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In Sharing Data, FinCEN Opened the Gates Wide Before Narrowing Them
By Brian Monroe
printIn the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Treasury Department's financial intelligence unit had one overriding objective: to better share its cache of Bank Secrecy Act data with investigators. There was a "lot of information flowing freely and a big goal was to share this Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) data," according to a former department official. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which was charged with managing the data along with the IRS, matured as investigators increasingly saw the value in bank reports, the person said. But while FinCEN focused first on maximizing access to its database...
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