Financial war on terror: recommended reading

• Time for a good old-fashioned asset freeze, arms embargo, and international travel ban against 6 ISIS terrorists… more>>

• The beltway chatter is that the U.S. can’t do much to stop the financing of ISIS because it makes millions locally, which is harder to interdict that international funds transfers. Newsmax disagrees… more>>

• ISIS may be behind high-profile cyber-hacks against Tony Blair, P-Diddy, and banks in order to finance their terror in Iraq… more>>

• A British mosque will host a fundraiser with a speaker from the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir… more>>

• U.S. taxpayer dollars fund UNRWA, a UN agency in the Palestinian territories staffed by a Hamas-run labor union whose members’ salaries are siphoned by Hamas as union dues… more>>

• The German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the main civilian airport is Iran has been transformed into a “hub of terror” for arms shipments by the IRGC to Hezbollah… more>>

• The feds will force 21,550 banks to mine more data on 8 million accounts a year. The American Bankers Association asks, “Once you have that information, what do you do with it?” more>>

India also combing bank records

It’s not just the United States that is contemplating more extensive data mining of bank records than ever before.  India is considering it too.  From Rediff.com on Sept. 28:

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has opposed the government’s move to snoop on the personal savings bank and other accounts in the name of anti-terror measures.

He conveyed his reservations to National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) CEO Raghu Raman who had requested the Reserve Bank of India to allow his organisation access to individuals’ savings accounts through the district magistrates to facilitate the terror money trail.

NATGRID, the brainchild of Home Minister P Chidambaram, is designed to help the government agencies combat terror and threats to internal security by generating “actionable” intelligence through search and retrieval from the networked databases.

In a confidential note to the Reserve Bank of India and the Financial Services department, the minister stated intrusion into privacy of the bank depositors is just not acceptable as it will ‘discredit the banking system’.

 The people will start using other modes for securing their funds and carry on transactions, Mukherjee warned.

NATGRID has now approached Home Minister P Chidambaram for the purpose.

Sources said that Mukherjee was not impressed with Raman’s idea that the database will not be leaked and will maintain secrecy and privacy of the bank account holders.

Read the rest here.  Like Mukherjee, I’m not impressed by the Obama administration’s idea that FinCEN’s new database will remain private and secure…