Talk:SWIFT

I don't know whether Wikipedia needs another list :-)

But I would be more than glad to offer my SWIFT code list website to be copied to wikipedia as a reference table.

It'd make it easier for people to add banks etc. It is a long list though. Thoughts? --Tristanb 10:07 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Later that year...

I've done it, and created the page: List of SWIFT codes. Tristanb 10:29, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)

By SWIFT codes the true terminology is BIC code (Bank Identifier Code).--76.4.72.236 (talk) 15:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Another question, does anybody know if SWIFT codes are the same thing as ISO 9362? Tristanb

SWIFT is the ISO Registrar for BIC codes. --76.4.72.236 (talk) 15:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

SWIFT work closely with and follow many ISO Standards - so I wouldn't be surprised at all. There is a huge link between SWIFT and standards, and if bank codes are to be published as a list, then perhaps SWIFT/ISO Country and Currency codes should be published as well. SWIFT have created a system that manages to list every country and currency in the world as a 2 and 3 character code respectively - no mean feat.

If the Currency Codes are there, shouldn't there be a list of the TIDs, MTs, Tags etc too.? Wallie 21:12, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

SWIFT publishes quarterly the SWIFT BIC Directory for its members and includes all above except MTs, Tags. Such are published and conveyed via other SWIFT User Handbook documentation.--76.4.72.236 (talk) 15:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Can someone create a new article with a list of SWIFT Message Types (FIN)? Misterjerk2 13:04, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The SWIFT Message Types are documented in the series of documents as a whole entitled the SWIFT User Handbook. Each Message Category contains a separate book. The SWIFT User Handbooks are for the Members of the SWIFT community.--76.4.72.236 (talk) 15:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to separate the GWB Administration SWIFT Scandal from SWIFT

Having the scandal within this article makes it difficult to elaborate on the nature of the scandal without cluttering up an otherwise unrelated article.--Sludge 12:01, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

That seems right to me. Intangible 18:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please make sure there is no reference to the scandal whatsoever here. Looks bad for us. Thanks boys, keep up the good work!

I find it interesting that the information in this article about the recent news stories is twice to three times as long as the information about the subject of the article. The "current news" part needs shortened desperately. —akghetto ^talk 08:44, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't really think it's that long, but it probably would make sense to make a separate article for the scandal info

Okay, now it's getting pretty long, especially compared to the general information about SWIFT.

Having been affiliated with SWIFT for 30 years, I cannot talk about this matter due to non-disclosure rules; but I can say this: A scandal, as with any news story, should only be taken a face value and quite far from factual. All the news articles, from the NY Times to Washington Post, hit around or near the story of SWIFT and the scandal, but they never gave you the full and correct details. And that is just the way life is and history is written. Moral: Don't swallow any of these articles (and perhaps history as well) at whole-cloth.--76.4.72.236 (talk) 15:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Kieth Olbermann shows 9 times when Bush talked about tracking financial transactions -- thus removing any justification for Bush attacking the NY Times supposed "leak of secret info": (not sure if maybe this video should be linked at the end of the article?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aphXxP-z1w8&search=olbermann%20bush%20times

No: please read the exsiting article as written: there are already mentions with external references to Bush previously discussing the tracking of terrorist finances, before the SWIFT story broke. The Bush administration and Treasury Department have responded that discussing general counterterrorism intentions, which includes "tracking finances", is very different from describing EXACTLY how one tracks those finances. Even Eric Lichtblau --The New York Times reporter who broke the SWIFT story did not know about SWIFT and the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program in an earlier story he wrote in Novermber 2005 criticizing the Bush administration's LACK of progress in tracking terrorist funds:

U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds, Agency Says

<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30610FA3F550C7A8EDDA80994DD404482>

or

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/national/nationalspecial3/29terror.html?ex=1290920400&en=27845432a25e74fe&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss> whole article requires free registration

In the article, Lichtblau informs the Times' readers about the government's efforts to track terrorist financing. His assessment was pretty negative:

The administration has made cutting off money to terrorists one of the main prongs in its attack against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It has seized tens of millions of dollars in American accounts and assets linked to terrorist groups, prodded other countries to do the same, and is now developing a program to gain access to and track potentially hundreds of millions of international bank transfers into the United States.

But experts in the field say the results have been spotty, with few clear dents in Al Qaeda's ability to move money and finance terrorist attacks. The Congressional report-- a follow-up to a 2003 report that offered a similarly bleak assessment -- buttresses those concerns.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Senate Finance Committee and was one of the lawmakers who requested the study, said he was disappointed to learn that in an area as critical as countering terrorist financing, they haven't gotten very far yet.

As recently as 2005, neither Lichtblau, nor the GAO study cited in the article, nor Lichtblau's "experts" cited in the article knew anything about the classified SWIFT tracking program, which had been in place since right after September 11th and was used to track the terrorists behind the Bali nightclub bombings according to the June NYT SWIFT story. This renders the Times' and Kieth Olbermann's current argument that the terrorists already knew untenable. Even most of the Belgian government did not know and are still performing an investigation to see if any Belgian laws were broken.

This should definately be in a seperate section, relating to the current events. I don't see how a brief news event should take over the entire article about S.W.I.F.T.. Misterjerk2 18:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of original research regarding 2001 and 2002 mentions of SWIFT in public sources

Note: On July 10, 2006, I have update the body of the article with enough documentation to show, beyond reasonable doubt that the description of a U.S. government program to monitor SWIFT international financial transactions has been in the public domain since September, 21, 2001, and that a December 2002 UN report, provides further details. My documentation calls into question the June 22, 2006 claims of disclosure of a "secret program" by the New York Times, and later statements by President Bush and by Vice-President Cheney, that seem to confirm the New York Times claim of "secret" disclosure, and the criticism of the Times reporting of "secrets", by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. The disturbing question that makes the case for continued linking of "GWB Administration with SWIFT Scandal", is why was a program described for nearly five years, on major media websites, considered and prounounced by Bush and Cheney as a "secret", and why was the program continued, after descriptions of it, and it's links to the U.S. government monitoring, were publicly disclosed over a 15 month period, between September, 2001, and December, 2002? -host, 10 July 2006

The United Nations report you cite (with a broken link unfortunately) discusses international transactions in general by saying "The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America" and could be used to track terrorist-related finances and that "the United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions." and other countries should plan to do so as well. The UN document does not say, however, that SWIFT's international headquarters in Brussels maintains a database that includes information on the vast majority of all international banking transactions. The UN Document does not say that the United States had persuaded the foreign bankers who operate SWIFT's Brussels headquarters (and perhaps their governments) to give the U.S. authorities access to that database. The UN article does not say that the database records themselves in the SWIFT database have the necessary fields needed to allow terrorists and their financiers to be tracked and identified.

Since this article is about the Brussels-based international SWIFT service and not the US Fed wire system, CHIPS, or the New York-based SWIFT terminal, the material might be more appropriate in the Fedwire Wikipedia article. Wikipedia also has a no original research policy.

In addition, if terrorist-related organizations did indeed read the particular UN report, the relevant paragraph in the report does not say that the United States had gained access to the database maintained in SWIFT's international Brussels headquarters. On the contrary, the paragraph refers specifically to "systems in the United States of America" which were being monitored by the U.S. These systems included Fedwire, which is operated by the Federal Reserve Board, CHIPS, an American bank-owned alternative to Fedwire, and the SWIFT operation "in the United States," which is located in New York, not Brussels (the subject of this article). The paragraph in question nowhere hints that SWIFT's Brussels headquarters had a massive database of international money transfers, or that the U.S. had gotten access to the Brussels-based database and program. Moreover, according to the original The New York Times article about SWIFT and the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program in June 2006: "Among the program's successes was the capture of an Al Qaeda operative known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said." This attack took place on October 12, 2002 and the UN report was "in the public domain" since September 21, 2001 -- apparently, the Bali bombers and their financiers did not find the information in the UN Report that valuable as they did transfer funds through the Brussels based SWIFT system and ultimately go caught as a result.

Interestingly enough, The New York Times itself has not mentioned this UN report in its editorials defending the decision to publish the SWIFT/TFTP story.--Historypre 23:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Clarification, the UN report was issued on December 17, 2002, and according to the The New York Times June 2006 article on the SWIFT program, following the 2002 bombing of the Bali resort, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was used to track al-Qaeda operative Hambali to a location in Thailand where he was arrested in 2003. The Hambali Wikipedia article lists the precise day of capture as August 11, 2003. Moreover, the Times story also states: "The [SWIFT] data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year [2005], the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said." It appears that neither the September 21, 2001 mention of SWIFT in The Baltimore Sun nor the December 17, 2001 mention of the US-based office of SWIFT in the UN Report caused the the individuals involved in these incidents to subsequently avoid using the Belgium-based SWIFT system to transfer/launder funds for terrorism-related activities.

Frankly, the The Baltimore Sun article actually argues that monitoring international financial transactions would not be helpful in combatting terrorism-related finances:

"We've had a saying for a long time - that terrorism is warfare on the cheap," says Yonah Alexander, a terrorism specialist at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., who recently co-wrote a study of bin Laden. "You had pilot training, air tickets, car rentals, apartments and food for a number of years. But for the whole operation, what are you talking about? Maybe a million dollars? They invest very little money, and the results are unbelievable."

Bridgeman agrees. "I'm sure this whole thing ran less than a million dollars - a lot less," he says. "That's why terrorism is so popular with the underdog - it's so cost-effective."

Funding on that scale would not necessarily have required large international bank transfers of the kind often seen in cases involving drug cartels or corrupt regimes. That could limit the ability of the National Security Agency to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions, which are carried out by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), headquartered in Belgium.

The Treasury Department's first line of defense against money laundering, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also might not be of much help. FINCEN, located in Virginia, studies bank reports of cash deposits of $10,000 or more, as well as other suspicious transactions. But none of the known financial activities of the hijackers would have generated such reports.

The Sun article does not say that the National Security Agency was actually intercepting "such transactions" through SWIFT, but that the size of the transactions were small enough that they "could limit the ability of the National Security Agency to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions." SWIFT is not mentioned anywhere else in the article. The Sun article was speculating that the NSA could electronically monitor some financial transactions andstated that international transactions are carried out using SWIFT in Belgium: that is not the same as saying that the NSA was electronically monitoring transactions through SWIFT in Belgium in December, 2001. Cleary the NSA was not electronically monitoring individual SWIFT transactions, otherwise there would have been no need to ask indivdiual foreign bankers to have access to the SWIFT database itself in Belgium. Why ask permission for what one already has? Unless, of course, one does not actually have something. Indeed, according to The New York Times article, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program involved the CIA and U.S. Treasury Department accessing the SWIFT transaction database with the permission of the SWIFT's member banks, not the NSA electronically monitoring individual transactions. If the NSA actually had been electronically monitoring individual SWIFT transactions, then there would have been no need to have bothered asking SWIFT for access to the database of all SWIFT transactions. Again, the The New York Times itself has not chosen to cite either of these mentions of SWIFT in its editorials defending the decision to publish the SWIFT/TFTP story.--Historypre 02:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Later on July 10, I added the following to Terrorist Finance Tracking Program: "An August 28, 1998, Washington Post article, titled, "Bin Laden's Finances Are Moving Target", describes how CIA and agents with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network would access "computerized systems of bank transaction monitoring services" of SWIFT and CHIPS, as well as systems maintained by the Federal Reserve. The article describes the systems as "record[ing] the billions of dollars coursing through the global banking system daily." The purpose was to "find out when Bin Laden moves funds".

The first news reporting by a New York Times reporter about the ability of the U.S. Government to monitor financial transactions via SWIFT, headquartered in Belgium, was in a September 21, 2001, Baltimore Sun news article, titled "Authorities trying to track money back to bin Laden", written by the then Sun's staff reporter, Scott Shane. Mr. Shane is currently working as a New York Times reporter."

Unfortunately, my addition was removed without comment. It is certainly relevant, and easily verifiable. It displays, convincingly that details of SWIFT monitoring, by CIA and Treasury of global financial transactions, was information in the public domain, as far back as August, 1998, and not the "secret program" that U.S. government officials claimed that it is, in June, 2006. The second paragraph of my addition is also relevant, because it verifies that a NY Times Washington Bureau reporter, Scott Shane, had reported U.S. government monitoring of SWIFT transactions, when he worked for a Tribune newspaper in September, 2001. On July 9, 2006, Mr. Shane filed a report with NY Times reporter, ERIC LICHTBLAU, titled "Ally Warned Bush on Keeping Spying From Congress" . Mr. Lichtblau was co-author of the June 23, NY Times article that "Terrorist Finance Tracking Program" section of this wiki "SWIFT" page, begins with.

My point to all of this, is that my edit verifies that this controversy over SWIFT monitoring, did not begin on June 23, 2006, and that the Bush adminstration, the NY Times, and the Washington Post, all knew or should have known, by June, 2006 that SWIFT was not a "secret" program, because description of it and U.S. monitoring of it, existed for years; in the public domain. -host, 10 July 2006

The reference to the August 28, 1998 Washington Post article discusses a program set up the moniter the FedWire, CHIPS system, and the New York terminal of the SWIFT system used for transactions that originate and/or terminate within the United States, and are thus fall under U.S. Federal Reserve regulations. This article is about the belgium-based SWIFT used for international transactions; the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program section is about the U.S. government program to access the the Brussels-headquarters SWIFT transaction database. The controversy discussed by original June 2006 article in The New York Times was the unprecedented access of international bank transfers outside of U.S. financial jurisdiction. The Washington Post article would make more sense in the Fedwire Wikipedia article or about tracking terrorist finances within the United States.

Per the discussion above, the September 21, 2001 The Baltimore Times article does not discuss "the ability of the U.S. Government to monitor financial transactions via SWIFT, headquartered in Belgium" as claimed in the recent edits to the Wikipedia SWIFT article. On the contrary, the The Baltimore Sun article actually calls attention to the fact that monitoring international financial transactions would not be helpful in combatting terrorism-related finances, such as those used in the September 11, 2001 attack because of the small amounts of money involved.

Funding on that scale would not necessarily have required large international bank transfers of the kind often seen in cases involving drug cartels or corrupt regimes. That could limit the ability of the National Security Agency to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions, which are carried out by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), headquartered in Belgium.

The Treasury Department's first line of defense against money laundering, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also might not be of much help. FINCEN, located in Virginia, studies bank reports of cash deposits of $10,000 or more, as well as other suspicious transactions. But none of the known financial activities of the hijackers would have generated such reports.

Again, the Sun article does not say that the National Security Agency was actually intercepting "such transactions" through SWIFT, but that the size of the transactions were small enough that they "could limit the ability of the National Security Agency to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions." SWIFT is not mentioned anywhere else in the Sun article besides this one paragraph. The Sun article was speculating that the NSA could electronically monitor some financial transactions and also stated that international transactions are carried out using SWIFT in Belgium: that is not the same as saying that the NSA was electronically monitoring transactions through SWIFT in Belgium on or before December 21, 2001, when the article was written.

Cleary the NSA was not electronically monitoring individual SWIFT transactions in Belgium, otherwise there would have been no need to ask the foreign bankers who run the Brussels SWIFT system for access to the SWIFT database in Belgium. Why ask for permission if you already have access to the data? Indeed, according to The New York Times article, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program--the section title--involved the CIA and U.S. Treasury Department accessing the SWIFT transaction database with the permission of the SWIFT's member banks, not the NSA electronically monitoring individual transactions. If the NSA actually had been electronically monitoring individual SWIFT transactions, then there would have been no need to have bothered asking SWIFT for access to the database of all SWIFT transactions. Once again, the The New York Times itself has not chosen to cite either of these mentions of SWIFT in its editorials defending the decision to publish the SWIFT/TFTP story.

Even so, the Baltimore Sun article is worth mentioning since it does discuss SWIFT in Belgium and represents a primary source where the Brussels headquarters of SWIFT was discussed in the same sentence as monitoring terrorist finances -- I have added it into the paragraph discussing the controversy as follows:

Still others have questioned whether the information in the articles was even secret because of a December 21, 2001 Baltimore Sun article that mentioned SWIFT in Belgium and conjectured about the ability of the U.S. National Security Agency "to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions," as well as public announcements that the Bush administration planned to track terrorist-related finances. For example, in a speech shortly after the September 11th attacks, George W. Bush elaborated on the Administration's intention to track terrorist funding, saying "if [financial institutions] fail to help us by sharing information or freezing accounts, the Department of the Treasury now has the authority to freeze their bank's assets and transactions in the United States".

However, the discussion of the Baltimore Sun article, or any other discussion of whether or not The New York Times broke the law, does not belong in the first paragraph of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program section of the SWIFT article. Rather, these discussions belong in the paragraph discussing whether the Times can be prosecuted for the disclosure -- which has become another core controversy--Historypre 22:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Historypre, you wrote the following opinion:

"The reference to the August 28, 1998 Washington Post article discusses a program set up the moniter the FedWire, CHIPS system, and the New York terminal of the SWIFT system used for transactions that originate and/or terminate within the United States, and are thus fall under U.S. Federal Reserve regulations. This article is about the belgium-based SWIFT used for international transactions; the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program section is about the U.S. government program to access the the Brussels-headquarters SWIFT transaction database."

The August 28, 1998 article, titled "Bin Laden's Finances Are Moving Target", contains the following, clear contradictions to your conclsions above, that the article only referenced U.S. transactions involving SWIFT: "On one point U.S. officials are certain: They hold out no hope of finding bin Laden assets in the United States. He has advocated a boycott of this country for years. But they are scouring Britain for bin Laden bank accounts used to finance a Saudi dissident organization there, terrorism experts said.

The CIA and agents with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network also will try to lay tripwires to find out when bin Laden moves funds by plugging into the computerized systems of bank transaction monitoring services – operated by the Federal Reserve and private organizations called SWIFT and CHIPS – that record the billions of dollars coursing through the global banking system daily."

The White House and the Treasury made public statements to the effect that monitoring of SWIFT was unknown to the terrorists before the June 22, NY Times disclosure, and that the terrorists are smart and would be looking for news articles that describe an entitiy such as SWIFT: From the July 27, 2006 White House Press Briefing by press secretary, Tony Snow: "Q I guess what I'm asking is -- and I'm sorry for not being specific enough -- but is there the belief that even though terrorists had clearly been tipped off from the very beginning by the President that there was going to be an aggressive attempt to get as much financial information as possible, that they did not know about the SWIFT Bank?

MR. SNOW: I am absolutely sure they didn't know about SWIFT. There are -- when you have key government officials around the world saying, we didn't know about it -- there may have been a lot of activity, but it is a program that was not well-known, including among people who have pretty high positions in the banking industry. So, yes, this is not the sort of thing that everybody knew."

From the June 23, 2006 Statement of Under Secretary Stuart Levey on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program: "...SWIFT is the premier messaging service used by banks around the world to issue international transfers, which makes its data exceptionally valuable. I would note that SWIFT is predominantly used for overseas transfers.....

.....Until today, we have not discussed this program in public for an obvious reason: the value of the program came from the fact that terrorists didn't know it existed. They may have heard us talking about "following the money," but they didn't know that we were obtaining terrorist-related data from SWIFT. Many may not have even known what SWIFT was.

With today's revelations, this is unfortunately no longer true. This is a grave loss.

The terrorists we are pursuing are deadly serious and take every precaution to keep their plans and methods to themselves. We cannot expect to continue disrupting their activities if our most valuable programs are exposed on the front page of our newspapers...."

Even if you were to offer a persuasive argument that the description of SWIFT monitoring by U.S. CIA and Treasury, in pursuit of Bin Laden related only to financial transactions that were initiated or terminated in the U.S., in the August 28, 1998, WaPo news article, and I doubt that you can find anything in the article that will counter the excerpts that I offered to counter your assumptions, the quotes from Tony Snow and from Treasury's Stuart Levey certainly do not support what you stated.

Their argument is that they assume that any mention of CIA/Treasury monitoring of SWIFT would lessen it's effectiveness, because, as Levey Stated, "The terrorists we are pursuing are deadly serious and take every precaution to keep their plans and methods to themselves."

You put much time and effort into the material you posted and neatly footnoted. My research and my effort to discuss this here, and support my points, is no less considerable. My edit about the 1998 and 2001 reporting of U.S. government SWIFT monitoring, is timely and relevant. Please stop removing it until you can offer justification that contradicts what Mr. Snow and Mr. Levey claim. Just because their claims that SWIFT was "not known" before the June, 2006 NY Times disclosed it's existence, are untrue, doesn't mean that they are wrong about everything else that they have stated.

You have chosen to pick a place in time, to begin your timeline. I have simply added to it, with citations of reporting about SWIFT from earlier years. If you knew about them, you might have included the information I have posted, in your timeline. This is a publicly edited place on the web. Allow others to supply verifiable material that is relevant to the section that you posted in, please. -host, 12 July 2006

To 66.56.3.182 -- Reverting other Wikipedia editors' work without checkin comments is both inappropriate and inconsiderate. In good faith, I have incorporated some of your additions into the article and included your citation properly in the article with a working link. You have shown no such reciprocity or consideration. Moreover, you have also reverted edits in other paragraphs without comment. Wikipedia is not a message board, blog, or a diary on DailyKos: it is an online encyclopedia updated and edited collaboratively by many editors. Adding your contributions without any consideration of the existing article structure or paragraph flow is completely inappropriate. You may want to familiarize yourself with the Wikipedia:List of policies. If you cannot refrain from violating these policies in both spirit and letter, then I suggest taking your contributions to other online forums where "anything goes." Finally, not providing properly formatted citations for the external references upon which you rely is also not helpful.

As for the 1998 Washington Post article you cite, the relevant lines are as follows:

On one point U.S. officials are certain: They hold out no hope of finding bin Laden assets in the United States. He has advocated a boycott of this country for years. But they are scouring Britain for bin Laden bank accounts used to finance a Saudi dissident organization there, terrorism experts said. The CIA and agents with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network also will try to lay tripwires to find out when bin Laden moves funds by plugging into the computerized systems of bank transaction monitoring services – operated by the Federal Reserve and private organizations called SWIFT and CHIPS – that record the billions of dollars coursing through the global banking system daily. John Moynihan, a former Drug Enforcement Administration investigator, said that unlike most criminal money-laundering, which washes dirty money into clean businesses, "bin Laden is taking clean, legitimately earned funds and turning it toward dirty purposes. Tracking that money will be doubly difficult because it hasn't aroused suspicion before."

This article does not mention the Belgium-based SWIFT, specifically -- it mentions SWIFT in the context that both SWIFT and CHIPS are privately owned (in contrast to the system operated by the U.S. Federal Reserve), as well as the context that the CIA and the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will try to "lay tripwires to find out when bin Laden moves funds ..." The article does not say that the CIA or Treasury will likely be successful, rather, it is pessimistic in this regard. The December 2002 UN Report you previously cited discusses the actual progress of this effort anticipated in the 1998 Washington Post article to track electronic transfers in systems "such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America" (emphasis added). In context, the U.N. report says:

The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. ... The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.

From the 2002 U.N. report, the United States, or Belgium for that matter, had not applied such "new monitoring techniques" to SWIFT transactions in Belgium, implying that the U.N. did not know about the details of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, which did not simply monitor individual SWIFT transactions, routed through New York, as they happened; instead, the program searched the historical database of all international transactions in Belgium, outside of US jurisdiction. Accessing the database was a sufficiently different procedure than what the Clinton administration had done following the 1998 United States embassy bombings that the Times chose to publish the details.

At any rate, the the 1998 Washington Post article does mention "SWIFT" in the same sentence as "global banking system". As a resolution, I propose discussing this Post article in the same paragraph where I added the discussion Baltimore Sun article with a proper citation (a good faith edit you simply reverted), along with a properly formatted citation with a working link to the original 1998 Washington Post article.--Historypre 21:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

SWIFT Model question

SWIFT Model question: Is there any UML model or XSD schema to SWIFT? If not, can anybody tell us why? ShaiBenYehuda ShaiBenYehuda 17:59, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

UML

I am not sure what your question means, but I can verify that SWIFT uses UML internally to model it's protocols. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.19.14.24 (talk) 16:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

Yes, SWIFT does employ XML Schema is some message types.--76.4.72.236 (talk) 15:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

External Link question

The following external link, links to a website called Girlza.com, which is a prohibited site at the bank I work for. I have attempted to test the link at home but for the last 2 weeks the link has been unavailable. Question: Should this link be removed:

• List of SWIFT codes (wiki)
  

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by KevinScottNL (talk • contribs) 12:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC).