Secrecy and European Security Governance: In/Visibility in the Terrorism Financing Tracking Programme

This paper examines the conjunction between secrecy and European security integration through the case of the Terrorism Financing Tracking Programme (TFTP). Designed as a secret programme to examine and mine citizen financial transactions data in the weeks after 9/11, the TFTP was not revealed to the wider public until 2006. Moreover, even after the public disclosure of the existence of the programme, many elements of the ways in which the data are transferred, stored and analysed remain secret.

The TFTP is important to understanding wider processes of secrecy in contemporary European security governing, for two reasons. First, it displays a complex dynamic of in/visibility in the way its security technology operates. In the current security landscape, the definition of sensitive and restricted information is “more akin to the construction of a mosaic” than it is a clear dichotomy of classification and publicity, as “thousands of bits and pieces of seemingly innocuous information can be analyzed and fitted into place to reveal with startling clarity how the unseen whole must operate” (Pozen 2005: 630). In this respect, mundane and legitimate monetary connections may become inscribed with suspicion and with terrorist intent. This paper teases out the complex landscape or mosaic of in/visibility in TFTP. It analyses the meaning of secrecy as accorded by authorities within different governance levels, and what comes to count as sensitive information.