Thursday, September 19, 2013
NSA Monitors Financial World
Secret documents reveal that the main NSA financial database Tracfin,
which collects the "Follow the Money" surveillance results on bank
transfers, credit card transactions and money transfers, already had 180
million datasets by 2011. The corresponding figure in 2008 was merely
20 million. According to these documents, most Tracfin data is stored
for five years.
The documents reveal how short-lived intelligence agencies' access to the financial world can be, as well as the fact that encryption actually can present problems, at least temporary ones, for the spies. According to one document, the agency had access to data from Western Union, a company that manages money transfers in over 200 countries, for quite some time. But in 2008 Western Union began to protect its data with high-grade encryption. This made access virtually impossible, as NSA staff members complain in one paper.
Well, BAD HARDWARE WEEK found that without Snowden. At SWIFT headquarter in Brussels, by taking administrator privilegies of its ISP provider.
___________________________
99% BAD HARDWARE WEEK:
The documents reveal how short-lived intelligence agencies' access to the financial world can be, as well as the fact that encryption actually can present problems, at least temporary ones, for the spies. According to one document, the agency had access to data from Western Union, a company that manages money transfers in over 200 countries, for quite some time. But in 2008 Western Union began to protect its data with high-grade encryption. This made access virtually impossible, as NSA staff members complain in one paper.
Well, BAD HARDWARE WEEK found that without Snowden. At SWIFT headquarter in Brussels, by taking administrator privilegies of its ISP provider.
___________________________
99% BAD HARDWARE WEEK: