Dept of Homeland Security Begins Using Private Financial Watch List

[aikido15]

The Department of Homeland Security has begun experimenting with a massive privately-run computer database that allows investigators to match financial transactions against a financial watch list of some 250,000 people and firms. The New York Times reports the watch lists reportedly contains people with suspected ties to terrorist financing, drug trafficking, money laundering and other financial crimes. The program is being developed by a British company called World-Check that gathers data from 140,000 public sources. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the government likely outsourced the project to a private firm in order to circumvent US privacy laws. Rotenberg said "There's a real risk in a situation like this because there's really no accountability. People can find themselves on a watch list incorrectly, and the consequences can be very serious."

comment-Don't just love the way they "outsourced" our civil rights?

[sandnsea]

1. circumvent "right to redress"

That's why they're privatizing everything, outscouring our civil rights is exactly right.

[Viktor Runeberg]

2. There's long been an agreement

Since many countries have restrictions on spying on their own citizens, it's long been standard practice to have, for instance, British Intelligence spy on Americans and report back to us, and vice versa. Having a British private contractor involved in this stuff fits right in.

Someone in the administration was quoted as saying, after the Total Information Awareness program was squashed by bad publicity, "It's not the tip of the iceberg; it's one iceberg in a sea of icebergs."

Meanwhile, of course, we still haven't persuaded the Saudis, whose people provide a large percentage of terrorist funding worldwide, to open their financial systems to monitoring. And then there's the informal system of money movement in the Islamic community, where credits are balanced between individual accounts and very little actually moves across borders or through the systems our spooks can monitor - as long as the movement of currency in both directions balances, it's really just pure accounting and cash drawers in informal, unlicensed offices.

[aikido15]

4. Thanks...

for the info. So it all comes down to money, AGAIN?

[neweurope]

3. Your rights - and mine. 140 000 public sources, so far...

We're screwed, on both sides of the Atlantic.

So if somebody in Great Britan finds out that I have ever given money to an organization the US-government doesn't like which I probably have then a poor US-citizen can be accused of terrorism when I write him a letter...

I keep saying it: Get out.

[UpInArms]

5. link, please

and thanks!

the privatization push of the reich-wing so that they can obscure all lines of reality now reaches into our pockets even deeper - maybe soon the ppl will awaken and realize they have been disappeared.

[aikido15]

6. sorry...forgot to give link

http://www.democracynow.org/

[aikido15]

7. Here's a link to info about National ID cards

I couldn't post it because the article is dated Dec. 7, although it was a government document that has just been released.

http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press2004/pr120704.htm