Facebook to Banks: Give Us Your Data, We’ll Give You Our Users

WSJ ^ | 8/6/2018 | Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and AnnaMaria Andriotis

[bitt]

The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users.

Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase JPM +0.25% & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. C +0.20% and U.S. Bancorp USB +0.40% to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter.

Facebook has talked about a feature that would show its users their checking-account balances, the people said. It has also pitched fraud alerts, some of the people said.

Data privacy is a sticking point in the banks’ conversations with Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks are taking place as Facebook faces several investigations over its ties to political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which accessed data on as many 87 million Facebook users without their consent.

[Ancesthntr]

I am quite sure that the banks cannot just sell off our personal information without our permission - and I’m not granting any such permission. They’d be sued out of existence if FB got hacked AGAIN (and this WILL happen, “When?” being the only question).

Facebook, Twitter and Google delenda est!

[willyd]

Your bank already sells your information to anyone that asks for it.

[raiderboy]

Why is this legal? Are we entitled to notice?? What the help is this?

[fella]

Give them your banking data.

What could possibly go wrong? Says the Nigerian Prince.

[redgolum]

Wells Fargo admitted to fraudulently foreclosing on peoples homes.

Do you really thing they care about your personal info?

[Eleutheria5]

Right. Also put a big sign on your bank’s entrance: We get hacked a lot, because we trusted Facebook. Trust us.

[M Kehoe]

Hi.

“Wells Fargo admitted to fraudulently foreclosing on peoples homes.”

And among other violations, client services personnel creating false accounts for commissions.

5.56mm

[faithhopecharity]

this is already illegal, imho, but should be made clear to FB that any implementation will result in immediate criminal prosecution of FB management

[Ancesthntr]

“Wells Fargo admitted to fraudulently foreclosing on peoples homes.

Do you really thing they care about your personal info?”

---

No...but I’m pretty sure that they’re not too keen on getting sued, and the bad publicity that goes along with it. That healthy self-interest, NOT their good will, is what I’m counting on to stop this crap. That, and the law. Yeah, I know, the law is a joke - if you’re among the favored few.

[plain talk]

Your bank already sells your information to anyone that asks for it.

Yes -- companies everywhere sell aggregated customer data. This is not the same as individual detailed customer data with your name attached to it.

[Repeal 16-17]

Facebook has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about customers as it seeks to boost user engagement

HELL F*CKING NO!

[TexasGunLover]

Hopefully, the banks laughed in their faces.

They don't. They share it with most businesses. You've agreed, unless you specifically opted out.

[catnipman]

“A couple of months ago, about the time Zuck started to really hit the fan, he was trying to get hospitals to dump their patients’ data in his lap. “

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-decides-to-back-off-creepy-hospital-data-shari-1825027429

[Linda Frances]

What happened to breaking up companies that are too big and powerful?

[jeffc]

Power play by Fakebook.

Banks already have websites and smartphone apps that allow you instant access and control over your accounts. Fakebook has evil intentions.

[tbw2]

A double violation of privacy.

[mdmathis6]

A caution mark though I agree mostly....the data thing blew up for Facebook when it was discovered that Republican minded sources were using Analytica to help with the elections in 2016....so thus this became a “horrible crime”! The Dems’s used the same sources in 2008 and 2012 and thus this was legal and okay and the source of Maxine Waters gloating about the new tools the Dems could use to reach voters.

So the Pubbies got smart, used the same tools that the Dem’s used and now Facebook did this horrible data crime. Hmmmmmm...can’t say I don’t enjoy the discomfiture and the egg on a few faces of the liberals who are also screaming about this. Yes I think the data was used inappropriately by both sides....but I snicker that it seems that the Libs are more sanctimoniously nonplussed at having been beaten by their own game.

[Liz]

The tech titans got stuff on you you'd never dreamed they'd have....and so does obama.

CAUGHT ON FILM --- Silicon Valley tech leaders colluding with Obama to set up the data base on Americans Maxine Waters told us would be used in Democrat campaigns. AKA The Obama Police State.

<><>What steps did they take to destroy the voting rights of innocent Americans?

<><> what diabolical plot did they hatch to fix the electronic vote for Democrats?

=================================

An extraordinary moment caught on film...tech masterminds of the universe in one place, toasting each other for screwing Americans in the name of Obama. Tech titans holding vast info on Americans plot the plan to compile a data base on Americans to be used in Democrat campaigns.

THE ORIGINS OF OBAMA'S POLICE STATE---DATA BASE ON AMERICANS CAUGHT ON FILM. (Mercury News photo)

Freeper edzo24 hat tip.

============================

What electronic frauds are being perpetrated that allow tinpot Obama to use the US govt against innocent Americans....and Republican candidates that stand in his way?

[VanDeKoik]

“Hopefully, the banks laughed in their faces.”

You think your average bank is in the business to turn down potential money?

[Liz]

CIRCA 2017-—Obama Treasury Intel Unit Accused Of Illegally Spying On Americans’ Financial Records
BuzzFeed News Report ^ | October 6, 2017 | Jason Leopold / Jessica Garrison
FR Posted on 2/2/2018 by Liz

The intelligence division at the Treasury Department has repeatedly and systematically violated domestic surveillance laws by snooping on the private financial records of US citizens and companies, according to government sources.
Over the past year, at least a dozen employees in another branch of the Treasury Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, have warned officials and Congress that US citizens’ and residents’ banking and financial data has been illegally searched and stored. And the breach, some sources said, extended to other intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency, whose officers used the Treasury’s intelligence division as an illegal back door to gain access to American citizens’ financial records. The NSA said that any allegations that it “is operating outside of its authorities and knowingly violating U.S. persons’ privacy and civil liberties is categorically false.”

In response to detailed questions, the Treasury Department at first issued a one-sentence reply stating that its various branches “operate in a manner consistent with applicable legal authorities.” Several hours after this story published, the department issued a more forceful denial: “The BuzzFeed story is flat out wrong. An unsourced suggestion that an office within Treasury is engaged in illegal spying on Americans is unfounded and completely off-base.” It added that “OIA and FinCEN share important information and operate within the bounds of statute.”
Still, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Inspector General said it has launched a review of the issue. Rich Delmar, a lawyer in that office, offered no further comment.
But a senior Treasury official, who is not authorized to speak on the matter so requested anonymity, did not mince words: “This is domestic spying.”

Sources said the spying had been going on under President Barack Obama, but the Donald Trump appointees who now control how the department conducts intelligence operations are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker.
At issue is the collection and dissemination of information from a vast database of mostly US citizens’ banking and financial records that banks turn over to the government each day. Banks and other financial institutions are required, under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, to report suspicious transactions and cash transactions over $10,000. The database is maintained by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, a bank regulator charged with combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. Under the law, it has unfettered powers to peruse and retain the data.

In contrast to FinCEN, Treasury’s intelligence division, known as the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, or OIA, is charged with monitoring suspicious financial activity that occurs outside the US. Under a seminal Reagan-era executive order, a line runs through the Treasury Department and all other federal agencies separating law enforcement, which targets domestic crimes, from intelligence agencies, which focus on foreign threats and can surveil US citizens only in limited ways and by following stringent guidelines.
FinCEN officials have accused their counterparts at OIA, an intelligence unit, of violating this separation by illegally collecting and retaining domestic financial information from the banking database. Some sources have also charged that OIA analysts have, in a further legal breach, been calling up financial institutions to make inquiries about individual bank accounts and transactions involving US citizens. Sources said the banks have complied with the requests because they are under the impression they are giving the information to FinCEN, which they are required to do.

One source recalled an instance from 2016 in which OIA personnel, inserting themselves into a domestic money-laundering case, sought information from a Delaware financial institution. In other cases, according to a second source, FinCEN gave OIA reports with the names of US citizens and companies blacked out. OIA obtained those names by calling the banks, then used those names to search the banking database for more information on those American citizens and firms.

Sources also claimed that OIA has opened a back door to officers from other intelligence agencies throughout the government, including the the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials from those agencies have been coming to work at OIA for short periods of time, sometimes for as little as a week, and thereby getting unrestricted access to information on US citizens that they otherwise could not collect without strict oversight.
“This is such an invasion of privacy,” said another Treasury Department official, who, lacking authorization to speak on the matter, asked not to be named. This person predicted that banks “would lose their minds” if they knew that their customers’ records were being used by government intelligence officers who did not have the legal authority to do so.

The Defense Intelligence Agency did not respond to a request for comment. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said, “Suggestions that the Agency may be improperly collecting and retaining US persons data through the mechanisms you described are completely inaccurate.”

Sources claimed the unauthorized inspection and possession of Americans’ financial data have been going on for years but only became controversial in 2016, when officials at FinCEN learned about it and began objecting. Early last year, Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which oversees OIA, proposed transferring much of FinCEN’s work to OIA.

In a bureaucratic turf war, FinCEN officials objected to the proposal, which would have shifted numerous employees and a portion of FinCEN’s budget to OIA. They said the move was illegal without prior approval from Congress.

Instead of being given the guidelines, sources said, they were removed from an email chain about the issue.
And they claimed that OIA, because it is part of the US intelligence community, could not legally collect information on US citizens and residents unless it complied with a landmark executive order known as 12333. Signed by President Ronald Reagan and later revised and reissued by President George W. Bush, this order sets the rules for how intelligence agencies can operate. Before any agency can collect, retain, and disseminate intelligence on American citizens, that agency must establish privacy guidelines, and those guidelines, in turn, must be approved by the attorney general after consulting with the director of national intelligence. OIA, which was established in 2004, has never completed this process. Even so, it must follow rules designed to protect the civil rights and privacy of American citizens.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the attorney general declined to comment.
Also, sources said, under an agreement between the two branches of Treasury, OIA is allowed to access FinCEN’s banking database for specific foreign intelligence purposes. But, these sources said, OIA has been going far beyond those limits, flouting both this agreement and the executive order.

Last summer, FinCEN officials asked to review OIA’s guidelines required under the executive order. Instead of being given the guidelines, sources said, they were removed from an email chain about the issue.
In September, a high-ranking attorney for the Treasury Department, Paul Ahern, got into a heated exchange at a meeting with at least a half-dozen FinCEN employees. He told them that OIA had the authority to access and use the data because it had preliminary, draft guidelines, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. In fact, more than a month would pass before the guidelines were written, according to a first draft reviewed by BuzzFeed News. To this day, the guidelines have not been finalized.
Ahern, sources said, also informed FinCEN officials that OIA had already been collecting information on US citizens. Many FinCEN officials were aghast because they believed that was illegal.

A Treasury Department spokesperson declined to make Ahern available for comment, and referred back to the department’s statement that all its offices act “in a manner consistent with applicable legal authorities.” The former head of OIA, S. Leslie Ireland, who resigned last year, did not respond to a request for comment. This month, she was named to the board of directors of banking giant Citigroup. The company declined comment.
Some FinCEN officials said they were instructed not to speak to Congress about their domestic spying concerns and other issues. They did anyway.

Some FinCEN officials said they were instructed not to speak to Congress about their domestic spying concerns and other issues. They did anyway.
In October of 2016, Rep. Sean Duffy, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sent a letter to then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew asking for OIA’s legal authority to collect and retain domestic information.
Nearly one year later, the Congressman has yet to receive an answer, according to a committee staffer.
Officials at FinCEN said that after they began raising alarms, OIA began shutting them off from classified networks. That lack of access, which BuzzFeed News reported last week, meant FinCEN officials were unable to fully respond to law enforcement agencies during several live terrorist attacks over the last year. It also prevented FinCEN from fully complying with the Senate investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

UPDATE October 6, 2017, at 4:06 p.m. This story has been updated to reflect statements that were issued after the story was published from the Treasury Department and the National Security Agency.