The NSA Spies on International Payments

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The latest in NSA spying news? According to this article, the NSA has been spying on your international payments made by credit card. :eek:

The information from the American foreign intelligence agency, acquired by 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.
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Then why aren't they catching fraudsters that have hacked account information, more promptly?
 
Remember when the government used to abide by the Fourth Amendment and obtain warrants? This is what we get for allowing our government to "protect us from terrorists". Never mind that you're probably almost as likely to be killed by lightning or a shark as you are to be killed by a terrorist in the U.S. That gives me an idea, we should expand government power to protect us from sharks.
 
Then why aren't they catching fraudsters that have hacked account information, more promptly?
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Because the NSA are not Law Enforcement? Someone else is paid to do that job.


Never mind that you're probably almost as likely to be killed by lightning or a shark as you are to be killed by a terrorist in the U.S.
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Which would seem to suggest that they are doing a pretty decent job cause terrorists are sure as hell having a bonanza in many other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_January–June_2012
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I think terror attacks world wide have sharks beat by a wide margin.
 
lcpiper said:
Which would seem to suggest that they are doing a pretty decent job cause terrorists are sure as hell having a bonanza in many other countries.
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That doesn't even come close to proving anything. I do like the circular logic, though.
 
There doesn't really seem to be any part of our private lives the NSA doesn't have their eyes and ears on. They should just change their initials to KGB. They've done a better job themselves of destroying our way of life than the terrorists ever could.
 
Cool, now they can expose the offshore tax shelters of politicians, celebrities, or heads of business? Cayman wire transfer, anyone?
 
why would they expose their financial backers?

don't you understand how 'do as I say not as I do' works?
 
lcpiper said:
Which would seem to suggest that they are doing a pretty decent job cause terrorists are sure as hell having a bonanza in many other countries.
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Until you can provide evidence of attacks foiled(which we apparently don't need to know about unless it's politically advantageous for there to be a "leak" for Obama), it suggests nothing. The link you provided shows attacks mostly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries that are either war zones, were war zones until recently, or are about to become war zones. Doesn't prove a thing about our country and how difficult it already was to carry out acts of terror.
 
What I don't understand about terrorists is why do they target civilians? Do they actually blame the populace of the US for the acts committed by our government? Why not target the people calling the shots?
 
So basically the NSA is extending its reach into credit card monitoring, because other than that, we've been doing this for decades. I've been in banking for almost a decade and can tell you we've been required by law to implement OFAC (Office of Foreign Asset Control) and BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) controls like this long before I came on board. When we get a "hit," we file a SAR, or suspicious activity report, and you can bet your ass the Feds come knocking.
 
Chokomonkey, if you want an excellent example of a completely successful terror attack go read up on the Madrid Train Bombings here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings

This attack convinced Spain to pull it's support to the Coalition Forces in Iraq.
This support was already very unpopular with the public there and the bombings were all that was required to convince the newly elected leadership to withdraw.
 
Funny, I always thought that FTM always meant "F*** The Man". Must be one of those other things that the NSA and I don't see eye to eye on.
 
What worries me about this, IF it is true, is that this data would have little use from a security standpoint ... terrorists or other folks engaging in illegal activities aren't usually going to use credit cards (since they leave such a pronounced electronic trail) ... monitoring banking makes sense to detect things like money laundering but credit card data just gives them useless data that would clog up their system unnecessarily

I also worry that they are starting to suffer from the same problems they had pre-911 ... there was data indicating a problem and we didn't detect it in time ... so now they are trying to collect data on everything ... but then you lose the forest in the trees ... our problem isn't lack of data right now but is more in how to effectively sift through the data we have to convert it to actionable intelligence ;)
 
FiveFig said:
why would they expose their financial backers?

don't you understand how 'do as I say not as I do' works?
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The real fear is the other way around.
Use certain information to blackmail politicians into passing NSA's desired bills, projects, etc etc.
 
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