The NYT is running a story (Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror) about a US program that has been examining international financial records in its hunt for terrorist:

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.

Of course,

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda

One would hope. However, I must confess: such protestations always strike me as odd: if we know exactly who and what we are looking for, why do we need all the other data? I know that they are looking for patterns and therefore need other information, yet they always make it sound like they know where the needle is and just happened to have taken the whole haystack with them just in case. Rather is seems to me that to find the needle that they are examining quite a bit of the haystack and not just the al Qaeda tainted portions.

The LAT also has a version of this story: Secret U.S. Program Tracks Global Bank Transfers, which notes that like previous surveillance programs, the data gathered is hardly just foreign:

The SWIFT network carries up to 12.7 million messages a day containing instructions on many of the international transfers of money between banks. The messages typically include the names and account numbers of bank customers — from U.S. citizens to major corporations — who are sending or receiving funds.

Through the program, Treasury has built an enormous — and ever-growing — repository of financial records drawn from what is essentially the central nervous system of international banking.

In a major departure from traditional methods of obtaining financial records, the Treasury Department uses a little-known power — administrative subpoenas — to collect data from the SWIFT network, which has operations in the U.S., including a main computer hub in Manassas, Va. The subpoenas are secret and not reviewed by judges or grand juries, as are most criminal subpoenas.

Michelle Malkin is outraged and and she chronicles in her post a number of other well-known right-leaning bloggers who are likewise outraged.

I cannot at the moment muster a strong emotional response as I do not automatically consider revelations about such programs to mean a) that someone is out to sabotage the administration or b) that revelations of this nature give would-be terrorists sufficient information to actually change their behavior. Like the phone records story and the NSA monitoring of international calls it seems to me that all of these revelation boil down to: the US is monitoring communications and financial transactions–which as a general principle surely has been long assumed by al Qaeda & Co. One suspects that even with that knowledge they continue to use phones and banks. Indeed, if it makes them more paranoid, that likely makes their activities more difficult, which is a good thing.

Further, the American public likely assumes that such surveillance is going on as well, and generically supports it. However, the issue of how these things are done are quite important in a democracy, and therefore I applaud the press for looking into these stories. Allowing the executive branch to do whatever it wants in the name of “Security” is a more dangerous road to follow in the long run than any damage that might be done to counter-terrorism by the NYT or LAT.

And on the political front, it seems to me that despite the protestations of the administration, they aren’t going to be all that unhappy about these revelations as they demonstrate that a) there is an active, ongoing fight against terrorism that isn’t just physical, and b) (and this is important to the administration’s political standing especially) that this program has been successful:

The Swift data has provided clues to money trails and ties between possible terrorists and groups financing them, the officials said. In some instances, they said, the program has pointed them to new suspects, while in others it has buttressed cases already under investigation.

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2024 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2024, they said.

In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.

The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.

Of course, there is this paragraph from the LAT piece:

Current and former U.S. officials said the effort has been only marginally successful against Al Qaeda, which long ago began transferring money through other means, including the highly informal banking system common in Islamic countries.

Such evaluations call into question whether it is worth giving that much data to the government.

Regardless of both the outrage of some and the politics of the situation, there is a noteworthy issue here:

The program is grounded in part on the president’s emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans’ records.

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.

The continues trend away from using court orders and court supervision in areas such as this are disturbing. Further, this President’s view that he has a number of inherent and emergencies powers is likewise problematic. While I understand the need to safeguard the nation, I continue to find it troubling and remarkable that so many self-styled conservatives seem more than willing to chuck the notion of limited government and a constrained executive because of the 9/11 attacks.

Given the gravely important issues at stake, I applaud these and other press revelations.