Washington – The Bush administration is considering, for the first time, requiring banks to inform the government of all their customers’ international wire transfers, regardless of possible terrorist ties, a Treasury Department official said Tuesday.
Such mandatory reporting would mark a major expansion of the government’s efforts to comb financial data to fight terrorism and other international crimes.
Depending on how the program is structured, it could mean that banks would be forced to turn over data on millions of transactions that they are now required to keep secret.
The department has been studying the feasibility of such a project since early 2005, when the idea first surfaced in media reports.
The proposal shows that despite controversy, the administration is still pushing for new tools to use technology for accessing confidential data to combat terrorism and other international crimes.
The issue surfaced Tuesday during congressional testimony about another program that Treasury has used to monitor terrorist finances.
That program, involving an international banking consortium known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, was disclosed last month by the Los Angeles Times and other media.
The program under consideration would capture international transactions involving only U.S. banks, while the SWIFT system logs such transfers across international borders.
