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