== Bush**'s plan to monitor intl bank records NOT SECRET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration is developing a plan to give the government access to possibly hundreds of millions of international banking records in an effort to trace and deter terrorist financing, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing interviews with government officials, the newspaper reported that the new initiative, conceived by a working group within the Treasury Department, would vastly expand government access to financial transactions via logs of international wire transfers into and out of U.S. banks.

The plan, still in the preliminary stages, grew out of a brief, little-noticed provision in the intelligence reform bill passed by Congress in December, the Times said. It would give the government tools to track leads on specific suspects and to analyze patterns in terrorist financing and other finance crimes, the officials said.

The newspaper reported that the officials, aware of concerns about privacy, want to include safeguards to prevent misuse of the enormous cache of financial records.

Government Wants More Access to Banking Records

Once again, it appears Congress didn't do its homework. Buried in the recently passed Intelligence Reform Bill, is a provision that paves the way for the Government to ask for millions of international bank records. (snip)

• US WANTS ACCESS TO INTERNATIONAL BANKING RECORDS
The April 10th New York Times reported that as part of its effort to trace terror funding,
the US Treasury Department wants access to logs of international banking transfers in
and out of the United States. Some banking compliance officials are meanwhile
complaining about the confusion and rule changing in what the government is
demanding of banks, and their sense that the system is being clogged with irrelevant
"suspicious activity reports" (SARS).