Interesting People mailing list archives
hoist with his own petard
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:00:38 -0700
________________________________________ From: Rod Van Meter [rdv () sfc wide ad jp] Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 11:42 AM To: David Farber Subject: hoist with his own petard Dave, for IP, if you wish... I happen to be in the States this week, and am already suffering from Media Overload Poisoning on the Eliot Spitzer story, but if you can stand one story on the topic: Yesterday, "All Things Considered" had a four-minute piece on how they caught him that might interest IPers. According to the story, *all* bank transactions, are tracked. Conventional wisdom has been that only large transfers (the threshold is typically assumed to be $10K) are flagged and inspected, but that is apparently not true. Banks flag some small fraction of transactions internally, forward those to the IRS, which filters again, and only a few ever get really looked at in detail. One thing that the monitoring software looks for is "bundling" of transactions, a set of smaller transactions all going from Point A to Point B, which is apparently the flag that Spitzer tripped. Reportedly, "politically exposed persons" (PEPs), including all politicians with a national reputation, their wives, children, even brothers-in-law, get extra scrutiny. Oh, and the Subject line? Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was a prime mover in the expansion of much of this monitoring power, and had used it in his prosecutions of organized crime. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88116176 --Rod ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- hoist with his own petard David Farber (Mar 12)
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- Re: hoist with his own petard David Farber (Mar 12)
- Re: hoist with his own petard David Farber (Mar 13)