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A Leviathan Rejuvenated: Surveillance, Money Laundering, and the War on Terror

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Abstract

Efforts to prevent and preempt further terrorist attacks in the United States and other developed countries have intruded into many spheres of public and private life. This article provides a short assessment of the redeployment of anti-money laundering regimes to combat the financing of terrorism. This expansion of financial surveillance is directed by international organizations and domestic legislation in the belief that terrorists and their financiers may be found, identified and detained. After providing background to the anti-money laundering regime, the article looks at the domestic and extraterritorial application of the USA PATRIOT Act. One conclusion of this analysis finds that a financial panopticon has coalesced out of the wide range of financial and non-financial businesses now required to report “suspicious financial activity.”

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Notes

  1. United Nations Security Council, “Resolution 1373 (2001),” S/RES/1373 (2001) (2001); Financial Action Task Force, The Forty Recommendations (2003), English, 20 June 2003 2003, PDF file, Available: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/dataoecd/38/47/34030579.PDF [accessed 30 June 2003].

  2. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Statute 272. The PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in 2006 with a number of civil liberties safeguard provisions introduced in response to criticisms made concerning the initial version of the legislation.

  3. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, volume 3: Hobbes and Civil Science, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 220.

  4. Ibid., p. 222

  5. Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, Second Vintage ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended” Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003).

  6. Norman Jacobson, “The Strange Case of the Hobbesian Man,” Representations, no. 63 (1998).

  7. An argument for a re-reading of Hobbes in order to secure liberty from within the security confines of the state was made by Claudia Aradau, see Claudia Aradau, The Other Hobbesian State, 19 April 2005, Web page, Challenge, Available: http://libertysecurity.org/article213.html [accessed 20 July 2005].

  8. Juvenal, Satires

  9. “When civil libertarians complained the law could lead to abuses, Attorney General John Ashcroft derided them as ‘hysterics.’” Michael Isikoff, “Show Me the Money,” Newsweek, 1 December 2003, p. 36.

  10. Privacy in this context is essentially the simple right to be left alone by both the state and society. Laura K. Donohue, “Anglo-American Privacy and Surveillance,” The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 96, no. 3 (2006), p. 1066.

  11. Ibid. p. 1197.

  12. Brian Doherty, An American Stasi, 16 July 2002, Web page, Reason Online, Available: www.reason.com/news/show/33671 [accessed 26 April 2007]. The original webpage for the program, ‘Operation TIPS Fact Sheet’ is archived at www.politechbot.com/docs/tips.deleted.112002.html [last visited 26 April 2007].

  13. Prior to this time, the money was simply part of the underlying (predicate) crime, or treated as tax evasion. See Teresa E. Adams, “Tacking on Money Laundering Charges to White Collar Crimes: What did Congress intend, and what are the courts doing?,” Georgia State University Law Review 17, no. 2 (2000), p. 538; U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Information Technologies for Control of Money Laundering (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. 3.

  14. As of October 2006 the FATF had 33 member jurisdictions: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, China, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States; and there are two special observers, China and South Korea. Financial Action Task Force, FATF invites the Republic of Korea to be an Observer, 8 August 2006, Press release, Available: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/dataoecd/25/39/37260684.pdf [accessed 23 September 2006]. Changes to the membership structure of the FATF are forthcoming as it introduces the category of ‘associate member’ for the FATF-style regional bodies (for example, the Council of Europe’s Select Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures (MONEYVAL) performs this function in Western Europe). Financial Action Task Force, Annual Report 2005–2006, English, 23 June 2006, PDF file, Available: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/dataoecd/38/56/37041969.pdf [accessed 18 July 2006], pp. 4–5.

  15. William F. Wechsler, “Follow the Money,” Foreign Affairs 80, no. 4 (2001).

  16. Financial Action Task Force, Report on Money Laundering Typologies, 2000–2001, English, 1 February 2001, PDF file, Available: www.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/TY2001_en.pdf [accessed 21 March 2002], p. 19.

  17. This example represents the personal experience of the author at an Irish pub in Boston, Massachusetts in 1985 where they were collecting for the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

  18. Stefan D. Cassella, “Forfeiture of Terrorist Assets Under the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001,” Law and Policy in International Business 34 (2002), p. 11.

  19. Financial Action Task Force, Report on Money Laundering Typologies, 2000–2001, English, 2002, PDF file, Available: www.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/TY2002_en.pdf [accessed 21 March 2002], p. 4.

  20. Ibid., p. 2.

  21. European Parliament and Council of the European Union, “Directive 2005/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2005 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing,” Official Journal of the European Union L series 309 (2005), Article 1(4).

  22. The latter Resolution “strongly urges” that all states fully implement the FATF’s Forty Recommendations.

  23. Financial Action Task Force, The Forty Recommendations (2003a, b), p. 7.

  24. USA PATRIOT Act, Section 351 “Amendments relating to reporting of suspicious activities.” See also Financial Action Task Force, The Forty Recommendations (2003a, b).

  25. As a point of comparison, for the United Kingdom in 2005 there were “just under 195,000” SARs filed, of which “just under 2,100” (1%) were thought to be of interest to those authorities involved in combating terrorist financing. See Sir Stephen Lander, Review of the Suspicious Activity Reports Regime (The SARs Review), (United Kingdom: Serious Organised Crime Agency, 2006), p. 13, Available: http://www.soca.gov.uk/downloads/SOCAtheSARsReview_FINAL_Web.pdf [accessed 14 June 2006].

  26. U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Information Technologies for Control of Money Laundering, p. 9.

  27. Josh Meyer and Greg Miller, “Secret U.S. Program Tracks Global Bank Transfers,” Los Angles Times 23 June 2006, Available: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-swift23jun23,1,357838.story [accessed 24 June 2006]; Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, “Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror,” New York Times 23 June 2006, Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html [accessed 23 June 2006]; Barton Gellman, et al., “Bank Records Secretly Tapped,” Washington Post 23 June 2006.

  28. “Swift in figures—SWIFTNet FIN traffic February YTD” at http://www.swift.com/index.cfm?item_id=61597 accessed 27 April 2007. Peak daily message traffic was recorded at 14,658,980 on 20 December 2006. The list of “countries” includes dependent territories like Jersey, Guernsey, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands.

  29. However, not everyone in the government agreed with this depiction of the process. “‘It is not “data mining,” or trolling through the private financial records of Americans. It is not a “fishing expedition,” but rather a sharp harpoon aimed at the heart of terrorist activity,’ [Secretary of the Treasury John Snow] said.” Gellman, et al., “Bank Records Secretly Tapped.”

  30. John Berlau, “Show Us Your Money,” Reason, November 2003, p. 27, Available: http://www.reason.com/0311/fe.jb.show.shtml. Berlau is quoting J. Michael Waller, vice president of the Center for Security Policy (“a hawkish D.C. think tank”) and professor of international communications at the Institute of World Politics.

  31. George Paine, Your Bank Account, Your Liberties, 2 January 2003, Web page, Warblogging.com, Available: http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000783.php [accessed 14 January 2003].

  32. Manu Joseph, Your Money Under More Scrutiny, 26 April 2005, Web page, Wired, Available: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2005/04/67249 [accessed 29 April 2007]. The same industry expert predicted the cost for Europe and Asia would be another US$11.6 billion.

  33. Real Assurance Risk Management, Estimation of FSA Administrative Burdens, (London: 2006), Available: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/other/Admin_Burdens_Report_20060621.pdf [accessed 29 April 2007].

  34. Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP, Anti-money laundering current customer review cost benefit analysis, (London: 2003), Available: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/other/ml_cost-benefit.pdf [accessed 27 April 2007].

  35. Money laundering charges are frequently added to the charge sheet if any money or property is involved. Moreover, Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said, “If these provisions are good enough to go after terrorists, they're good enough to go after drug dealers and child molesters.” John Berlau, “Money Laundering and Mission Creep,” Insight on the News, 6 January 2004, Available: http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/01/06/National/Money.Laundering.And.Mission.Creep-578104.shtml [accessed 27 January 2004].

  36. As required in order to comply with the PATRIOT Act, the Recommendations of the FATF and UN Security Council Resolution 1617 (2005).

  37. My thanks to Padideh Tosti, who suggested such a possibility about the London School of Economics and Political Science to me, given the large percentage of foreign students attending this fine institution of higher learning, and paying the substantial “non-resident” tuition and fees. This point was later made in the press and a number of universities in the UK now mention their reporting obligations under the Money Laundering Regulation 2003 with regards to large cash payments of tuition and fees. See Miranda Green, “Universities alerted to money-laundering risk from foreign fees,” The Financial Times (London), 9 February 2005, Available: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/780afad2-7a41-11d9-9b93-00000e2511c8.html [accessed 29 April 2007].

  38. Dean Calbreath, “Wells Fargo must pay $1.15 million to woman wrongly arrested by FBI,” The San Diego Union-Tribune 19 November 2002, Available: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20021119-9999_1b19wells.html [accessed 27 November 2002].

  39. Robert O'Harrow, Jr., “In Terror War, Privacy vs. Security,” The Washington Post 3 June 2002, Available: Lexis-Nexis [accessed 24 January 2004].

  40. Ed Harris, Divorce lawyers told to report tax dodges, 9 October 2003, Web page, Evening Standard (London), Available: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/7100598?version=1 [accessed 3 November 2003].

  41. Karen Howlett, “Ottawa taking aim at lawyers in money laundering move,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), 7 October 2003, Available: http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031007.r-money-laundering07/BNStory/Business/ [accessed 3 November 2003].

  42. Valsamis Mitsilegas, Money Laundering Counter-Measures in the European Union: A New Paradigm of Security Governance Versus Fundamental Legal Principles (The Hauge, London, New York: Kluwer Law International, 2003), 95–102.

  43. Eric Lichtblau, “U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling,” New York Times (New York), 28 September 2003, p. 1, Available: Lexis-Nexis [accessed 4 November 2003a, b, c]. See also Eric Lichtblau, “U.S. Wants Foreign Leaders’ Laundered Assets,” New York Times (New York), 23 August 2003, Available: Lexis-Nexis [accessed 4 September 2003].

  44. Eric Lichtblau, “U.S. Cautiously Begins to Seize Millions in Foreign Banks,” New York Times (New York), 30 May 2003, Available: Lexis-Nexis [accessed 16 June 2003a, b, c].

  45. Isikoff, “Show Me the Money,” p. 36.

  46. Ibid. The article quoted Peter Djinis, a banking lawyer.

  47. Associated Press, “Anti-Terror Laws Capture Common Criminals,” New York Times 14 September 2003, Available: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anti-Terror-Laws.html [accessed14 September 2003].

  48. Lichtblau, “U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling.”

  49. Ibid., p. 1.

  50. Lichtblau, “U.S. Cautiously Begins to Seize Millions in Foreign Banks.”

  51. See http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/programs/terror/terror.shtml.

  52. For example, Ibrahim Warde recounts the story of Ptech, a Massachusetts-based software firm co-founded by a Lebanese immigrant, see Ibrahim Warde, The Price of Fear: Al-Qaeda and the Truth Behind the Financial War on Terror (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 113.

  53. John B. Taylor, Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post-9/11 World (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), p. 12, 18.

  54. Alix M. Freedman and Bill Spindle, “Global Upheaval Shakes Roots of U.N. Mandate to their Foundations,” The Wall Street Journal Europe (Brussels), 19–21 December 2003, p. 8.

  55. Jose E. Alvarez, “The Security Council's War on Terrorism: Problems and Policy Options,” Review of the Security Council by Member States, eds. Erika de Wet, André Nollkaemper and Petra Dijkstra (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2003), p. 121. On this point, Eric Rosand suggested that the “legislative” action of the Security Council with this Resolution was a “pragmatic triumph” when compared to the longstanding deadlock in the General Assembly over a comprehensive convention against international terrorism. See Eric Rosand, “The Security Council as “Global Legislator": Ultra Vires or Ultra Innovative?,” Fordham International Law Journal 28 (2005), pp. 548–549. However, his perspective must be viewed through the lens of his official position as Deputy Legal Counselor in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York, even though the views and opinions expressed are his and not necessarily those of the U.S. government.

  56. Rohan Bedi, “The new anti-money laundering regime,” The Manila Times 3 March 2003, Available: http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/mar/03/opinion/20030303opi5.html [accessed 7 March 2003].

  57. Ethan Preston, “The USA PATRIOT Act: New Adventures in American Extraterritoriality,” Journal of Financial Crime 10, no. 2 (2002), pp. 107–108.

  58. Jane Bussey, “Anti-money laundering compliance sparks debate,” The Miami Herald 15 February 2007, Available: http://origin.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/16700079.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_business [accessed 27 April 2007].

  59. Lesley Springall, “Conscripted By US Patriot Act,” The Independent (Auckland), 22 November 2002, Available: http://xtramsn.co.nz/business/0,,5007-1938571,00.html [accessed 27 November 2002].

  60. Lindsay Thompson, “Clients’ job to provide credit card data to U.S. IRS,” The Nassau Guardian (Bahamas), 18 March 2003, Available: http://www.thenassauguardian.com/business/284215735111517.php [accessed 3 April 2003]; Martella Matthews, “IRS pressure kills Leadenhall Mastercards,” The Nassau Guardian (Bahamas), 30 July 2003, Available: http://www.thenassauguardian.com/business/278287488782622.php [accessed 19 August 2003].

  61. Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions (South End Press, 1989), Available: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-contents.html [accessed 19 December 2003].

  62. William Brennan, The Quest to Develop a Jurisprudence of Civil Liberties in Times of Security Crises, 1987, PDF, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Available: http://www.brennancenter.org/resources/resources_national_security.html [accessed 19 December 2003]. No longer present on the Center’s website at time of writing, a copy is on file with the author.

  63. Ibid. However, it should also be noted that the version of the speech available from the Brennan Center for Justice had been edited, which was noted by the presence of an ellipse at the beginning of the final paragraph. It no longer contained the references to Israel and the preservation of civil liberties within Israel as quoted by Chomsky. The complete lecture is available in Yoram Dinstein, ed., Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, vol. 18 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988).

  64. Financial Action Task Force, Report on Money Laundering Typologies, 1998–1999, English, 10 February 1999, PDF file, Available: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/dataoecd/29/38/34038177.pdf [accessed 21 March 2002].

  65. Anonymous, “The future of money: A cash call,” The Economist, 17 February (2007).

  66. Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson, “The surveillant assemblage,” British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4 (2000).

  67. Ulrich Beck, “Living in the World Risk Society,” Lecture given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 15 February 2006 (2006), Available: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/events/2006/20051215t1424z001.htm; Ulrich Beck, “The Terrorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited,” Theory, Culture & Society 19, no. 4 (2002).

  68. For a comparative analysis between the United Kingdom and South Africa, see Louis De Koker, “Money laundering control and suppression of financing of terrorism: Some thoughts on the impact of customer due diligence measures on financial exclusion,” Journal of Financial Crime 13, no. 1 (2005).

  69. Financial Action Task Force, Combating the Abuse of Alternative Remittance Systems: International Best Practices, English, 20 June 2003, PDF file, Available: http://www.fatf-gafi.org./pdf/SR6-BPP_en.pdf [accessed 30 June 2003].

  70. William Vlcek, “Surveillance to Combat Terrorist Financing in Europe: Whose liberty, whose security?,” European Security 16, no. 1 (2007).

  71. Louise Amoore and Marieke de Goede, “Governance, risk and dataveillance in the war on terror,” Crime, Law and Social Change 43, no. 2–3 (2005); Marieke de Goede, “Financial Regulation and the War on Terror,” Global Finance in the New Century: Beyond Deregulation, eds. Libby Assassi, Anastasia Nesvetailova and Duncan Wigan (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

  72. A conversation between a Representative from Nevada and the local FBI office left her unsettled. Shelley Berkley says “never…did the FBI say we needed additional tools to keep this nation safe from strip-club operators.” Isikoff, “Show Me the Money,” p. 36.

  73. Stephen Gill, “American Transparency Capitalism and Human Security: A Contradiction in Terms?,” Global Change, Peace and Security 15, no. 1 (2003); Stephen Gill, “The Global Panopticon? The Neoliberal State, Economic Life, and Democratic Surveillance,” Alternatives 20, no. 1 (1995).

  74. An activity the author will admit to having performed once or twice in the 1980s.

  75. Brandon C. Welsh and David P. Farrington, “Surveillance for Crime Prevention in Public Space: Results and Policy Choices in Britain and America,” Criminology & Public Policy 3, no. 3 (2004), pp. 510–513.

  76. Financial Action Task Force, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Typologies, 2004–2005, English, 10 June 2005, PDF file, Available: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/dataoecd/16/8/35003256.pdf [accessed 24 June 2005], p. 85.

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Correspondence to William Vlcek.

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A respectful nod of acknowledgement must be made to an anonymous referee for suggesting that the presence of the Leviathan in this article should start with the title. The revised version of this article benefited greatly from work completed while I was a member of the London School of Economics team in the European Commission-funded project CHALLENGE (The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security) and I remain grateful for the financial support received during that time. For more information on the scope and dimensions of the project, see <www.libertysecurity.org>.

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Vlcek, W. A Leviathan Rejuvenated: Surveillance, Money Laundering, and the War on Terror. Int J Polit Cult Soc 20, 21–40 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-007-9020-6

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