Little-Known Surveillance Program Captures Money Transfers Between US and More Than 20 Countries (wsj.com) 34
Hundreds of federal, state and local U.S. law-enforcement agencies have access without court oversight to a database of more than 150 million money transfers between people in the U.S. and in more than 20 countries, according to internal program documents and an investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden. WSJ: The database, housed at a little-known nonprofit called the Transaction Record Analysis Center, or TRAC, was set up by the Arizona state attorney general's office in 2014 as part of a settlement reached with Western Union to combat cross-border trafficking of drugs and people from Mexico. It has since expanded to allow officials of more than 600 law-enforcement entities -- from federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to small-town police departments in nearly every state -- to monitor the flow of funds through money services between the U.S. and countries around the world.
TRAC's data includes the full names of the sender and recipient as well as the transaction amount. Rich Lebel, TRAC's director, said the program has directly resulted in hundreds of leads and busts involving drug cartels and other criminals seeking to launder money, and has revealed patterns of money flow that help law-enforcement agencies get a broader grasp on smuggling networks. "It's a law-enforcement investigative tool," Mr. Lebel said. "We don't broadcast it to the world, but we don't run from or hide from it either." Mr. Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said TRAC allows the government to "serve itself an all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' personal financial data while bypassing the normal protections for Americans' privacy."
Internal records, including TRAC meeting minutes and copies of 140 subpoenas from the Arizona attorney general, were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. They show that any authorized law-enforcement agency can query the data without a warrant to examine the transactions of people inside the U.S. for evidence of money laundering and other crimes. One slideshow prepared by a TRAC investigator showed how the program's data could be used to scan for categories such as "Middle Eastern/Arabic names" in bulk transaction records.
TRAC's data includes the full names of the sender and recipient as well as the transaction amount. Rich Lebel, TRAC's director, said the program has directly resulted in hundreds of leads and busts involving drug cartels and other criminals seeking to launder money, and has revealed patterns of money flow that help law-enforcement agencies get a broader grasp on smuggling networks. "It's a law-enforcement investigative tool," Mr. Lebel said. "We don't broadcast it to the world, but we don't run from or hide from it either." Mr. Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said TRAC allows the government to "serve itself an all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' personal financial data while bypassing the normal protections for Americans' privacy."
Internal records, including TRAC meeting minutes and copies of 140 subpoenas from the Arizona attorney general, were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. They show that any authorized law-enforcement agency can query the data without a warrant to examine the transactions of people inside the U.S. for evidence of money laundering and other crimes. One slideshow prepared by a TRAC investigator showed how the program's data could be used to scan for categories such as "Middle Eastern/Arabic names" in bulk transaction records.
Digital currency (Score:3, Insightful)
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
With there being so much international crime, I would hope they are monitoring monetary transactions to other nations. "Follow the money" isn't just something you should do for cracking down on legitimate business sectors.
Re: (Score:1)
offs get offa my law you gov-a-cidal idiot
You are more than welcome to go to Somalia and live your libertarian fantasy
I, on the other hand, appreciate that I live in a civilized country and a government with the authority to tax and provide services
My building has every convenience, it's gonna make life easy for me [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
'Merica, you ever visit
I mean, if you want to live in a _real_ civilized country you would be paying a flat 40% in taxes and giving up yer guns, but for the comparison to such tax free havens like Somalia or Honduras the US certainly qualifies as civilized
Re: Good. (Score:2)
Hunter Biden paid Joe Biden 1.2 million dollars in "rent" during 2017 and 2018. Joe Biden declared 12,000 dollars in rent recieved on his taxes across those two years.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Gravis,
I would certainly like to see these asshats pay their fair share, when does the roundup start?
How much money is in tax havens? [taxjustice.net]
An $21 to $32 trillion in financial assets are sitting offshore in tax havens. Due to the secrecy that pervades the tax haven system, precise numbers are hard to come by so estimates can vary. The Tax Justice Network estimates that $427 billion is tax is lost every year to tax havens.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not lost, the money is there, there is no tax code that requires anyone to collect on this money so it's completely legal.
Moaning about tax havens is just blaming the puppets for the show being shit.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax havens are used to conceal individual and corporate revenue in order to avoid paying taxes legally owed. For example, by US law you owe taxes on your income, and tax havens are illegal concealment of income to avoid paying taxes owed. They're mainly used by the very rich and corporations to avoid paying taxes, creating a significant loss of tax revenue that means that those of us who properly pay taxes owed have to pay more taxes, or to finance more debt. Supporting tax dodges just screws everyone honest about their taxes.
Re: (Score:3)
No, calling out people who want to see the show without paying for their ticket is completely valid
Every single corporation in America (and most wealthy people) rely on the US military, police forces etc to keep their wealth safe, not to mention the regulatory actions of the FED, etc... that keep theives from robbing them blind with no recourse
Furthermore, the essential infrastructure roads, airports, water, power, sewer, are relied on, but not paid for by the people who hide away their money to avoid taxat
It doesn't really target US citizens (Score:2)
As TFS says, it's limited to particular countries. Why? Because Western Union, MoneyGram, etc. are the go-to solutions for moving what Americans consider petty cash and above petty cash remittances between illegals on our side and family and business associates south of the border.
This is not like monitoring PayPal or Venmo in the name of busting a few drug dealers and illegals. These services are overwhelmingly used by foreigners doing things which are not legal under federal law when the money is being se
Trac (Score:3)
https://trac.edgewall.org/ [edgewall.org]
Must be a plugin.
Ridiculous (Score:3)
Mr. Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said TRAC allows the government to "serve itself an all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' personal financial data while bypassing the normal protections for Americans' privacy."
Nice hyperbole Mr. Senator. First it only tracks transfers between US persons and overseas counterparts to one of 20 countries; that's hardly an "all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' personal financial data".
Secondly, if you're so concerned about the government having that data, then have you heard of this little known agency called the IRS? Or literally any of the states' FTB? The government already has this data, they confirm it from financial institutions and you are required to report any transaction over $10,000, and recently lowered to $600, to the IRS.
There's nothing here that isn't already held by the IRS and accessible via law enforcement per Internal Revenue Code 6103(i)(1) that requires IRS officers to share data with the FBI for non-tax criminal laws. It seems that TRAC only organizes the data so it's searchable more easily than requesting tax records.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice whatabout, but note that your local police department can't access the IRS's records, unlike this database of transactions.
Re: (Score:3)
Financial transactions above a threshold ($10k until recently, now $600) are reported to both the IRS and FinCen https://www.fincen.gov/ [fincen.gov] . The police very much do use FinCen to look for fraud, money laundering, terrorism, etc.
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Financial transactions above a threshold ($10k until recently, now $600)
Try again. The FinCen threshold is still $10k. The reporting of transactions over $600 is to the IRS and it has been delayed. You haven't shown that Law Enforcement has unrestricted access to IRS data.
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My original comment was that the Senator is hyperbolic in stating this an "all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' financial data". Most Americans do not do financial transactions overseas or do it in very limited terms. This program does not appear to require a warrant, but is limited in scope and is hardly comprehensive and thus the alarmism from the Senator is "ridiculous".
I then assert that the IRS has way more informa
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, there is so much to unpack here, I am not sure where to start, but I will try.
Firstly, you start with an ad hominem. You probably don't realize that because you showed that you don't understand what it means ("You call that a "whatabout", an ad hominem").
Let's talk about law enforcement's access to IRS data. It's not comparable because of the very reason you post: "subject to a warrant". So, it's not a free-for-all for law enforcement access, unlike this new database.
As for the $600 reporting rule, y
Re: (Score:1)
It tracks and searches US persons, that means US citizens, which is a violation of the constitution, as is whatever the IRS collects from banks.
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Your OPINION of what the Constitution allows seems to have been crafted by a child, maybe you should read up on some actual SCOTUS cases
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The framers of the Constitution were serious about raising taxes and used available means to ensure they could collect it. Read up on the Whiskey Rebellion [wikipedia.org]
Your anger is almost as amusing as your intellect
Wyden concerned about information gathering? (Score:5, Insightful)
"serve itself an all-you-can-eat buffet of Americans' personal financial data while bypassing the normal protections for Americans' privacy."
Is this the same Wyden who says he's anti-surveillance but voted to enact [senate.gov] the Patriot Act?
A guy who says he wants to amend and will filibuster the Patriot Act each time it's up for renewal but hasn't? [govtrack.us]
As stated here multiple times, we need to harness the hot air that comes out of DC for electrical power generation. At least these self-serving idiots could then self-power their EVs. Asset forfeiture laws have sprung up everywhere in order to pad police and prosecutorial budgets. Have cash on you when you travel? Oh police would love to confiscate it if they think they have reason to believe you're a drug mule. Do you want your money back? You have to go to court and fight them which means most of the time they'll just keep the money. They even want to track small transactions [newsweek.com] because they have the tools in place to do it, the number is arbitrary!
It doesn't matter what part of the political spectrum you're on, we have both the left and right pushing legislation that erodes our privacy and steals from us in the name of {"Children", "War on Drugs", "War on Terrorism", "War on America", "Entrepreneurs", "Cash", "Free Speech"}
We need to hold politicians accountable and vote for those who take up space without actually doing anything except renaming post offices.
Oh and wholly offtopic but the great mental midget and first-class seat purveyor from Houston wants to make free speech that she disagrees with, a crime. [nypost.com] I wonder if old Wyden will support that if it gets out of the House?
nice trick to bypass warrants and oversight (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
There's FinCEN that has the mission of collecting financial transactions for research purposes by law enforcement. Specifically authorized by laws https://www.fincen.gov/fincens... [fincen.gov] .
I agree that the whole "land of the free" self-image here in the US falls apart once you learn how the rest of the world actually works. Privacy laws, etc., outside the US are a lot more effective, etc.
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Thanks, appreciated the informative link. Def an Interesting read... and there is lots on there to ingest.
Uh, yea. (Score:2)
"Freedom? Oh, freedom. Well, that's just some people talk'n." - Desperado -- Johnny Cash
US is so "Chinese"! (Score:1)
600 law-enforcement entities ... (Score:2)
Middle Eastern/Arabic names? (Score:2)
One slideshow prepared by a TRAC investigator showed how the program's data could be used to scan for categories such as "Middle Eastern/Arabic names" in bulk transaction records.
I wonder if that will pick up people named "Al Kayda".