new banking rules - Naziism has returned

This is interesting.

Another nice feature of this system is that the feds can tell
exactly who is giving donations to what organization since
they can trace all check deposits to "Activist Organization Y"
from each individual SSN that donated. Could be very useful
when getting ready to round up all the undesirables, like
people who vote the wrong way or object to this and that.

Of course we don't need such a system to track REAL terrorists
-- looks like the CIA knew the identities of most of bin
Laden's associates in the US and was tracking their flight
school activity etnc but never could be bothered to inform the
FBI, INS, or whitehouse about these things. So the problem was
not taht our intelligence was unable to track these people --
our intelligence worked fine. Therefore we do not need 'more'
intrusive, unwarranted monitoring without probable cause of
the activities of the citizenry. Of course the reason these
systems are being put in place are NOT to stop terrorism, but
to prepare us for the upcoming purges. Already, here in the
South, cops are stopping cars at random roadblocks and
searching cars without any probable cause. Any passengers or
driver found te be without identification papers is held for
further questioning. All under the guise of "seatbelt safety".
Who would be foolish enough to think this has anything
whatsoever to do with seatbelts. Where is the Constitution?
Rounded up, taken out back and shot in the back of the head
apparently! Next to come, disenfranchised discrete insular
minorities, one by one. When they come for you, will any one
be left?

- J

----
In Terror War, Privacy vs. Security

Search for Illicit Activities Taps Confidential Financial Data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49323-2002Jun2.
html

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 3, 2002; Page A01

In the amorphous war on terrorism, government officials
believe they have a new weapon: the growing number of
financial institutions that use powerful technology to monitor
confidential customer activity and report suspicious behavior
to law enforcement and intelligence officials.

Driven by little-known provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the
anti-terror legislation that was approved after Sept. 11,
banks, securities firms and other companies are deploying
computer systems that draw together millions of transactions,
sometimes automatically, in searches for money laundering,
terrorist financing or other unusual patterns.

"The Patriot Act is imposing a citizen-soldier burden on the
gatekeepers of the financial institutions," said David
Aufhauser, general counsel at the Treasury Department and head
of an interagency task force on terrorist finance. "In many
respects, they are in the best position to police attempts by
people who would do ill to us in the U.S., to penetrate the
financial systems."

Federal regulators three years ago tried to impose similar
monitoring requirements on financial institutions to combat
money laundering but dropped their plan, known as "know your
customer," after it caused an uproar among consumers concerned
about their privacy. Now some specialists believe the scrutiny
of consumers on the government's behalf is going even deeper.

"Sept. 11 obviously made us totally rethink where to draw the
line with respect to government access to customer
information," said David Medine, a former financial privacy
specialist at the Federal Trade Commission.

"The question going forward is: Did we draw that line in the
right place?" Medine said. "It is really a fundamental civil
liberties issue."

The increased financial scrutiny is part of an expanded
campaign by the government to tap into public and confidential
data in search of people who pose terrorist threats. The push
relies heavily on data and analytical tools, some of them
developed in the 1990s for direct mail, credit-card offers and
other kinds of targeted marketing.

As directed by the Patriot Act, Treasury Department
regulations require that securities firms, money-services
businesses and broker-dealers file reports on suspicious
activity, something banks have been doing for several years.
Those firms, along with mutual funds, operators of credit-card
companies and some other financial companies, also must have
anti-money-laundering programs.

Congress also said that financial companies must authenticate
new customers, check their identities against government watch
lists and maintain records for government scrutiny.

The law encourages financial institutions to share information
among themselves about customers suspected of being involved
with terrorism or money laundering, and it gives them
protection from legal liability for doing so. In addition, it
gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies greater access
to confidential information without a subpoena while also
requiring that credit bureaus secretly turn over credit
reports to the CIA, National Security Agency and other
intelligence agencies when presented with a request signed by
a senior agency official.

While law-enforcement officials said the cooperation of the
financial services industry is critical to the war on
terrorism, some industry officials have expressed concern.

H. Rodgin Cohen, a leading financial services lawyer in New
York, said he believes that financial companies may find
themselves asking customers about seemingly suspicious but
innocent activity that might be embarrassing or involve
private matters, such as health care. He predicted that they
also will file more suspicious-activity reports, with less
evidence, to avoid trouble from the government.

"As long as the government can enlist the financial
institution as part of the front-line defense against money
laundering and terrorism, it has got to be anticipated there
will be more in the way of intrusions on privacy," said Cohen,
chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell. "It is just a different
manifestation of whether they can wiretap you."

Tracy Calder, chief money-laundering prevention officer at UBS
PaineWebber Inc., agreed the new reporting mandates, coupled
with the sophisticated monitoring technology, are "absolutely
intrusive." But, she said, they will help fight terrorism and
crime, something she believes most people will embrace.
"Americans are willing to accept more intrusiveness in
exchange for security," she said.

The computerized systems create profiles of customer activity,
sometimes including more than a year's transactions, and sift
through deposits, wire transfers, ATM activity and links among
account holders. Mantas Inc., a Fairfax County spinoff from
SRA International Inc., a government contractor that works
closely with U.S. intelligence agencies, recently demonstrated
how its software can monitor millions of transactions a day.

Using data culled from people whose identities were masked,
officials showed reports that a bank analyst might receive
from an overnight computer review. One report in the
demonstration had a risk score of 95 out of 100. A click on a
screen that resembled a Web page pulled up a file that showed
several unrelated individuals at the same address had, over
several days, sent out 18 checks or money orders for a total
of $9,000.

Another click on the screen brought up a report about links
among five relatively new accounts at different branches of
the same bank. Those accounts had transferred $125,000 to
another account in Miami. The system noted that the account
holder there then wrote a check for $125,000.

While each account on its own did not appear to represent a
risk, the coordinated activity set off alarms, said Don
Temple, an anti-money-laundering specialist at Mantas and a
former special agent at the IRS. "You can only detect
suspicious transactions today with sophisticated data-mining
and pattern-recognition software," Temple said.

Experts said such systems could also flag a securities account
that never trades stocks. Or the systems could draw attention
to someone of apparently modest means who receives a $40,000
wire transfer from abroad and then sends out a large check.
Specialists said the systems, by sweeping through vast
electronic depositories of information, can find links among
customers that a person might never see.

"Sometimes we've referred to our product as the 'Big Brother,'
" said Alison Holland, spokeswoman for NetEconomy, a Dutch
firm that is pitching its systems to U.S. firms. "It can
monitor so many things."

Some companies used such tools before Sept. 11, as computer
power increased and the government increased efforts to stop
the flow of drug and mob money through the U.S. banking
system. But TowerGroup, a Massachusetts research firm that
tracks financial services, estimated that banks and other
institutions will double their spending on monitoring systems
this year, to $120 million. "This is just a sea change in the
industry," said TowerGroup analyst Breffni McGuire.

UBS PaineWebber, for example, recently signed a deal with
Searchspace Corp., a company that says its computer system
"captures and uses all transactions that flow through an
organization to provide continuously adaptive profiles of all
individuals."

Riggs Bank NA is working with Americas Software Corp. to
install a similar system that will automate procedures it has
had in place for several years. Citigroup Inc. has contracted
with Mantas, which says its software can "reduce the risk of
money laundering with comprehensive, enterprise-wide
surveillance of your customer, account, and transaction
information . . . to reveal suspicious and previously unknown
behaviors."

Last week, in response to a mandate in the Patriot Act, the
Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,
known as FinCen, began operating a secure online network to
make it easier for financial companies to report suspicious
behavior by customers to the government.

Central to that relationship are suspicious-activity reports,
which require officials to fill in more than 50 kinds of
information, including addresses, account numbers, Social
Security numbers and phone numbers.

They are maintained by FinCen in databases that are available
to local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies. Under
Patriot Act provisions, intelligence agencies also have the
right to get such reports on demand. People who are the
subjects of the reports may not see them, a FinCen official
said.

The number of suspicious-activity reports filed with the
government was almost 163,000 in 2000, compared with 81,000 in
1997, the first full year the reports were collected, the
agency said.

The pace of the reports jumped sharply after the Sept. 11
attacks. About 125,000 were filed from Oct. 1, 2001, to the
end of March, compared with about 86,000 in the same period
the previous year, agency officials said.

John Byrne, senior counsel at the American Bankers
Association, said members have cooperated with the government
in tracking down terrorist assets and matching customer names
against government lists of suspects since Sept. 11. But Byrne
said that financial institutions, even those using the most
sophisticated technology, need guidance and timely
intelligence to help the government.

"We have proven our willingness to respond to legal government
requests to search records and report suspected crime," he
said. "What concerns us is any policy that suggests that the
financial industry on its own determine potential terrorist
activity. At the end of the day, the financial sector is not
law enforcement."

Officials at FinCen said they have no interest in deputizing
the financial industry and intruding unnecessarily into the
financial lives of most people. They want the industry to act
as a gatekeeper, not a cop, and to focus on risky customers.

"We have this important practical reason for paying attention
to privacy concerns," FinCen Director James F. Sloan said. "If
we don't, we're going to end up losing these tools."

Sloan said suspicious-activity reports, coupled with powerful
data warehouses and mining tools at FinCen, have turned up
leads and suspects. "This created an opportunity for dialogue
that has never existed before," Sloan said of the Patriot Act.
"It has given us an opportunity to work with the industry like
never before."

2002 The Washington Post Company

---

[See also:]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30027-2002May29
.html

Financial Database To Screen Accounts
Joint Effort Targets Suspicious Activities

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 30, 2002; Page E01

NEW YORK, May 29 -- Leading financial services firms here have
formed a private database company that will compile
information about criminals, terrorists and other suspicious
people, for use in screening new customers and weeding out
those who may pose a risk.

The company, known as Regulatory DataCorp Int'l LLC, comes as
financial services face strict new government mandates to make
efforts to identify those who may want to use the U.S.
financial system for illegal activity and file reports of
suspicious activity to federal investigators, according to
people involved in the effort.

you know what? -- because of all the Nazi procedures
already in place in California, i had a hard time opening
a bank account when i moved here. i finally decided it
wasn't worth it, and since 9/11, now i'm happy that i
don't have one, and i don't intend to open one.

-monz

----- Original Message -----
From: "X. J. Scott" <xjscott@...>
To: "metatuning" <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 7:15 AM
Subject: [metatuning] new banking rules - Naziism has returned

> This is interesting.
>
> Another nice feature of this system is that the feds can tell
> exactly who is giving donations to what organization since
> they can trace all check deposits to "Activist Organization Y"
> from each individual SSN that donated. Could be very useful
> when getting ready to round up all the undesirables, like
> people who vote the wrong way or object to this and that.
>
> Of course we don't need such a system to track REAL terrorists
> -- looks like the CIA knew the identities of most of bin
> Laden's associates in the US and was tracking their flight
> school activity etnc but never could be bothered to inform the
> FBI, INS, or whitehouse about these things. So the problem was
> not taht our intelligence was unable to track these people --
> our intelligence worked fine. Therefore we do not need 'more'
> intrusive, unwarranted monitoring without probable cause of
> the activities of the citizenry. Of course the reason these
> systems are being put in place are NOT to stop terrorism, but
> to prepare us for the upcoming purges. Already, here in the
> South, cops are stopping cars at random roadblocks and
> searching cars without any probable cause. Any passengers or
> driver found te be without identification papers is held for
> further questioning. All under the guise of "seatbelt safety".
> Who would be foolish enough to think this has anything
> whatsoever to do with seatbelts. Where is the Constitution?
> Rounded up, taken out back and shot in the back of the head
> apparently! Next to come, disenfranchised discrete insular
> minorities, one by one. When they come for you, will any one
> be left?
>
> - J
>
> ----
> In Terror War, Privacy vs. Security
>
> Search for Illicit Activities Taps Confidential Financial Data
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49323-2002Jun2.
> html
>
> By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Monday, June 3, 2002; Page A01
>
> In the amorphous war on terrorism, government officials
> believe they have a new weapon: the growing number of
> financial institutions that use powerful technology to monitor
> confidential customer activity and report suspicious behavior
> to law enforcement and intelligence officials.
>
> Driven by little-known provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the
> anti-terror legislation that was approved after Sept. 11,
> banks, securities firms and other companies are deploying
> computer systems that draw together millions of transactions,
> sometimes automatically, in searches for money laundering,
> terrorist financing or other unusual patterns.
>
> "The Patriot Act is imposing a citizen-soldier burden on the
> gatekeepers of the financial institutions," said David
> Aufhauser, general counsel at the Treasury Department and head
> of an interagency task force on terrorist finance. "In many
> respects, they are in the best position to police attempts by
> people who would do ill to us in the U.S., to penetrate the
> financial systems."
>
> Federal regulators three years ago tried to impose similar
> monitoring requirements on financial institutions to combat
> money laundering but dropped their plan, known as "know your
> customer," after it caused an uproar among consumers concerned
> about their privacy. Now some specialists believe the scrutiny
> of consumers on the government's behalf is going even deeper.
>
> "Sept. 11 obviously made us totally rethink where to draw the
> line with respect to government access to customer
> information," said David Medine, a former financial privacy
> specialist at the Federal Trade Commission.
>
> "The question going forward is: Did we draw that line in the
> right place?" Medine said. "It is really a fundamental civil
> liberties issue."
>
> The increased financial scrutiny is part of an expanded
> campaign by the government to tap into public and confidential
> data in search of people who pose terrorist threats. The push
> relies heavily on data and analytical tools, some of them
> developed in the 1990s for direct mail, credit-card offers and
> other kinds of targeted marketing.
>
> As directed by the Patriot Act, Treasury Department
> regulations require that securities firms, money-services
> businesses and broker-dealers file reports on suspicious
> activity, something banks have been doing for several years.
> Those firms, along with mutual funds, operators of credit-card
> companies and some other financial companies, also must have
> anti-money-laundering programs.
>
> Congress also said that financial companies must authenticate
> new customers, check their identities against government watch
> lists and maintain records for government scrutiny.
>
> The law encourages financial institutions to share information
> among themselves about customers suspected of being involved
> with terrorism or money laundering, and it gives them
> protection from legal liability for doing so. In addition, it
> gives law enforcement and intelligence agencies greater access
> to confidential information without a subpoena while also
> requiring that credit bureaus secretly turn over credit
> reports to the CIA, National Security Agency and other
> intelligence agencies when presented with a request signed by
> a senior agency official.
>
> While law-enforcement officials said the cooperation of the
> financial services industry is critical to the war on
> terrorism, some industry officials have expressed concern.
>
> H. Rodgin Cohen, a leading financial services lawyer in New
> York, said he believes that financial companies may find
> themselves asking customers about seemingly suspicious but
> innocent activity that might be embarrassing or involve
> private matters, such as health care. He predicted that they
> also will file more suspicious-activity reports, with less
> evidence, to avoid trouble from the government.
>
> "As long as the government can enlist the financial
> institution as part of the front-line defense against money
> laundering and terrorism, it has got to be anticipated there
> will be more in the way of intrusions on privacy," said Cohen,
> chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell. "It is just a different
> manifestation of whether they can wiretap you."
>
> Tracy Calder, chief money-laundering prevention officer at UBS
> PaineWebber Inc., agreed the new reporting mandates, coupled
> with the sophisticated monitoring technology, are "absolutely
> intrusive." But, she said, they will help fight terrorism and
> crime, something she believes most people will embrace.
> "Americans are willing to accept more intrusiveness in
> exchange for security," she said.
>
> The computerized systems create profiles of customer activity,
> sometimes including more than a year's transactions, and sift
> through deposits, wire transfers, ATM activity and links among
> account holders. Mantas Inc., a Fairfax County spinoff from
> SRA International Inc., a government contractor that works
> closely with U.S. intelligence agencies, recently demonstrated
> how its software can monitor millions of transactions a day.
>
> Using data culled from people whose identities were masked,
> officials showed reports that a bank analyst might receive
> from an overnight computer review. One report in the
> demonstration had a risk score of 95 out of 100. A click on a
> screen that resembled a Web page pulled up a file that showed
> several unrelated individuals at the same address had, over
> several days, sent out 18 checks or money orders for a total
> of $9,000.
>
> Another click on the screen brought up a report about links
> among five relatively new accounts at different branches of
> the same bank. Those accounts had transferred $125,000 to
> another account in Miami. The system noted that the account
> holder there then wrote a check for $125,000.
>
> While each account on its own did not appear to represent a
> risk, the coordinated activity set off alarms, said Don
> Temple, an anti-money-laundering specialist at Mantas and a
> former special agent at the IRS. "You can only detect
> suspicious transactions today with sophisticated data-mining
> and pattern-recognition software," Temple said.
>
> Experts said such systems could also flag a securities account
> that never trades stocks. Or the systems could draw attention
> to someone of apparently modest means who receives a $40,000
> wire transfer from abroad and then sends out a large check.
> Specialists said the systems, by sweeping through vast
> electronic depositories of information, can find links among
> customers that a person might never see.
>
> "Sometimes we've referred to our product as the 'Big Brother,'
> " said Alison Holland, spokeswoman for NetEconomy, a Dutch
> firm that is pitching its systems to U.S. firms. "It can
> monitor so many things."
>
> Some companies used such tools before Sept. 11, as computer
> power increased and the government increased efforts to stop
> the flow of drug and mob money through the U.S. banking
> system. But TowerGroup, a Massachusetts research firm that
> tracks financial services, estimated that banks and other
> institutions will double their spending on monitoring systems
> this year, to $120 million. "This is just a sea change in the
> industry," said TowerGroup analyst Breffni McGuire.
>
> UBS PaineWebber, for example, recently signed a deal with
> Searchspace Corp., a company that says its computer system
> "captures and uses all transactions that flow through an
> organization to provide continuously adaptive profiles of all
> individuals."
>
> Riggs Bank NA is working with Americas Software Corp. to
> install a similar system that will automate procedures it has
> had in place for several years. Citigroup Inc. has contracted
> with Mantas, which says its software can "reduce the risk of
> money laundering with comprehensive, enterprise-wide
> surveillance of your customer, account, and transaction
> information . . . to reveal suspicious and previously unknown
> behaviors."
>
> Last week, in response to a mandate in the Patriot Act, the
> Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,
> known as FinCen, began operating a secure online network to
> make it easier for financial companies to report suspicious
> behavior by customers to the government.
>
> Central to that relationship are suspicious-activity reports,
> which require officials to fill in more than 50 kinds of
> information, including addresses, account numbers, Social
> Security numbers and phone numbers.
>
> They are maintained by FinCen in databases that are available
> to local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies. Under
> Patriot Act provisions, intelligence agencies also have the
> right to get such reports on demand. People who are the
> subjects of the reports may not see them, a FinCen official
> said.
>
> The number of suspicious-activity reports filed with the
> government was almost 163,000 in 2000, compared with 81,000 in
> 1997, the first full year the reports were collected, the
> agency said.
>
> The pace of the reports jumped sharply after the Sept. 11
> attacks. About 125,000 were filed from Oct. 1, 2001, to the
> end of March, compared with about 86,000 in the same period
> the previous year, agency officials said.
>
> John Byrne, senior counsel at the American Bankers
> Association, said members have cooperated with the government
> in tracking down terrorist assets and matching customer names
> against government lists of suspects since Sept. 11. But Byrne
> said that financial institutions, even those using the most
> sophisticated technology, need guidance and timely
> intelligence to help the government.
>
> "We have proven our willingness to respond to legal government
> requests to search records and report suspected crime," he
> said. "What concerns us is any policy that suggests that the
> financial industry on its own determine potential terrorist
> activity. At the end of the day, the financial sector is not
> law enforcement."
>
> Officials at FinCen said they have no interest in deputizing
> the financial industry and intruding unnecessarily into the
> financial lives of most people. They want the industry to act
> as a gatekeeper, not a cop, and to focus on risky customers.
>
> "We have this important practical reason for paying attention
> to privacy concerns," FinCen Director James F. Sloan said. "If
> we don't, we're going to end up losing these tools."
>
> Sloan said suspicious-activity reports, coupled with powerful
> data warehouses and mining tools at FinCen, have turned up
> leads and suspects. "This created an opportunity for dialogue
> that has never existed before," Sloan said of the Patriot Act.
> "It has given us an opportunity to work with the industry like
> never before."
>
> 2002 The Washington Post Company
>
> ---
>
> [See also:]
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30027-2002May29
> .html
>
> Financial Database To Screen Accounts
> Joint Effort Targets Suspicious Activities
>
> By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Thursday, May 30, 2002; Page E01
>
> NEW YORK, May 29 -- Leading financial services firms here have
> formed a private database company that will compile
> information about criminals, terrorists and other suspicious
> people, for use in screening new customers and weeding out
> those who may pose a risk.
>
> The company, known as Regulatory DataCorp Int'l LLC, comes as
> financial services face strict new government mandates to make
> efforts to identify those who may want to use the U.S.
> financial system for illegal activity and file reports of
> suspicious activity to federal investigators, according to
> people involved in the effort.
>
>
>
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