this comes as a total shock........

NOT

according to the ny times .. YOUR king, george the meek and mild, has been looking into YOUR bank records in addition to listening to your phone calls, reading your emails and opening your regular mail. according to the article the king and his court say, 'The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda'. well they said that about the WARRANTLESS phone calls too didn't they? but we all know they're listening to us say, 'grandma, can you send me 200 bucks?' too!!! NOTE: neither my grandma (my noni died at 102 years old AND i NEVER asked her for money) nor i are members of al qaeda OR any other TERRORIST organizations. now the right really didn't complain about the calls or the mail but i think THIS (money money money) may get them whining so it MAY indeed be a GOOD thing after all. we shall see we shall see


Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas or into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.
Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said. The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an undersecretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview Thursday. The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records. .........