MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
We're going to continue now with our coverage of the government's monitoring of international banking records. And we're going to focus on the consortium known as SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications.
NORRIS: We're joined by L. Richard Fischer. He's author of The Law of Financial Privacy. He's also a partner in the Washington office of Morrison and Foerster. He's also an expert on privacy issues. So glad you could come and talk to us.
Mr. L. RICHARD FISCHER (Morrison and Foerster): Happy to be here.
NORRIS: So what exactly does SWIFT do?
Mr. FISCHER: The way to think about SWIFT is it's a switch. You think about thousands of banks around the country where telephone calls go through, telephonic organizations obviously. SWIFT does the same thing for money transfers.
NORRIS: So it's not a bank in that it actually holds paper? It's a databank?
Mr. FISCHER: That's exactly right. It deals in information, not money.
NORRIS: And it's often described as a gatekeeper. How does it fulfill that function?
Mr. FISCHER: Well it makes sure that there's sufficient information on the front end of a transaction coming through to identify it, who sent it and where it's going. Because otherwise it has no place to put the information.
NORRIS: So it basically handles all the sort of electronic instructions to make those transactions happen?
Mr. FISCHER: Precisely.
NORRIS: It's sort of, I'm thinking almost of a railroad system. It's the switcher.
Mr. FISCHER: That's exactly right. Or if you think about in a domestic context, Visa or MasterCard, with sort of a similar purpose for a credit card and debit card transactions.
NORRIS: SWIFT is a cooperative. It's actually owned by several financial institutions. Do you think that the principals in those institutions knew about this, or were they reading about it in the front page of the paper today?
Mr. FISCHER: I think it's clearly the latter. Yeah if you think about any large international organization, not just banking organization that they're operated by professionals. And SWIFT is a terrific organization. There's a board of directors and some other governing body that will look at reports, but the thought that bank executives in the U.S. would have knowledge of specific things like this doesn't happen. I think they did not know about this.
NORRIS: As someone who's closely studied privacy laws, what are your primary concerns about this program?
Mr. FISCHER: It's not a question of using bank information to find terrorists. Frankly, from a personal perspective, I find that perfectly appropriate. It's a question how you do it.
NORRIS: We just heard Undersecretary Levey talk about the sort of three levels of oversight within the government and also outside auditors looking carefully at this program. Does that allay any of your concerns?
Mr. FISCHER: It does if those programs were in place from day one and throughout this process. I would say yes.
NORRIS: Secretary Snow has called this, said this is akin to a harpoon that's aimed at the heart of terrorists activity. Have they struck the right balance in protecting individual privacy while also protecting the U.S. against terrorist threat?
Mr. FISCHER: I don't think anyone really knows. We've read what we've read. We've heard the reports that we've heard today, but the devil is in the details in a situation like this. If in fact they've identified particular individuals or organizations and they have a way to go from that information to a particular transfer and only there, then I think that's perfect appropriate.
NORRIS: And as perhaps we learn more about this, what are you going to be looking for then to determine whether or not the U.S. is doing this in the right way? Whether or not they're violating individual privacy?
Mr. FISCHER: I think it's really the balancing act if you look at it. If in fact, they're looking at broad ranges of information on broad groups of people, then I would be very concerned.
NORRIS: Give me a specific example of something that would raise a red flag for you.
Mr. FISCHER: Well, if in fact they were looking at every transaction, for example, that happened to flow through a bank in, say, India or Pakistan, better yet. In other words, there was no differentiation between individual transactions. They were going to look at them all. That is a very broad net. That's not a harpoon. That I would think would be inappropriate.
On the other hand, if you have an organization, let's say it's a charitable organization in Pakistan that's known to educate children and has a track record of those children becoming terrorists -
NORRIS: A Madrasa?
Mr. FISCHER: Exactly. In a context like that, if you're looking at transfers of funds from other parts of the world to that organization, then I think that is a harpoon.
NORRIS: Mr. Fischer, thanks so much for coming in.
Mr. FISCHER: Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
NORRIS: Richard Fischer is a partner in the Washington office of Morrison and Foerster.
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