Nov 152013
 

Western Union slumped 5 percent in trading Friday following a report by the Wall Street Journal that the CIA is building a database of international money transfer data.

The report, citing unnamed officials familiar with the program, says the program collects information from U.S. money-transfer companies including Western Union. It is carried out under the same provision of the Patriot Act that enables the National Security Agency to collect nearly all American phone records.

The mass collection of financial data includes millions of Americans’ financial and personal data.

The CIA is barred from targeting Americans in its intelligence collection. But as a foreign-intelligence agency, it can conduct domestic operations for foreign intelligence purposes. The CIA program is meant to fill what U.S. officials see as an important gap in their ability to track terrorist financing world-wide, officials told the newspaper.

Western Union said last month it would be spending about 4 percent of its revenue in 2014 on compliance with rules under the Patriot Act, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and other anti-money-laundering and terrorist-financing requirements.

Company spokesman Dan Díaz said that Western Union collects consumer information to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and other laws. In doing so, the company also protect customers’ privacy and works to prevent consumer fraud.

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Shares of The Western Union Co. fell 90 cents to $16.55 by late afternoon amid a broader market uptick.

Oct 312013
 
Why spy on allies? Even good friends keep secrets

President Barack Obama walks with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg in this September 6, 2013 file photo. AP In geopolitics, even best friends don’t tell each other everything. And everybody’s dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the US has been monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have brought into sharp relief the open secret that even close allies keep things from one another — and do all they can to find out what’s being held back. The Israelis recruited US naval analyst Jonathan Pollard to pass along US secrets including satellite photos and data on Soviet weaponry in the 1980s. The British were accused of spying on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan before the Iraq War. The French, Germans, Japanese, Israelis and South Koreans have been accused of engaging in economic espionage against the United States. But the technology revealed by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden has underscored the incredible reach of the US spy agency. And it is raising the question for some allies: Is this still OK? National Intelligence Director James Clapper testified this week that it is a “basic tenet” of the intelligence business to find out whether the public statements of world leaders go with what’s being said behind closed doors. What might the Americans have wanted to know from Merkel’s private conversations, for example? Topics could include her thinking on Read More …