US May Invoke "State Secrets" To Stop Banking Suit

An anonymous reader sends us to the International Herald Tribune for news that the Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn once again to a favorite legal tool, the 'state secrets' privilege. The administration wants to shut down a lawsuit brought against Swift, a huge Belgium banking cooperative that that the article calls the "nerve center of the global banking industry," after it was revealed that Swift secretly let the CIA comb through millions of private financial records. Quoting: "Two US banking customers sued Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. Many legal and financial analysts expected that the lawsuit would be thrown out because US banking privacy laws are considered much more lax than those in much of Europe. But to the surprise of many, a judge refused to throw out the lawsuit in a ruling in June."

Now SWIFT is an interesting subject

[A beautiful mind]

Basically, those are the guys who run international banking, with the message centers and the networking. As far as I know, their physical location is a secret aswell, only a few of these centers exist in the world. SWIFT is more or less owned by the largest banks in the world, roughly based on their marketshare and size. That was the only way they felt assured that noone is going to swindle them with 8 bit xor "encryption" on financial transactions.

If these guys are cooperating with Bush/the US Govt., then basically the largest banks in the world are cooperating with Bush, giving the US access to international banking.

What gave the CIA the rights...

[bomanbot]

...to comb through private financial recordings from a Belgian bank in the first place? I mean, last time I checked, Belgium does not exactly fall under US jurisdiction, doesn't it? Wouldn't that fall under some international laws or something?

Re:It's relative.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The only borderline-objective source for normalcy seems, to me, to be what the market actually produces in response to consumer desires.

Nice theory, too bad it depends on a free market. When the whitehouse can dole out interviews and 'leaks' to favored networks and many news agencies are themselves just subsidiaries of larger companies with larger agendas that can easily conflict with the simple goal of unbiased reporting, then simple market-based theories aren't very meaningful.

people abandoned CNN in the late 90s and early 2000s to watch Fox News instead. That's an indicator to me, that the public is actually quite -- perhaps frighteningly -- conservative.

That's certainly one interpretation. But not the only one. There are more dimensions to news reporting than just "left and right." A few years ago, I saw an interview with one of the original program directors for Fox News. He attributed much of their success over CNN to their style of reporting -- not their content. Fox made a deliberate presentation decision to be more "folksy," to have their anchors and reporters speak more in the fashion of one neighbor talking to another than a reporter "handing down the truth" like God to Moses.

Would this be a bit like

[Aexia]

how prior to the 2006 elections, the networks justified the tremendous slant of the guests [mediamatters.org] on their Sunday Morning talk shows by pointing out that Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and House.

But after the 2006 elections... well, the slant still exists. Guests are mostly conservative [mediamatters.org] and overwhelmingly white males [mediamatters.org].

The public has elected a Democratic House and Senate but you wouldn't realize it from the media...

Re:Why does this sound so dire?

[evil_arrival_of_good]

I agree with WheelDweller. I totally *want* data mining so that Islamic terrorists are caught.

Don't put me in the LovesGWBush camp, I don't watch Fox News - live in a urban liberal haven and walk to work. I've read Chomsky for years. BUT I'm finding it hard to respect my fellow liberals on this war with terrorism thing. Its freaking serious and real, and it means data mining, inspecting suspicious behavior, arresting people, and dropping bombs in areas of the world.

Liberals should be ok with all of the above when used intelligently to thwart Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. ( I will agree, the Bush administration has NOT been so intelligent and also went to war in a totally wrong country, dumbasses) From the majority of posts in the thread all claims of wrongdoing are carte blanche condemnations of whole catagories of police activities. No wonder we have these idiot neocons running the show, intelligent non-neocons exalt privacy and freedom to meaningless and unbounded fundamental first-principle that disables all offensive and defensive measure our goverments can take to protect us. If the liberals aren't up to engaging in war, then we'll continue to allow conservatives to occupy positions of power.