The weird thing is that they probably didn’t even need to: all money transfers above a certain (low) amount are recorded and monitored by the various national authorities anyway, at least in Europe. They could have just asked kindly…?
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That’s the other strange thing about the feds: while the left hand is haxx0ring the planet, the right hand more-or-less-ignores the major banks that get caught red handed doing massive amounts of money laundering. Why bother breaking into SWIFT if you aren’t even going to send a single person to jail over, say, HSBC’s little shenanigans?
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Oh, they do it in the USA too. The bankers gladly gave them all the data. Not the bankers data, but companies, investors, and peoples data. Bankers like to think they are the smartest people in the room. They’re not. NSA captures the data that bankers are trying to hide but NSA doesn’t do anything about. There is collusion between finance, industry, and the military.
Seventeenth century Dutch merchant Jan Pieterszoon Coen, "We cannot make war without trade, nor trade without war."
“The Ascent of Money”, page 134, by Niall Ferguson
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The criteria are security, terror, organised crime. And economic well-being.
I’m sure ‘keeping China British’ came under ‘ecomomic well-being’ back in the day. (1:30 - Why doesn’t discourse allow you to link to a video at a specific point?)
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Not to mention the PLA might have found it harder to hack those American companies if the NSA spent its time strengthening security protocols rather than weakening them.
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An official at the NSA told Globo that the agency gathers economic information in order to monitor for signs of potential instability in financial markets, and not to steal commercial secrets…
Potential instability in financial markets? Does that mean the NSA has to read Petrogas’s books, see how they’re spending their capital, make sure the administration isn’t skimming off the top, to ensure things aren’t being priced into an inflationary bubble?
Well, given the NSA’s record in telling us all about how poorly the banks were managing their affairs prior to the housing crash, I’d say they weren’t looking in the right places.
It would be redundant if I said this is crazy stuff…
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Who said they were going to tell us if they found signs of instability? It’s not like they’re doing it for our benefit.
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Yeah, and why is all this happening again?
I thought the point of government was to enable us to get some economy of scale and enjoy a better life while helping set a level playing field and protect us when somebody tries to interfere with our happiness or hurt us.
Instead we have to protect ourselves from our government, which is telling some of us to hurt others of us and encouraging us not to help each other instead? The same one that also wastes most of our work, lets other groups pollute our land, and actually manufactures scarcity?
Why did we invent this ‘civilization’ thing again?
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Why bother breaking into SWIFT if you aren’t even going to send a single person to jail over, say, HSBC’s little shenanigans?
A cynic would say it with one word: blackmail.
… more likely, it’s just another case of total incompetence: they probably hacked SWIFT just to track some Russian oligarch’s money buying a skyscraper in central London, because in some circles the Cold War never ended.
I suppose my sarcasm was hard to read without proper quotes, so <sarcasm> blah </sarcasm>. And hey, while I’m here, if I had to guess, the NSA would say they’re absolutely doing it for your benefit, as long as you’re an American, of course. A shot in the dark: what group do you think is meant to benefit from this?
Not really. Since SWIFT is the interbank network, they handle transactions from banks in nation states which are either not friendly to the US, those without treaties dealing with financial transaction data and those without the legal infrastructure or capability to deal with AML/CTF issues. Asking kindly doesnt really help in those cases.
I’ll probably write out a more complete post on some of this in this thread after I get back from lunch.
I suppose my sarcasm was hard to read without proper quotes
Don’t worry, I got your tone and my comment wasn’t entirely serious either. I’m sure they would say this is for the benefit of Americans in general (or hey, the free world - why not), but there are more obvious beneficiaries of big government than the general population. I don’t think it’s some great conspiracy at work, but the head of the NSA probably wouldn’t say no to seeing the NSA’s powers and budget increase. Any information they find out about national or international banks wouldn’t be shared with us in any case, so while theoretically it could be used to benefit Americans through an appropriate response to financial irregularities, I don’t think they will see much of a difference in practice.
I know I’m going to be the odd man out here and what I have to say may enrage some of y’all or get me accused as a puppet of “the man” or capitalist running dog, etc. but this one makes pretty good sense to me. A few years back I met Avi Jorisch and then read some of his books, this one in particular as I had reason to start learning about Anti Money Laundering/Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) things. Gives a good overview of how money can move inside and outside of the formal banking system.
“Follow the money” is really one of the best strategy and tactics packages against some really repellent criminal activity as well as terrorism. Being really good at forensic accounting or being able to automate some of the analysis also lets you sort out “regular” remittances of migrant workers from criminal/terrorist smurfing transfers. There have been plenty of BB posts about Brian Krebs tracing down various criminal gangs who operate by virtue of money transfer mules, these are the sorts of tools you use to identify evidence of the crime in progress. Same techniques work in regards to the funding networks of Boko Haram and other nasties.
As for theories about if this data is used for the advantage of American industry I wont speculate. I will point out the contrast between the wink wink nudge nudge relationship between Three Letter Agencies in the US and industry vs France where there is a national School of Economic Warfare which is largely staffed by ex-military folks. I went to a lecture by the director and one of the professors there, very interesting stuff. The French do not make any secret of the state’s support of commerce in this regard.
In the context, I agree there were likely reasons behind this that could be perceived as ‘logical’.
However, that logic is REALLY context sensitive, you know? Our spooks just force the other ‘sides’ to hire more of their own. Our wars on terror just makes more terrorists. We as a nation have a bit of history with this sort of bad decision making among our leadership, and I haven’t seen an indications of change.
If this were in the hands of balanced people who were paying attention to the impacts of what they’re doing and cares about the greater good, I’d agree. However I don’t see that sort of person being gravitated to the top. Indeed, changing your mind in the face of new information is an anathema in those circles, and reasonable people are treated as wishy-wishy while unreasonable ones are treated like ‘strong leaders’
All that in mind, all my indications are that the individuals making these decisions are part of a chain of stupid, none of this even needs to exist. I simply don’t trust the sort of person who most easily gravitates to power in our political and military industrial complexes.
That’s not an idle statement, that’s just plain old psychology, y’know?
“I could not help myself! It was in my nature!” said the scorpion to
the frog, as they both sunk needlessly to the bottom of the lake -
Since no one had mentioned these contexts and since I know a bit about it I figured I’d put it out there, a change from the general tin foil hattery (of course even the paranoid do have enemies) and whargarbl.
Our spooks just force the other ‘sides’ to hire more of their own. Our wars on terror just makes more terrorists.
That is the nature of war. In one regard it doesnt matter whether the agency making war on you is a state or non state actor and not all weapons cause physical damage. I’d rather see more of the stuff I wrote about before than carpet bombing which is indeed “fighting the last war”.
We as a nation have a bit of history with this sort of bad decision making among our leadership, and I haven’t seen an indications of change.
OK but lets not confuse the NSA with the leadership. Even if there is some element of tail wagging dog, real life isnt a Hollywood B grade thriller. Even were some Dr. Evil type at the NSA to CGI up some video of the POTUS with a live boy and a dead girl, their job is sigint and they do answer to someone else in the end.
I simply don’t trust the sort of person who most easily gravitates to power in our political and military industrial complexes.
Sure. Same idea goes at least as far back as the Babylonian Talmud: “Love work, hate being in a position of authority, and do not become overly intimate with the ruling authorities.”
As you say, theres some human nature/psychology at play here.
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And I actually respect the hell out of that.
Yes, true. I’d take a more nuanced view. . . that the sets of traits that tend to be selected for in those roles is generally predictable. Not that there’s no variety, but there is selection in process and some psychologies have certain advantages while others do not gravitate or don’t succeed in a broad number of the roles that influence what’s actually done and do the dirty deeds.
There are, of course, also social pressures, often quite tremendous. Those forge us as well, and given how important a career is in today’s world … well, we have plenty of stories and movies that walk us down the torturous trail to corruption, we can’t pretend that good people can’t get hooked in too.
I think that works better. It’s not a boogeyman so much as a predictable dynamic that gets created when we have systems that favor the wrong traits and motivations, right?
Word.
Brains. You can’t live without 'em, but they attract zombies.
Or something like that. Sorry, used up most of my thinks in the prior bit! 
I’m borrowing that if you dont mind…
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It’s yours, sir.
Ideas should be set free!
(just not by zombies)
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I will point out the contrast between the wink wink nudge nudge relationship between Three Letter Agencies in the US and industry vs France
The difference is that the French have never been champions of free trade. They’ve always been very coherent with their policy of national economic champions and grandeur, pretty much at any time since the late XVIII century / early XIX…
Whereas US economic policy is built on a hypocritical cathedral of Free Trade orthodoxy, that is constantly propagandised around the world as The One True Way, while at the same time other countries get screwed sideways.
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If Cory ever gets sick, with this level of hyperbole skills you could sub for him. Your first paragraph made sense and added value though.
