Not a great argument for classification.

If it were, we would classify as Top Secret all those security cameras at banks, and imprison anyone that discloses their existence. After all, they have been used on many occasions to catch bank robbers.

Or we should classify fingerprints, since they are a pretty effective crime-fighting tool.

The fact that a program has worked does not lead to the conclusion that it should be classified.

I can't think of why it's classified except that the Bush admin didn't want law abiding citizens to know just how deeply the government had wormed its way into their private lives. It was yet another political use of the nation's security classification, and that's why I agree with the Times' decision to "declassify" it.

Like I said before, if Karl Rove can classify and declassify based on political advantage, this environment invites others to do the same.

What was that phrase again??

Oh yeah, tu quoque...I like that phrase...

I was watching an episode of South Park, where Towelee (the stoner Towel) was trying to sell a book. The episode was making fun of that fraud Oprah had on; the guy with the self help book. Anywho, Towelee is busy trying to pitch the book and some character was saying he wasn't credible because he was a towel...Towelee, stoned as usual, responded "Yer a towel!"

In the above illustration Towelee is wrong and the character accusing Towelee of being a towel was right.

tu quoque?...I hate the French.

Beginning of the fallout from the NYT disclosure.

Group Asks Gov'ts to Block Data Release

Belgians will probe U.S. bank privacy row

And this is a bad thing how?

Oh, right. It wil remind the terrorists that international cash transactions are being watched.

Top Secret information.

I don't think the Bush administration can demand personal financial information of millions of people with absolutely no oversight.

Now I know why they wanted this top secret.

The U.S. Treasury Department acknowledged Friday that it had tracked millions of financial transactions handled by the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

SWIFT oversees about 11 million financial transactions a day among banks and financial institutions worldwide, recording customers' names, account numbers and other identifying information.

Here's the killer part. Because it's true.

Privacy International's director, Simon Davies, said the secret CIA-Treasury program "shows yet again how the U.S. willfully disregards the privacy rights not only of its own citizens, but also the rights of foreign nationals."

Don't trade your freedoms for some marginal promise of safety. That's what Bush and Cheney are selling, and it's a bad deal.

We can win this without abandoning our freedoms. The Bush administration can can look at bank records, but not at its whim, under its own rules, and answerable to no one.

Checks and balances.

I am for erring on the side of privacy rights, especially with this secretive and freedom-hating POS administration. They have zero legitimacy at this point in my book. Locking cockpit doors would have prevented 9/11, as well as the presence of one single competent government employee anywhere along the food chain above Colleen Rowley in the months proceeding the attack. But of course, like the worst entry ever in a fake Kurt Vonnegut novel contest, the tragedy gave carte blanche to the most loathsome leaders the free world has ever seen to do whatever they please w/ $$$ and information that does not belong to them. It belongs to the American people, or should I say it did. :rolleyes:

As for Thomas Kean, he is the uncle of a close friend of mine. (His Mom's brother). I met him a few times back in the '80s, including when I was in my friend's wedding, I think that he was Governor of NJ then if I remember right. He was a moderate Republican whose name was bandied about as a presidential possibility back then and I got a minor thrill at the thought that someone I knew might become president. My friend, whose judgment I respect, really admired his uncle as an extraordinary man in every way, FWIW. :cool: