Bank record privacy a concern

  • Monday, November 26, 2001 9:00pm
  • Business

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Consumer and privacy advocates are voicing concern over a data-sharing agreement being considered by the government and major banks to track terrorists through their use of U.S. financial institutions.

"It poses all kinds of privacy questions," Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the Public Interest Research Group, said Monday. "We need to check on terrorists, but we also need to make sure there are checks and balances in place to prevent legitimate programs from invading the privacy of law-abiding account holders."

Under the agreement, federal law enforcement agencies would check a list of people and groups with known or suspected terrorist links against banks’ databases of account holders and transactions. If the daily checks turned up matches, the banks’ records automatically would be transmitted to the federal agencies.

The New York Clearing House, an association of major U.S. banks and foreign banks with U.S. operations, is leading the discussions concerning the data-sharing plan, which was first reported in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. Also participating are officials from several big banks, the FBI and the Treasury Department.

Jeffrey Neubert, president and chief executive officer of the clearing house, said it is "leading a forum to discuss ways we can share information across our organizations that would help curtail or eliminate the flow of funds to terrorists and terrorist organizations."

Law enforcement agencies want to be able to run names of terrorist suspects against banks’ databases daily to determine whether any of them are doing business with those institutions, Neubert said in a statement. He declined to provide further details, which he said are being worked out by the participants.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the nation’s banks have cooperated with the FBI in combing through their records for accounts held or transactions by the alleged hijackers and other suspects linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. Several large and small banks around the country have found accounts held by several of the individuals.

The data-sharing agreement under consideration would go much farther, however.

Daniel Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said such a plan would be legitimate if law enforcement agents could demonstrate probable cause for obtaining bank records to a judge or magistrate.

He would oppose, however, "open-ended fishing expeditions without probable cause."

Neubert said privacy concerns would be addressed before the agreement took effect and that law enforcement agents would not have "a general perusal authority" and would be restricted to gathering information on individuals they already suspected of terrorist links.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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