U.S. Secretly Examining Massive Amounts of Private Financial Records
Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records. That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.
Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror, New York Times, June 23, 2006.
