Is the NSA tracking international credit card transactions?

According to Edward Snowden’s information, credit card Payments Payments One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl One of the bases of mediums of exchange in the modern world, a payment constitutes the transfer of a legal currency or equivalent from one party in exchange for goods or services to another entity. The payments industry has become a fixture of modern commerce, though the players involved and means of exchange have dramatically shifted over time.In particular, a party making a payment is referred to as a payer, with the payee reflecting the individual or entity receiving the payment. Most commonl Read this Term are tracked by The US intelligence agency through a specific division called “follow the money” (FTM).

Spiegel reports on Snowden’s unveiled, top-secret information and explains that the NSA has its own financial database (Tracfin) which stores personal records from credit cards and from other transactions. The customers of large credit card companies (which most of us are) including VISA are privy to such surveillance.

The database also holds SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) code information, linking details to specific banks around the world.

While Spiegel is referring here to offline payment transactions, we cannot but query the extent to which the scrutiny travels – if the NSA is able to gain access to all of this information through card-present transactions, there is absolutely no good reason to believe that the same is not happening in online transactions. We can only assume that the same is true for the card-not-present environment.

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