US Treasury Secretary John Snow confirmed that the CIA and the financial security special unit at the Treasury Department have indeed been tracking the movement of funds in bank accounts around the world for almost five years.
According to Snow, the purpose of the program is to cut off funding for various terrorist groups. "I don't see anything wrong with this," Snow said, "This program is an effective weapon in the global war on terrorism." At the same time, the Treasury chief stressed that banking operations are tracked only if account holders are suspected of ties to terrorists. The confidentiality of deposits of law-abiding citizens, according to the Treasury chief, is not violated. The program is authorized by the US Congress, Snow added, and is carried out in strict compliance with international law.
The US Treasury Secretary said that financial intelligence and the CIA began monitoring bank operations of those suspected of involvement in terrorist activities after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In his speech, Snow did not address the question of where the intelligence services obtained information about transactions. However, the New York Times reported that data on operations was provided to the US government by the international interbank information system SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), which unites more than 7,800 financial institutions around the world, including all major banks and their correspondent networks.
Recall that a publication in the New York Times, which appeared at the end of 2005, reporting that the National Security Agency was wiretapping Americans' phone conversations without court authorization, caused a major political scandal in the United States. It turned out that Congress had not authorized the wiretapping; the decision was made without its knowledge by the presidential administration. The White House then managed to prove that by allowing surveillance of Americans, Bush did not exceed his authority.