ASIC to include financial background checks?

[breakfastburrito]

Airport staff face tighter checks
Paul Maley From: The Australian January 11, 2010 12:00AM

BACKGROUND checks for airport employees should be expanded to include a person's financial history and possible links to organised crime.

As Transport Minister Anthony Albanese met US Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute yesterday to discuss tighter airport security, government sources doused suggestions Australia would adopt full body scanners. The meeting followed calls from Australia's peak financial intelligence agency, AusTrac, to expand the background checks for airport employees to include suspect financial transactions and criminal intelligence suggesting links to organised crime.

AusTrac has also called on the government to give it access to the troubled maritime and aviation identification security systems to identify staff with criminal links.

Mr Albanese met Ms Holl Lute at Sydney airport as part of the US official's whistle-stop tour of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America.

The tour comes in the wake of the failed attempt by Nigerian man Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a US passenger aircraft using liquid explosives concealed in his underwear.

Abdulmutallab managed to board the Detroit-bound aircraft despite being on a terror watch list and undergoing airport security screening.

Full body scanners, which can see beneath clothes and have been attacked by civil liberties groups, are among the measures being considered by officials around the world to toughen airport security.

Mr Albanese confirmed various technologies were discussed at the meeting.

"One of the issues raised was how new technology can assist with aviation security," Mr Albanese said. But he went on to say that aviation security must be "appropriate to the threat".

The government is awaiting a report into a six-month trial of the scanners, due within months.

However, The Australian understands the government is yet to be convinced about the value of scanners, citing their cost and the high level of training required to operate them.

Nor is it clear they are capable of detecting all concealed materials.

In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, AusTrac said corrupt airport employees could be identified by tracking suspect financial dealings. And in what would amount to a major expansion of the ASIC system, AusTrac said the checking process should be broadened to include an employee's criminal links or suspect financial transactions: "AusTrac believes there would be benefit in expanding the criminal history check to include criminal and financial intelligence."

An ASIC card is required for anyone whose work requires their unescorted access to a security-controlled airport.

Source: The Australian, 11-1-2010 Page 1 (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/airport-staff-face-tighter-checks/story-e6frg6nf-1225817883021).
My Bold emphasis in story body.

Would this be limited to just the employee or their immediate family or the extended family as well. How about friends & known associates? Maybe in the future they will be required to be listed on the application as well.
Welcome, Big Brother.

[Baileys]

welcome to communist australia.

[Keg]

Lol. Aus trac is the company that does the digging and by recommending the increase in checks they subsequently increase the size of their business......considerably!

[Under Dog]

And up goes the cost for an ASIC:=

The Dog

[CaptCirrus]

I think you're right Dog, and no doubt the employers could also pass on the cost of the ASIC if you really want that job!

[qf 1]

should leave no Qantas AME after the financial checks:ok:

[Wod]

Fact of life.

Small, rather than really large, crims have always targetted goods movement.

Wharves, Post Office Sorting centres, Air Freight, Ground Freight, rail freight, any kind of bulk catering including wholesale markets.

Some of these companies like AusTrac want to put honest thieves out of business.

It's un-Australian.

And, oddly, I half believe that.

P.S. What any of that has to do with terrorism and air safety is beyond me.

[KittyKatKaper]

from austrac.gov.auAUSTRAC is Australia's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulator and specialist financial intelligence unitThey're the ones who want to know if you do any international funds transfer, or take more than A$10000 cash in or out of Oz. (their definition of cash is quite broad and that 10k level hasn't changed in the past decade)
They're the ones that receive all the STRs (suspicious transactions reports) which the (exempt from prosecution) bank staff and lawyers and casinos and bookies and real-estate agents and ...... can issue. ( so be nice to the front-line staff and have a very plausible reason for doing anything 'suspicious' with your financial account(s) ).

The agency had been around for a lonnnnng time, and shares info with a lot of the alphabet agencies, (such as the ATO), so I'm very surprised that ASIO and the AFP don't already have a direct tap into AUSTRACs database for the purposes of background checking for an ASIC.
(but then, with a 2 week turnaround between mailing an ASIC application and receiving the pretty card I'm surprised if any significant checking is/was being done anyway)

[gutso-blundo]

Bloody hell...
Its starting to sound more and more like the National Security clearance check (ie Secret, Top Secret etc) - which incidentally doesn't count for squat when applying for an ASIC so I found out :hmm:
Why not just hand responsibility for background checks over to ASIO and be done with it?

[Worrals in the wilds]

so I'm very surprised that ASIO and the AFP don't already have a direct tap into AUSTRACs database for the purposes of background checking for an ASIC.

They do, but AFAIK AusTrac don't have access to the ASIC holder database because it's not a routine check for an ASIC clearance. I think this is more about empire building by AusTrac than anything else.

The trouble with including the AusTrac record in the ASIC checks is that currently, you can only be refused an ASIC if you are convicted of a specific offence. An adverse AusTrac record is not a conviction, just cause for suspicion. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it's certainly a departure from the 'innocent until proven guilty' principle.

Personally, I would have thought it was more beneficial for the intelligence agencies to take a greater interest in the people working at ports and airports, but they're probably already doing that anyway and just not talking it up in the press.

[blueloo]

The whole things is a load of BS anyway. Whats the point of having an ASIC if nobody checks the stupid thing anyway when you go through security. Might as well have a little red piece of plastic for all the good it does.

[chimbu warrior]

Any pilot with more than $100 in the bank is obviously doing something on the sly.........

[Erin Brockovich]

Its starting to sound more and more like the National Security clearance check (ie Secret, Top Secret etc)
It was less hassle to get Top Secret

[Super Cecil]

Anybody with a pilots licence from the old restricted onwards has had similar checks since the mid 1960's. The only difference is now you know about it. That communist remark was a bewdy, didn't know ole Bob Menzies was a commie, who'd of thought it eh?

[KittyKatKaper]

¿Que ? Super Cecil.
If we've had such checks since the 60's, then, (apart from the fees and security-theatre aspect) what's the point of all the ASIC crap and its' associated background checking ?

CASA vehemently states the the checking for an AVID are not the same as those for an ASIC, even though from my mug-punters-point-of-view, the documentation requirements are almost identical.

[Super Cecil]

Kitty said ¿Que ? Super Cecil.
If we've had such checks since the 60's, then, (apart from the fees and security-theatre aspect) what's the point of all the ASIC crap and its' associated background checking ?

Dunnoo, ask somebody who knows? Lil Johnny Howard perhaps? His advisers?

Come on admit it, since we all had to have little red passes and those big fences have gone around airfields you feel soooooo much safer don't you?
And for the sceptics out there you have to admit it really works, I'll bet you haven't seen a terrorist behind the fence at an airfield since all this started have you? :8