New York Times: CIA collecting records of money transfers

The CIA is secretly amassing records of international money transfers into and out of the United States, including operations handled by firms like Western Union, the New York Times reported Friday.

The Central Intelligence Agency is acting under the same law that the NSA uses to assemble a data base of Americans' phone records, the paper said, quoting current and former U.S. officials.

This financial transactions program is covered under the post 9/11 Patriot Act and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Times said.

It existence suggests that Americans still do not know everything about the extent of government data collection programs.

The data does not include purely domestic transfers or bank-to-bank transactions, several officials said.

But the Times quoted another official, while not acknowledging the program, as suggesting the court imposed rules that protected the identities of any Americans from the data the CIA sees.

Rather, a tie to a terrorist organization is required before a search can be conducted, it said. And the search has to be erased after a certain number of years.