Do all these suspicious activity reports (SARs) really help law enforcement?
According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) the financial data, collected from financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), has proven to be of considerable value in money laundering, terrorist financing and other financial crimes investigations by law enforcement. When combined with other data collected by law enforcement and the intelligence communities, BSA data assists investigators in connecting the dots in their investigations by allowing for a more complete identification of the respective subjects with information such as personal information; previously unknown addresses, businesses and personal associations; banking patterns; travel patterns; and communication methods. The value of BSA data relative to counterterrorism matters produces additional information about subject(s) under investigation and their methods of operation. Counterterrorism investigators analyze the data to acquire biographical and descriptive information, to identify previous
