EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

EXCLUSIVE - U.S. to let spy agencies scour Americans' finances

By Emily Flitter and Stella Dawson and Mark Hosenball


NEW YORK/WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 13, 2013 2:31pm EDT (Reuters) – 


The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.


The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.


Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of "suspicious customer activity," such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.

The Treasury plan would give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots or criminal schemes.

The planning document, dated March 4, shows that the proposal is still in its early stages of development, and it is not known when implementation might begin.

Financial institutions file more than 15 million "suspicious activity reports" every year, according to Treasury. Banks, for instance, are required to report all personal cash transactions exceeding $10,000, as well as suspected incidents of money laundering, loan fraud, computer hacking or counterfeiting.


"For these reports to be of value in detecting money laundering, they must be accessible to law enforcement, counter-terrorism agencies, financial regulators, and the intelligence community," said the Treasury planning document.


A Treasury spokesperson said U.S. law permits FinCEN to share information with intelligence agencies to help detect and thwart threats to national security, provided they adhere to safeguards outlined in the Bank Secrecy Act. "Law enforcement and intelligence community members with access to this information are bound by these safeguards," the spokesperson said in a statement.


Some privacy watchdogs expressed concern about the plan when Reuters outlined it to them.

 

A move like the FinCEN proposal "raises concerns as to whether people could find their information in a file as a potential terrorist suspect without having the appropriate predicate for that and find themselves potentially falsely accused," said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a non-profit watchdog group.

Despite these concerns, legal experts emphasize that this sharing of data is permissible under U.S. law. Specifically, banks' suspicious activity reporting requirements are dictated by a combination of the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA PATRIOT Act, which offer some privacy safeguards.

National security experts also maintain that a robust system for sharing criminal, financial and intelligence data among agencies will improve their ability to identify those who plan attacks on the United States.

"It's a war on money, war on corruption, on politically exposed persons, anti-money laundering, organized crime," said Amit Kumar, who advised the United Nations on Taliban sanctions and is a fellow at the Democratic think tank Center for National Policy.

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

The Treasury document outlines a proposal to link the FinCEN database with a computer network used by U.S. defense and law enforcement agencies to share classified information called the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.

The plan calls for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - set up after 9/11 to foster greater collaboration among intelligence agencies - to work with Treasury. The Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

More than 25,000 financial firms - including banks, securities dealers, casinos, and money and wire transfer agencies - routinely file "suspicious activity reports" to FinCEN. The requirements for filing are so strict that banks often over-report, so they cannot be accused of failing to disclose activity that later proves questionable. This over-reporting raises the possibility that the financial details of ordinary citizens could wind up in the hands of spy agencies.

 

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law, said privacy advocates have already been pushing back against the increased data-sharing activities between government agencies that followed the September 11 attacks.

"One of the real pushes from the civil liberties community has been to move away from collection restrictions on the front end and put more limits on what the government can do once it has the information," he said.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter in New York, Stella Dawson and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Leslie Gevirtz)

Every Breath You Take: The Police (Link)

THINGS TO DO IN AND AROUND PORTLAND, MAINE

Portland post-storm double rainbow from DiMillo’s upper deck.

   For the last several years I’ve occasionally sojourned in Portland on Maine’s shoreline and I’ve come to realize how much I love it there.  

     Last Monday morning, we made our Escape From New York, which truly seemed like Hell the previous evening (more about that another time soon).  Six hours later we stopped the car in Portland; the world turned about-face and seemed right again.

A plaque attached to a section of the Berlin Wall, DiMillo’s wharf.

  It’s not the city's beauty so much because Portland is not particularly beautiful.  Unlike its neighbor Manchester, New Hampshire, Portland's brick-brick-brick building style has no powerful, distinctive, if slightly oppressive, rhythm.  Rather, Portland’s appeal lies in its broad, clear sky views, hills that afford pedestrians and drivers city vistas and bring heaven closer, marine fragrances and friendly, courteous people.  Unlike everywhere I’ve ever lived or visited, Portland drivers are uniformly polite and no one seems anxious to run you over.

Painting on reverse of Berlin Wall section.

   On our next-to-last day in town, we took a morning whale watching trip out Casco Bay and into the North Atlantic.  We saw minke whales, which is always a thrill, many dolphins, harbor seals and pelagic birds.  The trip's highlight, however, was our encounter with four or five ocean sunfish.  Odyssey Voyage’s resident naturalist announced the first sighting by saying that we had a real treat in store for us – “one of the weirdest animals we would ever see” – and he was right.   I was completely unfamiliar with the species Mola mola, but I have attached the Wikipedia article here (Link) if you’re interested.  (I think you should be.)   All I can say is that these enormous, unique creatures floated close to the sides of our vessel near the ocean's surface, clearly and curiously seeking social interaction.  They stretched themselves out in the oddest conformations I had ever seen among fish and when we departed they waved at us with their fins extended in the air. They reminded me of cats.

Ocean Sunfish floating on its side with fin emerging from water, Casco Bay.

   Later that day, we visited the Portland Museum of Art for the first time and it was a revelation.  Housed in a handsome, non-officious, non-clichéd  (finally) I.M. Pei structure which suits the city’s reserved, proper, but informal style, the Portland collection is generally superb in quality.  It possesses and amplifies local integrity and accurately reflects the city of Portland and state of Maine without taking on the character of a local historical society.  Also, because it is a fairly small museum (only about 17,000 objects all told), it tells its story succinctly,  but in a way that makes you want to “read” it again.

   The exhibitions currently on view are The Draw Of The Normandy Coast 1860-1960 and Maine Sublime: Frederic Edwin Church’s Landscapes of Mount Desert and Mount Katahdin. The shows are both excellent and are complementary in the way they each draw on coastal representations, albeit views from different continents.

   They are complementary also in the way they both project – more distinctively than I’ve ever seen at any museum exhibition  – the joyous feelings that invariably accompany seaside excursions, loci where water’s visual, tactile, sonic and olfactory effects are enhanced by stony formations on land and in the surf.

Félix Vallotton, Edouard Vuillard Drawing At Honfleur, 1902, Oil on cardboard.

   The Normandy Coast exhibition, with paintings, watercolors and drawings from Trouville, Deauville, Honfleur,  Étretat and Le Havre includes great works by the French artists Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Courbet, Félix Vallotton (his wonderful portrait of his friend Edouard Vuillard sketching is shown above), Maurice Vlaminck, Henri Matisse and two surprising contributions by Yves Tanguy and Marcel Duchamp (a really nice early painting of the Normandy surf and cliffs, showing Monet’s influence.)   The show also includes work by American painters resident in France including Samuel Coleman, George Inness and James A.M. Whistler and by the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind. 

   The nineteenth and early twentieth century pictures are really the heart of the show and the exhibition catalogue’s descriptions of Normandy’s social history, its relation to the arts and the interactions among the painters who worked so productively there, are fascinating and actually uplifting.  Whatever these artists’ individual points of view, you have a feeling that they all found that things seemed better at the beach.

   The morning we checked out of our hotel, during a trip to the lobby to get coffee to aid with our suitcase packing, I realized that I wanted to have a job that would allow me to return to Portland regularly so that I could regularly revisit many eye-opening items in the museum’s permanent collection (which includes some really superb Marsden Hartleys, Winslow Homers, as well as the best examples I have ever seen of N.C. Wyeth’s work) and continue to research and enjoy Portland’s fine restaurants.  (We found several that the guide books don’t tell you about and one or two they do mention, which you should avoid unless Pan-Fried Maine Farm Rabbit Livers or Wood-Roasted Lamb Hearts are the reason for your visit to the north country.)

 The occasion for our trip – the Maine Event, as it were -- was visiting Jane at camp.  She had grown noticeably taller and was cheerful, charming, witty and sensible.  That was spectacular.