A report released last week from the White House highlights that another facet of life that the National Security Agency stuck its Orwellian nose into is the worldwide financial sector.
Comprised by a review panel commissioned by the White House, the more than 300-page report includes reviews on current intelligence and communications technologies in the United States, as well as recommendations to President Obama on how the government can best “protect our national security and advance our foreign policy, while also respecting our longstanding commitment to privacy and civil liberties,” without violating the trust of the public or U.S. allies.
One of the most surprising of the some 46 recommendations in the report is Recommendation 31, which says that “Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.”
However, the report doesn’t provide any further details, prompting many to wonder how exactly the NSA manipulated the world financial system, especially since the collection of financial information is a largely unknown aspect of the NSA’s work.
Though some brushed off the recommendation that the NSA keep out of the financial sector as a preventative measure — “you didn’t say we couldn’t” — journalist Trevor Timm from the Electronic Frontier Foundation says that the recommendation means the NSA was targeting major financial institutions.
In a report on Techdirt, Mike Masnick, editor of the Techdirt blog, an organization that covers technology news and technology-related issues, agreed with Trimm, saying that while the recommendation seems odd and “out of the blue,” inclusion of “this particular bullet point likely came as a result of a rather specific thing that came up during the task force’s review.”
He added that it’s now just a matter of time before we discover the “inevitable news of what sort of financial shenanigans the NSA was up to.”
Although news of the NSA’s financial tracking may have caught many Americans off guard, back in September, some alternative U.S. media organizations such as Zero Hedge reported that German news outlets were accusing the NSA of monitoring bank accounts and financial transactions and had the documents to prove it.
Follow the money
In September, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that “The National Security Agency widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions,” according to documents it had seen that were released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
What this means is that every time a credit card is swiped, the NSA knows about it. And if the purchase triggers a specific filter, it’s likely the agency will continue to monitor every purchase that customer makes.
Fittingly, the NSA named its internal branch that was tasked with monitoring financial data and activity “Follow The Money,” and stored the collected financial information in a databank called “Tracfin.”
According to Spiegel, there were 180 million financial records stored in Tracfin in 2011, and of those records, 84 percent were reportedly taken from credit card transactions.
One credit card company the NSA specifically targeted was Visa, since in addition to the U.S., the company has customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
According to Spiegel, during a presentation by NSA officials in 2010, analysts described how they successfully managed to tap into Visa’s transaction network to gain access to transactions all over the world, so they could “collect, parse and ingest transactional data for priority credit card associations, focusing on priority geographic regions.”
Visa released a statement to Spiegel back in September — that was eerily similar to that of phone companies and Internet providers — saying the company was not aware of any unauthorized access to the network, but said it’s company policy to provide transaction information in response to a subpoena or other valid legal process.
NSA’s worldwide financial interest
Earlier this year Derek Mead, editor-in-chief of Vice, penned a post pointing out the value of tracking financial data, which can be used to illustrate relationships and movements that can’t otherwise be identified. He says that while it shouldn’t be surprising at this point that the NSA tracked financial data, he called the “scope” of the financial data collection “incredible.”
“Credit card transactions are generally small but location-specific, which means the NSA is perhaps using it to try and track where persons of interest are traveling and moving about,” Mead said. “Based on the sphere of focus, that transaction data is likely being collected for counterterror efforts, but how effective can it be? I suppose there’s potential in identifying networks based on who’s spending money where, yet it’s not like one can bankroll al-Qaeda with a MasterCard.”
In addition to financial data from Americans, the NSA’s Tracfin financial data bank reportedly had financial data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which is a network used by thousands of banks to securely send transaction information.
Political game
Although the NSA worked with other intelligence agencies around the globe — including the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ — many were reportedly uncomfortable with the NSA’s decision to spy on the world’s finance system.
As Spiegel reported, one document in particular says that GCHQ called the collection, storage and sharing of politically sensitive data, including peoples financial information, a deep and unnecessary invasion of privacy since the bulk of the personal data “is not about our targets.”
Mead added that spying on the SWIFT system is particularly worrisome because the NSA reportedly spied on the organization “on several levels.” Although he recognizes that SWIFT may have been able to help the NSA discover the head of a Mexican drug cartel, the level of spying the NSA was conducting makes it unclear whether or not the information was used for political or economic gains.
“It’s a situation ripe for totally unfounded speculation,” Mead said. “Is the NSA involved in economic espionage on China?—which is exactly the point. The NSA’s actions have broadly eroded the world’s fleeting trust in the US government. And following the ridiculous Libor scandal and heaps of other financial misdoings, here’s more evidence that the global financial system has been corrupted by more than just shady dealings.”
Financial manipulation
In addition to the privacy concerns that go along with a massive spying operation on worldwide financial transactions, another concern with the NSA’s financial spying is that the agency was manipulating financial systems around the globe.
According to a post on Washingtons Blog, many top financial experts have expressed concerns that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are using this financial information “in order to profit from this inside information. And the NSA wants to ramp up its spying on Wall Street … to ‘protect’ it.
But it’s not clear whose money the NSA is protecting, how they are doing that, or what happens “to the money of people that the U.S. government considers undesirables.”
As InfoWars pointed out, “the prospect of the U.S. government relying on cyber attacks launched by the NSA to manipulate financial markets and bank accounts remains a genuine possibility,” and questioned whether Chase Bank customers inability to withdraw cash from ATMs earlier this year due to a mysterious system “glitch” was related to the NSA’s activities.
The InfoWars report continued on to say that unless the NSA’s financial spying is put to an end, the government may enlist the services of the NSA to “directly amend bank accounts … in the name of austerity.”