hoist with his own petard

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
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



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