Bank monitoring program was already in public domain

Notwithstanding the full court press to close down the NY Times and jail its editors, publisher, and reporters for treason, it turns out that information on the bank monitoring program has been publicly available since 2002 and was published in a UN report. According to Victor Comras,

The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:

“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. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. 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.”