Worth reading from the
Counterterrorism Blog's Victor Comras: "Reports of US Monitoring of SWIFT Transactions Are Not New: The Practice Has Been Known By Terrorism Financing Experts For Some Time":Reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:
“The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and
payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information.
The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.”There is something of "Thou Doth Protest Too Much" about the manufactured overheated outrage about this story, directed overwhelmingly against the NY Times. Anyone who has sent an international wire transfer in the last few years would find it obvious such international transfers are being monitored pretty carefully.
http://www.warandpiece.com/Reports of US Monitoring of SWIFT Transactions Are Not New
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/06/reports_of_us_monitoring_of_sw.php