US Treasury sets bank-data sharing limits with spy agencies

According to a Bloomberg report, the US Treasury Department released a new protocol which still allows the country's intelligence agencies to access bank information for suspicious or large money movements despite the spying revelations made by Edward Snowden. The protocol, which was released at the end of last week, describes how the department provides some information in bulk to the hub of the government's anti-terrorism intelligence efforts, the National Counterterrorism Center. The partially-redacted protocol also listed conditions for searching the information database.

Bloomberg said that the 2010 memorandum of understanding between the NCTC and the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network requires intelligence agencies to make "best efforts" to tap pertinent information only to specific cases and destroy data that has been obtained in error immediately. The memo also said that redistribution of the data is limited.

Snowden's leaks, which contained vast data tombs of classified information, has sent the Obama administration into overdrive assuring the American people and its allies that they are not subject to continual surveillance, in the same breadth as defending its intelligence collection measures as an important step to counterterrorism efforts. On the other hand, the US has been requiring financial firms in public to report suspicious activity to the Treasury for decades to thwart anti-money laundering. The news agency said that information can be shared with law enforcement and has been proven vital in past terrorism cases.

In an interview, NCTC Director Matthew Olsen said, "Financial data can be some of the most relevant as to how people are connected. That's why it's vital that we have access (to the FinCEN database)."

FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery also said in a separate interview that although they are assured that their current guidelines had the right balance of acknowledging privacy and national security concerns, she said, "The data we collect is publicly known. It's not raw data. It's suspicious, large-cash transactions that meet a threshold. We think we've gotten that balance right, although it is something we must always be ready to re-examine."

Tags

US Treasury Department, National Counterterrorism Center, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

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