DOJ Rings Up Another Leaker, Nailing Financial Investigation Official For Handing Docs To Buzzfeed

from the stop-handing-journalists-info-the-public-might-want-to-see! dept

Another government employee has been charged with leaking sensitive info. This time it's a Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) official -- one who apparently handed dozens of suspicious activity reports (SARs) to Buzzfeed.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who was picked by Trump to replace Preet Bharara’s deputy Joon Kim, denounced BuzzFeed’s accused source.

“Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior-level FinCEN employee, betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information contained in Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to an individual not authorized to receive them,” Berman said in a statement Wednesday announcing the charges.

The leaked SARs dealt with alleged money laundering by Russian diplomats, as well as transactions possibly related to the purchase of hacked Hillary Clinton emails by a GOP figure. These were supposedly the basis for nine Buzzfeed articles over the last year, with the most recent article cited in the complaint appearing only a few days ago (October 15).

The complaint [PDF] itself is an interesting read. It makes it clear investigators don't necessarily need to see the content of a person's messages to draw inferences about their behavior.

18. Based upon my training, experience, my conversations with other law enforcement agents with training and experience in cyber technology, and my conversations with law enforcement agents who have reviewed records received in response to a judicially-authorized pen register and trap and trace order for the EDWARDS Cellphone (the "EDWARDS Pen"), I have learned, among other things, that:

a.The EDWARDS Cellphone utilized a mobile messaging service that utilizes end-to-end encryption (the "Encrypted Application"), that is, a method of secure communication that prevents third-parties from accessing data, including the companies that host the end-to-end services, and law enforcement.

b. On or about August 1, 2018, within approximately six hours of the EDWARDS Pen becoming operative--and the day after the July 2018 Article was published--the EDWARDS Cellphone exchanged approximately 70 messages via the Encrypted Application with the Reporter-1 Cellphone during an approximately 20-minute time span between 12:33 a.m. and 12:54 a.m.

c.Between on or about July 31, 2018 and August 2, 2018, the EDWARDS Cellphone and the personal cellphone of CC-1 exchanged dozens of messages via the Encrypted Application.

d. On or about August 2, 2018, approximately one week prior to the publication of the First August 2018 Article, the EDWARDS Cellphone exchanged approximately 541 messages with the Reporter-1 Cellphone via the Encrypted Application.

e. On or about August 10, 2018, the day of the publication of the First August 2018 Article, the EDWARDS Cellphone and the Reporter-1 Cellphone exchanged approximately 11 messages via the Encrypted Application.

It doesn't appear investigators were able to access the content of the messages until they examined Edwards' phone.

Throughout the course of 2018, EDWARDS engaged in hundreds of electronic communications with Reporter-1, many via an encrypted application. A review to date, pursuant to a judicially-authorized search warrant executed today, of EDWARDS's personal cellphone has revealed that that cellphone contains the substance of many of these communications, including, as described in greater detail below, communications in which EDWARDS transmitted or described SARs or other protected information to Reporter-1.

So much for going dark. Presumably the information obtained with the pen register order was enough to secure a warrant to search a cellphone and flash drive owned by Edwards. "Reporter-1" is likely Jason Leopold, who wrote or co-wrote every article named in the DOJ complaint. This also means the DOJ likely has a whole bunch of conversations between a journalist and his source, although obtaining them from the source makes it far less of a First Amendment issue.

The other interesting part of the complaint is this: Edwards viewed her leaks as whistleblowing and had pursued a whistleblower complaint in the past.

During the interview described herein, EDWARDS told the Interviewing Agents, in sum and substance, that she is a "whistleblower" who provided the SARs to Reporter-1 for "record keeping." Based on my participation in this investigation and my conversations with other law enforcement agents, I am aware that, prior to the SARs Disclosures, EDWARDS had previously filed a whistleblower complaint unrelated to the SARs Disclosures, and that EDWARDS had also reached out to congressional staffers regarding, among other things, her unrelated whistleblower complaint.

These leaked SARS may have been one of the "other things" she spoke to staffers about. It appears she felt these SARs would just be buried by the administration. Or she felt these were of enough public interest they should be publicly-disclosed. Or it just may be the excuse she gave investigators during the interview.

Whatever the case, one thing remains clear: the Trump Administration is definitely interested in punishing whistleblowers, self-described or otherwise. As Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation points out, this is the fifth time journalists' sources have been charged with felonies since Trump took office. If he keeps it up, Obama's record-setting persecution of whistleblowers will be viewed with fond remembrance usually reserved for misremembering America's halcyon days of segregation and post-war baby making.

Filed Under: financial information, fincen, leaks, natalie edwards, reporters, sars, wiretap
Companies: buzzfeed

Treasury Department Wing Latest To Be Accused Of Domestic Spying

from the just-dipping-into-the-domestic-stream-until-someone-says-stop dept

Some more domestic spying taking place, this time by financial regulators. While the US Treasury Department is well within its legal wheelhouse to investigate domestic financial wrongdoing, its Office of Intelligence and Analysis is only supposed to monitor financial activity occurring outside of the US. The OIA has apparently been helping itself to domestic financial records, as Jason Leopold reports.

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 US Treasury Department has responded to the allegations raised by several anonymous sources, claiming Leopold's article is basically bullshit.

“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.”

The department claims any sharing of data between the domestic-focused Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the OIA is completely legal. The NSA made a similar claim about its perusing of domestic financial data. But those claims seem a little hollow now that the Treasury Department's Inspector General has announced an investigation into this information sharing.

In some cases, the information shared had been properly redacted. But officials claim OIA personnel simply found ways to obtain the blacked-out data.

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.

That's how the backdoor works. When identifying information is redacted, the OIA just calls up the financial institution and asks for more information about unnamed accounts until it has enough to nullify built-in minimization procedures.

And there's more. It appears OIA is passing along domestic banking data to other foreign-facing agencies like the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. According to Leopold's sources, this has gone on for years. It's only coming to light now because FinCEN officials have begun complaining about the apparent privacy violations.

This has drawn the attention of Sen. Ron Wyden, who is now demanding answers from the Treasury Department.

“If true, those allegations would represent a serious abuse of spying powers to gather Americans’ financial information,” Senator Ron Wyden’s spokesman, Keith Chu, said in a statement: “Sen. Wyden plans to get to the bottom of what happened and take a close look at whether the rules currently protecting the privacy of Americans are strong enough and adequately enforced.”

This is something Wyden does well: dogged pursuits of information pertaining to intelligence community misconduct. Unfortunately, the intelligence community maintains a pretty solid stiff arm, which tends to put years between Wyden's questions and their eventual answers. Throw in some national security concerns, and the agencies involved are likely to be permitted to go dark for as long as possible.

The years of infighting between FinCEN and the OIA appear to be causing collateral damage. Another Leopold report from a couple of weeks ago covers a bizarre incident at the Treasury Department as FinCEN analysts attempted to dig through financial data for anything of interest that might have helped investigators track down participants in the recent London terrorist attack.

When the officials got to their secure operations center in Northern Virginia that Saturday night, they discovered that everyone on duty had been blocked from the classified networks their response depended upon. They couldn't open links emailed by the FBI about the suspected terrorists they were supposed to be chasing. They couldn't begin following the threads connecting those suspects to the people who had been funding and supporting them.

The lack of access for personnel within the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — never before reported — cost antiterrorism forces on both sides of the Atlantic crucial time in identifying and pursuing the people and networks around the attackers, according to sources and documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

One possible explanation for the lockout may be the ongoing feud between FinCEN and the OIA. The OIA grants access to FinCEN, which allows it to piece together paper trails from both domestic and foreign banking data. If the OIA wanted to keep FinCEN out, it easily could. The other explanation is human error: unrenewed network security keys.

Whatever is happening isn't pretty. Human errors like these can result in lost human lives. If there's a turf war happening, the latest claims about OIA malfeasance are only going to result in less cooperation during critical times which, again, will possibly result in the loss of lives.

Filed Under: backdoor surveillance, financial records, fincen, oia, surveillance, treasury