WSJ: CIA Spying on Americans’ Financial Accounts

The US “Wall street Journal” daily revealed Friday that the Central Intelligence Agency is building a vast database of international money transfers that includes millions of Americans’ financial and personal data.

The program, which collects information from US money-transfer companies including Western Union, is carried out under the same provision of the Patriot Act that enables the National Security Agency to collect nearly all American phone records, officials familiar with the program say. Like the NSA program, the mass collection of financial transactions is authorized by a secret national-security court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
cia “The CIA, as a foreign-intelligence agency, is barred from targeting Americans in its intelligence collection. But it can conduct domestic opeournarations for foreign intelligence purposes. The CIA program is meant to fill what US officials see as an important gap in their ability to track “terrorist” financing world-wide,” current and former US officials said.
The program serves as the latest example of blurred lines between foreign and domestic intelligence as technology globalizes many activities carried out by citizens and terrorists alike. The CIA program also demonstrates how other US spy agencies, aside from the NSA, are using the same authority to collect data such as details of financial transactions.

The Central Intelligence Agency is building a vast database of international money transfers that includes millions of Americans’ financial and personal data, such as Social Security numbers, Devlin Barrett reports.
In this case, the secret surveillance court has authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to work with the CIA to collect large amounts of data on international transactions, including those of Americans, as part of the agency’s terrorism investigations.

The data collected by the CIA doesn’t include any transactions that are solely domestic, and the majority of records collected are solely foreign, but they include those to and from the US, as well. In some cases, it does include data beyond basic financial records, such as US Social Security numbers, which can be used to tie the financial activity to a specific person. That has raised concerns among some lawmakers who learned about the program this summer, according to officials briefed on the matter.

The CIA declined to comment on specific programs but said its operations comply with the law and face oversight from Congress, the FISA Court and internal watchdogs. “The CIA protects the nation and upholds the privacy rights of Americans by ensuring that its intelligence-collection activities are focused on acquiring foreign intelligence and counterintelligence in accordance with US laws,” said agency spokesman Dean Boyd.

The FBI declined to comment.

A US intelligence official said that any spy-agency operation under FISA Court orders require “strict compliance with the law and with those court orders.” Orders would include procedures to safeguard the privacy of people in the US; require training of those with access to information; prohibit searches not specifically authorized; and limit how long data may be retained, the official said.

In a typical money transfer, a person goes to a company such as Western Union and uses cash or a credit card to send funds to someone else. The recipient can pick up funds at a local money-transfer office. This process differs from, say, a bank transfer, in which funds might be moved from one account to another.

Source: WSJ, edited by website team