Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror - New York Times:
"The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift....While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift's records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined....Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution. But at the outset of the operation, Treasury and Justice Department lawyers debated whether the program had to comply with such laws before concluding that it did not, people with knowledge of the debate said. "

Well all righty then. Treasury officials concluded that this was all legal after a presumed strongly spirited debate. See, it's not really financial information, it's just "messages". And really, only a "small fraction" of the data is "messages" sent solely within the USA even though they have no idea if that data was examined.

This is very, very bad.