The NSA has been widely monitoring international banking and credit card transactions, a new report says referencing Edward Snowden’s leak. The agency targeted Visa customers and global financial service SWIFT and created its own money flows database.
Referring to information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA
employee and NSA contractor, German Der Spiegel reports that the
surveillance was carried out by a branch called "Follow the
Money" (FTM).
After the information on transactions was obtained, it was
redirected to the NSA's own financial database, called "Tracfin".
According to the leaked documents, in 2011 the database contained
180 million records, with 84 percent of those being credit card
transactions details.
Among the millions of records, the NSA's Tracfin’s also contained
data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). Used to conduct business
operations “with speed, certainty and confidence”, this
global financial service is used by more than 10,000 banking
organizations in 212 countries.
The NSA spied on SWIFT on several levels, involving its
"tailored access operations" division, according to the
report in Der Spiegel. Reading "SWIFT printer traffic from
numerous banks," was just one of the ways the NSA was
accessing the information.
One of the NSA’s goals was to "collect, parse and ingest
transactional data for priority credit card associations,
focusing on priority geographic regions."
According to documents dated 2010, the agency was spying on large
credit card companies’ customers, Der Spiegel adds. In
particular, the NSA was getting access to transactions by Visa
Inc. customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Reportedly,
speaking at an internal conference that year, NSA analysts
described in detail how the search through the US company's
complex transaction network for tapping possibilities was
conducted.
Visa Inc. told RT in a statement that “with respect to the
claims in the Der Spiegel article” they were not aware of any
unauthorized access to their network.
“Visa takes data security seriously and, in response any
attempted intrusion, we would pursue all available remedies to
the fullest extent of the law,” the statement said.
“Further, it’s Visa’s policy to only provide transaction
information in response to a subpoena or other valid legal
process.”
According to one of the documents, the UK's intelligence agency,
GCHQ, admitted cooperation with the NSA to spy on the world
finance system. In its report, concerning the legal perspectives
on "financial data", it said that the collection, storage and
sharing of politically sensitive data was a deep invasion of
privacy and involved "bulk data" full of "rich personal
information," much of which "is not about our
targets."
Experts warn that government could start profiling people that
use alternative forms of transactions such as cash or bitcoin.
Financial Advisor Margaret Bogenrief, co-founder of ACM Partners,
tells RT that it is hardly surprising that financial companies
whose dominance was sponsored by the government share
intelligence data with it.
“Do I think that people that are traditionally more suspicious of
the government would start using Bitcoin and cash and other
currencies like that? Yes, probably," Bogenrief believes.
She agrees that raising a red flag once individuals use cash
could be another way to “monitor” people. But because of
privacy concerns, Bogenrief says, companies who accept cash
transactions will not likely share such data with the federal
government. “I do not think they will be handing over the
information to the federal government any time soon. You would
have to see a pretty significant shift in policy and
enforcement.”