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Senator Ron Wyden has released a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Inspector General voicing his concern over a previously-unknown bulk data collection program that was carried out by Homeland Security Investigations(HSI), a unit within DHS’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For more than two years, HSI used administrative subpoenas to acquire millions of financial records from two companies involved in money transfers, Western Union and Maxitransfers Corporation (Maxi). This is a blatantly illegal exploitation of government subpoena power–and an all too familiar one that must stop.
Beginning in 2019, HSI sent eight administrative subpoenas to these financial services companies asking that they turn over all records for money transfers over $500 to or from California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. Each administrative subpoena sought records for six-months at a time. In response, Western Union and Maxi provided 6.2 million financial records, including personal information such as names and addresses, to HSI. All of the information was entered into a database called Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC), which is run by a non-profit and facilitates law enforcement access to bulk financial data for 5 years. According to Sen. Wyden, HSI terminated the program in January 2022 after his office contacted HSI about it.
This practice presents real-world harms to people who, for good reason, would like to keep private the transfer of money and the identifying information that goes with it. Sharing financial and other personally identifying records of domestic violence survivors, asylum seekers, and human rights activists could expose them to danger, particularly given that TRAC allows hundreds of law enforcement agencies unfettered access to these records.
Moreover, this kind of bulk surveillance is illegal. By statute<
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Read the original article: Here’s How ICE Illegally Obtained Bulk Financial Records from Western Union