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Financial privacy a casualty of attack Legislation would give easier access to personal information Congress is likely to pass a White House-backed piece of legislation that would make it easier for the government to seize banking transaction histories. By Tom Woodruff CNBC ON MSN MONEY Oct. 26 — Due to the terrorist attacks, you’re about to lose a chunk of your financial privacy. With big White House support, Congress is about to change federal law to let the government seek information on your banking transactions whenever there are “suspicious activities.” THE GOVERNMENT WILL be able to snoop on your credit report, distribute information it collects to various intelligence agencies and give your bank, broker or credit-card company immunity from possible lawsuits if they turn over information.

And these provisions would only be a small part of large government efforts to try new weapons to fight terrorism. The legislation stems from reports that the terrorists used computers at public libraries and schools to plan their attacks. There are investigations seeking to find out if they used our electronic financial-services infrastructure to finance the attacks. (There was highly suspicious trading in options of the parent companies of United Airlines and American Airlines just before the Sept. 11 attacks.) Buried in both bills are changes to wiretap, e-mail surveillance and search procedures that Congress and previous administrations had rejected because of opposition from civil liberties groups, industry and the public.

One of Feingold’s defeated amendments would have eliminated a provision aimed at preventing cyber-attacks by terrorists. That provision would permit surveillance of anyone accessing a computer “without authorization.” Feingold says the provision, which remains in the bill, is overly broad, and could be construed as allowing surveillance by law enforcement authorities of an office worker who violates company policy by making a personal Internet purchase on company time. ‘CARNIVORE’ COMES BACK

Under the PATRIOT Act, the FBI would be able to revive its “Carnivore” e-mail snooping program. Under the legislation, any U.S. attorney or state attorney general would have the authority to plug FBI computers into Internet-service-provider centers under “emergency situations” without a court order to monitor e-mail. The Carnivore system is programmed to both target individual users and search all e-mail at an ISP for communications that it deems to be suspicious. Last year, the FBI suspended the use of Carnivore after civil liberties groups objected.

The PATRIOT Act also lowers the legal standard for monitoring telephone voice-mail messages to a “search warrant” rather than the stricter “wiretap warrant” standard. In addition, the legislation creates a new “roving wiretap” warrant which would permit the government to monitor individuals or groups with the same warrant no matter how many phones they may use. Attorney General John Ashcroft justified his call for this new warrant category by citing the increasing use of cell phones by terrorists. Civil liberties advocates worry about PATRIOT’s expanded definition of “terrorists” who can be monitored under the expanded police powers. They claim, for example, that the definition is so vague that peaceful demonstrators at an anti-war rally could qualify under the legislation as suspected terrorists.

http://www.msnbc.com/modules/exports/ct_bizjournal.asp?/news/648298.asp

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 26, 2001