Further NSA documents from 2010 show that the NSA also targets the transactions of customers of large credit card companies like VISA for surveillance. NSA analysts at an internal conference that year described in detail how they had apparently successfully searched through the US company's complex transaction network for tapping possibilities.
Their aim was to gain access to transactions by VISA customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to one presentation. The goal was to "collect, parse and ingest transactional data for priority credit card associations, focusing on priority geographic regions."
The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely. SWIFT was named as a "target," according to the documents, which also show that the NSA spied on the organization on several levels, involving, among others, the agency's "tailored access operations" division. One of the ways the agency accessed the data included reading "SWIFT printer traffic from numerous banks," the documents show.But, you see, we have to let the NSA snoop on those records because, er, uh...
But even intelligence agency employees are somewhat concerned about spying on the world finance system, according to one document from the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ concerning the legal perspectives on "financial data" and the agency's own cooperations with the NSA in this area. The collection, storage and sharing of politically sensitive data is a deep invasion of privacy, and involved "bulk data" full of "rich personal information," much of which "is not about our targets," the document says.
something something terrorism something something pedophelia....
Terrorists and pedos. Terrorists and pedos. Keep repeating those words until numb. Those two words justify everything.
1 comment:
omg, and now we have Claire McCaskill bemoaning that the same firm checked backgrounds for both Aaron Alexis and Eric Snowden before giving them both clearance. And the media's happily illustrating her statement with side by side photos of both men. A mentally ill man and a whistleblower. Yeah, those are our terrorists.
Here's an idea for our "security" teams. When people start hearing voices, get them help. And if you stick to your stated purpose of looking for terrorist activity, instead of spying on everyone in every nation and their pocketbooks, you won't have to worry about whistleblowers, either.
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