News
Data Mining Programs Fail in Finding Terrorists, U.S.-Sponsored Report Says
printGovernment data mining programs are failing to find terrorists and often lead to unproductive false leads, said a U.S. government-sponsored study released on Tuesday. The 376-page study issued by the Washington D.C.-based National Research Council said that data mining programs that search through databases of personal information-from phone records to banking transactions-often fail to correctly identify terrorists because the systems cannot discern between truly suspicious and benign behavior. While using the programs to find patterns pointed to by specific, past terrorist activity can be fruitful, automated systems that look for unknown suspicious activity are ineffective and result in too many...
TO READ THE FULL STORY
Related News
The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday unanimously passed a bill aimed at foreign banks that provide financial services to Hezbollah, an Iran-backed, Lebanon-based Shiite militant group.
A transactional data handover mandated under a $102 million settlement disclosed Tuesday between the U.S. Justice Department and a defunct Beirut bank will likely lead to new financial crime investigations.
As U.S. officials work to shield American prepaid cards from abuse by financial crooks, foreign-issued stored value products remain a relatively easy avenue to move money into the United States anonymously.
A decision by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirming sanctions against Jordan's largest bank for not turning over data on suspicious accounts could leave some financial institutions with an unwanted choice, say attorneys.
The U.S. Treasury Department Friday fined a Sioux Falls, SD bank branch $10 million for not properly reporting instances of suspected structuring and terrorist financing.
Increases in the rates that U.S. states tax cigarette purchasers has led to a rise in tobacco smuggling by organized crime groups and terrorist financiers, say governmental officials.
U.S. officials have launched a criminal investigation after linking data seized at Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan to a Bank Secrecy Act report, counterterrorism investigators said Monday.
The U.S. Justice Department seized $150 million held for a Lebanese financial institution at accounts at five U.S. banks, as part of a crackdown on a purported terrorist financing network.
The U.S. Treasury Department's ability to freeze the funds of suspected terror financiers without a warrant is likely curtailed to emergency circumstances under a court order handed down last week.
Lawmakers are asking the U.S. Justice Department to clarify how it will prosecute individuals and groups that aid terrorist organizations, and whether those cases could involve innocent charity groups.
U.S. efforts to clamp down on terror financiers have been largely a success, a federal official told American lawmakers at a hearing in downtown Manhattan Tuesday.
U.S. lawmakers Thursday questioned how a blacklisted Lebanese terrorist organization works with political leaders and narco-traffickers in Latin America.
The Senate Thursday named David Cohen the nation's top sanctions official after legislators agreed to end a standoff over the U.S. Treasury Department's implementation of financial measures aimed at Iran.
Less than two years after U.S. diplomats mentioned concerns that Qatar's terrorist financing problems may be "the worst in the region," the country has done little to effectively limit the crime, say experts.
Egypt's decision to reopen the Gaza Strip's most important land-based port of entry will complicate international efforts to stem funding for designated terrorist group Hamas, say critics of the move.
Documents and data seized Sunday by the United States during the military raid that killed Osama Bin Laden will likely give officials insight into how the terror group's financial network operates, say analysts.
The U.S. Treasury Department wrote off $3.2 million in 2008 from a failed Bank Secrecy Act data mining program, bringing the losses associated with the project to at least $15.4 million.
A renewed emphasis on customer data privacy in the European Union is making it difficult for U.S. financial institutions to conduct background checks on EU customers, and in some cases has exposed them to fines, according to legal consultants.
In the push by global governments for greater financial transparency and greater privacy guarantees, large financial institutions are left struggling to reconcile these two competing principles. The conflict is most striking for banks dealing with so-called secrecy jurisdictions.
Because data protection laws in Europe and elsewhere make it difficult for a multinational financial institution to share data among all of its branches, the laws "will be the biggest impediment to protection from terrorism," the officials said.