U.S. Secretly Tracks Global Bank Data

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The SWIFT program is just one of the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 initiatives to collect intelligence that could include information on U.S. residents.

The National Security Agency, which can intercept communications around the world, is eavesdropping on the telephone calls and e-mails of some U.S. residents without obtaining warrants. And it has been accused of asking telecommunications companies to help create a database of the phone-call records of almost all Americans.

The Justice Department also has asked Internet companies to keep records of the websites customers visit and the people they e-mail for two years, rather than days or weeks, which would greatly expand the government's ability to track online activity.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed against the government and phone companies, challenging the NSA efforts. The government has asked courts to throw them out, invoking the "state secrets" privilege and arguing that trials would compromise national security. The NSA's interception of telephone calls also has been criticized for lacking an independent review process to ensure that the information is not abused.

The SWIFT program raises similar concerns, some critics say.

Privacy advocates have questioned "link analysis" because it can drag in innocent people who have routine financial dealings with terrorist suspects.

And no outside governmental oversight body, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or a grand jury, monitors the subpoenas served on SWIFT.

Levey said the program is subject to "robust" checks and balances designed to prevent misuse of the data. He noted that requests to access the data are reviewed by Treasury's assistant secretary for intelligence; that analysts can only access the data for terrorism-related searches; and that records are kept of each search and are reviewed by an outside auditor for compliance.

Levey said there had been one instance of abuse in which an analyst had conducted a search that did not meet the terrorist-related criteria. The analyst was subsequently denied access to the database, he said.

During the last five years, SWIFT officials have raised concerns about the scope of the program, particularly at the outset, when it was handing over virtually its entire database. The amount of data handed over each month has been winnowed down.

"The safeguards were not all there in September 2001," Levey acknowledged. "We started narrowing it from the beginning."