NSA Spies On International Payments 314
jones_supa writes "The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL. Information acquired by the former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, show that the spying is conducted by a branch called Follow the Money (FTM). The collected information then flows into the NSA's own financial databank, called Tracfin, which in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions."
Remember that blow up doll in discrete package? (Score:5, Insightful)
NSA knows what you are up to with your credit card
Pay cash !!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And my wife ask me why I don't like to pay with any plastic cards (credit and/or debit)... I always pay cash whenever i can. Even if all my transactions are legal, some could be frowned upon but not illegal (not yet), I don't like my bank or any other private corporation to know what I do and what i like.
Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you mean reasonably sized country, over inflated economy, and massive national debt?
Oh wait! you must be American and have no clue what's past your own borders.
Re:News? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it really news that a spy agency is spying? "oh look at them doing their job!"
"oh look at them shitting on the US Constitution." FTFY
Re:News? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, but it is certainly 'news' to the general public that the scope of spying has increased to include the common man.
Where do we draw the line? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice."
This is a quote, not mine, but a quote nonetheless that holds relevance. When do we tear down the walls and regain our country?
Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PCI Compliance (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this mean that the NSA is PCI Compliant?
No, they haven't had the required audit.
Which, given the revelations about how bad their data security is, they would have failed anyways.
They still don't know what Snowden took. Forget secrets or blackmailing politicians, if he wanted to Snowden could just use the data to steal a ridiculous amount of money. Thank goodness he seems to be a good person. The scary thing is somebody else might have done just that, and no one knows about it.
NSA Spies on EVERYTHING (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just get it over with and use that headline instead? Let's face it, they're either Big Brother at this point, or they're trying VERY HARD to be.
SEPA too (Score:1, Insightful)
"The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely. "
EU Commission GAVE them Europe's Swift data, on promise they wouldn't misuse it. I suspected NSA had political leverage over the EU Commission because the EU Commission can enforce the privacy right but has not right to *waive* the privacy right. Yet that was exactly what they did. They decided it was proportionate to hand the EU Bank data to the US on condition they pretended not to misuse it. You are unlikely to see a reversal of this policy, despite the new revelations because there is something wrong with the EU Commissioners, I suspect political leverage.
Watch SEPA, the European bank transfer system, this was largely driven by Germany to replace SWIFT. Just as its due to become mandatory in Europe, we have marketing for data exchange among G20 countries. I bet you'll see the EU Commission find a way to hand that SEPA data to the UK, which in turn hands it to the NSA, or perhaps they'll have the balls to hand it directly to NSA.
That data will contain all Europes commercial transactions, every euro cent spent by companies to employees, suppliers, every sale, every order. That's just the commercially sensitive data.
It means they have a track record of every card purchase on every potential political candidate, campaigner, reporter, politician, civil servant, judge, jury member, lawyer, teacher, everyone. If you donate to a political party or a cause the NSA doesn't like, they have record of that donation. I bet US transactions are in there too, they're the easiest to grab. It will be like the phone meta data, all grabbed, all data mined.
Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority (Score:2, Insightful)
You're wrong. Because things like the European debt crisis was fed by the GFC which was originally fueled by fuckups caused in the US market.
Don't allude yourself. The US is no shining pillar because any of this. The US is an international loan shark fed by its military muscle. Take Syria for example. Your president has shown weakness to the world for not indiscriminately bombing the shit out of it. As a result the USD has fallen. Now why is that? Is that because you guys know how to run a successful economy and offer true value to the world? Or is it because of the international perception of the US and how it bullies the middle east and other nations?
Unless you show me a clear example of the former. I'll stick to believing the latter thank you very much!
Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please show us where in the constitution it's forbidden to monitor international monetary transactions.
No seriously, I'll wait.
Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm saying that the fact you felt the need to home school due to the "totally inadequate results of the local elementary and middle schools" says how fucked up your country is.
Re:Pay cash !!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The patriot act made buying anything overseas without a credit card that's registered in your name very difficult. Yes, you can mail cash in an envelope but our crooked postal workers often just steal it. The best defense against this sort of thing is: Vote for someone that's not in the D/R parties. Anyone... I don't care if you vote for the fucking Nazis just get the current Reich out of office asap. There are plenty of alternative parties out there... Libertarian, Green, even the communist party. I'd rather not be governed by most of them but if we can get enough disagreement into congress things may change. It's basically our only hope short of an insurrection and I'm personally moving to Canada if that happens.
Re:Pay cash !!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've said for a long time that if you're liberal you should vote Green, if you're conservative vote Libertarian. Both are on enough ballots to get elected (but the Ds and Rs are financed by corporations, who own the mass media).
Re:American Exceptionalism and Moral Superiority (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets see... 7 billion people / 206 countries is an average of 33 million people per country, so YES, 300+ million people is in fact a large country. Nobody said we are a majority of the worlds population, just a large country. You should perhaps work on your basic math skills and reading comprehension prior to speaking in public.
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
You think they don't monitor US transactions too? What about transactions that have one end in the USA? Or which are executed by banks which are active in the USA but technically headquartered in London? What about the data feeds they get from GCHQ?
Anyway, the constitution doesn't mention any such thing because it was inconceivable back then. There is plenty of language in the constitution that states the government should get a warrant for things that are like financial transaction data:
Note "the people". Not "US citizens" or "US persons" or "people who are geographically within the USA at the time a paper is made" but "the people". The constitution uses that language quite carefully because the authors were highly familiar with the ways governments wriggle out of rules using artificial reclassifications or redefinitions of common concepts.
Anyway, who cares? Everyone outside the USA doesn't want the NSA to watch their financial transactions, or any other foreign intelligence agency. Saying it's allowed by the law just tells everyone else that the law is inadequate. And yes that applies to the UK and other places that have industrial-scale programs that spy on ordinary citizens of other countries.