Sunday, June 25, 2006
Let Freedom Ring!
Recently the widespread fears of unnamed government officials ‘with no independent knowledge’ of the Treasury Department’s successful anti-terrorist activities compelled the LA and NY Times to expose a classified program that complied with Supreme Court jurisprudence and federal statutes. Due to the media's heroic efforts, banking clients who rightly feared the Executive Branch’s successful implementation of what John Kerry called 'the law enforcement approach to terrorism' have been alerted to the clear and present danger lurking in their midst:
In the heightened state of emergency after 9/11, the government began examining the Swift records with the help of general administrative subpoenas, which are basically permission from one part of the executive branch to another. Now it is nearly five years later, and nothing has changed. Investigators have examined the international money transfers of thousands of Americans, apparently without ever trying to get a court order or warrant to do the searches. And Congress, as usual, has never exercised any oversight.
Worried readers no doubt appreciate the logic behind NY Times' assertion that the surest way to prevent another 9/11 is a return to September 10th tactics. After all, we haven't been attacked lately, have we? What clearer proof could there be that the heightened state of emergency is over? It's time for Americans to get on with our lives, secure in the knowledge that the danger of terrorist attacks is a thing of the past.
With our national security virtually a sure thing, astute observers realize that the real danger lies in misguided infringements of our civil liberties rooted in post-9/11 hysteria. The 1976 SC decision in US v. Miller, a clear response to Bush administration fear-mongering, is a case in point. In that case, SCOTUS ruled that:
the records kept by a bank are not the depositor's private papers, but instead are the business records of the bank. The court said that there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in the information kept in bank records and that therefore the bank's compliance with the subpoena did not intrude upon the depositor's Fourth Amendment rights..
But the Supreme Court is hardly alone in its unquestioning surrender to post-9/11 hysteria. In 1970, no doubt enraged by the sight of bodies in free fall from the World Trade Center, Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act:
The Bank Secrecy Act authorizes the Treasury Department to require financial institutions to maintain records of personal financial transactions that "have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax and regulatory investigations and proceedings." It also authorizes the Treasury Department to require any financial institution to report any "suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation." These reports, called "Suspicious Activity Reports" are filed with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN").
This is done secretly, without the consent or knowledge of bank customers, any time a financial institution decides that a transaction is "suspicious." The reports are made available electronically to every U.S. Attorney's Office and to 59 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Customs Service. A law enforcement agency does not have to be suspicious of an actual crime before it accesses a report, and no court order, warrant, subpoena, or even written request is needed. Law enforcement agencies can, and allegedly do, download the entire harvest of new information from FinCEN whenever they want it.
But how can the NY Times be sure Congress still wants the Executive Branch poking into our banking records? Certainly Congress would be outraged if they knew law enforcement could access our financial data:
- without court review or approval;
- without you being suspected of a crime; and
- without ever having to tell us.
Thankfully, the media are united in their determination to protect ordinary Americans from laws passed by their elected and appointed officials. After all, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and without oversight we are defenseless against those who would willingly and knowingly abuse the power they've been given under the Constitution.
It is vital that so-called "law enforcement approaches to terror" not be allowed to proceed without oversight from the media, and sometimes this vital oversight requires a few laws to be broken. We cannot allow Treasury Department officials to take cover behind Supreme Court decisions and federal statutes. We cannot trust the Congressional Committee on Intelligence Oversight to investigate tips which come into the media's hands.
No, it is clear that our best protection lies in complete transparency. By letting the terrorists know we're watching them, we send a strong message about the role of freedom of the press in a democratic society, and it is a message they cannot mistake.
The days of marginalizing our enemies are past. We must admit them to all facets of our national security dialog. Only in this way will they come to realize we mean them no harm.
Let Freedom ring!
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Jun 25, 02:27:00 PM:
Let's reveal confidential NY Times Secrets!
The New York Times has delighted in revealing confidential information about the methods our security services are using in the war on terror. These disclosures naturally compromise our efforts to fight terrorists by making the terrorists alert as to how we track them, making the terrorist plots harder to discover and increasing the risk that terrorist attacks against the US will be undiscovered. In other words, their disclosures potentially put lives in danger.
But the Times seems to feel that the public's "right to know" outweighs all this. If the public's "right to know" is so strong, I think the public also has a "right to know" more about the New York Times. I think the government should do the following:
o) Tap the phones of all columnists of the New York Times and then print the names of all their sources in their articles (if these sources actually exist). The public has a "right to know" who these anonymous sources are, to better judge the credibility of their statements. This might inhibit people from giving off-the-record information to the times, but hey, the public has a right to know.
o) Print the income, net worth, and credit card and bank account numbers and balances of all editors and reporters for the New York Times. Sure, people could misuse this information, but the public's right to this information is more important.
o) Publish the net worth and distributions from the Sulzberger trust fund. Again, this is private financial information, but the public has a right to know who is funding the Times and where the money is going. And besides, once this disclosure is made, we can find out how much the Sulzberger's are giving to "the poor" every year!
o) Publish the political affiliations and political donations of all reporters and editors of the times, as well as political organizations they belong to. A small invasion of privacy, but that still doesn't trump our "right to know". If this information is displayed in a pictorial format, we can play "Where's Waldo" to find the single Republican!
From the Right Valley
http://www.cliffordcroft.com/rightvalley/index.asp
By 
Cassandra, at
Mon Jun 26, 09:42:00 AM:
Oh, but that would be invading their privacy.
