I’ve been thinking a lot about SWIFT lately. Partly that’s
because of the renewed discussion on how some big banks relied
on cash from drug cartels to survive as the housing bubble began
to pop. Partly that’s because of advance publicity for Nicholas
Shaxson’s Treasure Islands and coverage of corporate tax
dodging. And partly it’s because of this piece, declaring
privacy dead without realizing that privacy is only dead for the
little people.  You see, I’m increasingly convinced SWIFT will
one day be the ultimate battleground over whether the US
government can just suck up and analyze all the data it wants.
As a reminder, SWIFT (or Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunicatiom) is the online messaging system the
world’s finance industry uses to transfer funds internationally.
It records the flows of trillions of dollars each day.  It first
got big news coverage when Eric Lichtblau and James Risen
reported on how our government uses it to track terrorist
financing. But of course, the database tra