Q & A About Terrorist Financing

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times created an uproar in June 2006 when they published details of the US Treasury Department's monitoring terrorist financial information held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). It's a complex program that raises quite a few questions.

• What is Treasury's authority for access to SWIFT information?
• What privacy protections apply to records of financial transactions?
• What other federal laws apply to tracking terrorist finances?
• Is publication of classified information a criminal act?
• What international law may be implicated by the program?
• Has Congress responded (to the uproar)?

These questions are asked and answered or at least discussed in the Congressional Research Service's July 7, 2006, Report for Congress entitled Treasury's Terrorist Finance Program's Access to Information Held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).