CIA-Funded Tech Company to Surveil Credit Suisse Employees

Swiss bank Credit Suisse and the CIA-backed data analysis company Palantir are launching a joint surveillance program called Signac to track and catch bankers engaged in illegal trades.

The move comes in the wake of revelations that Credit Suisse has accrued some $90 billion in debt after implementing a strategy of pursuing revenue at any cost, including allowing traders to hold high-risk illiquid positions.

Traders are now considered by Credit Suisse executives to be the root of the problem. The bank seeks to use software developed in collaboration with Palantir to detect employees who violate the rules to make unauthorized trades.

“We study external and internal events to try and learn from them,” Lara Warner, Credit Suisse’s head of compliance, told Bloomberg. “There is a toxic combination of facts that present itself in any unauthorized trading event. We focus on individual behavior which might be indicative of the risk, instead of focusing on the symptoms.”

Palantir, founded in 2004, is a private software and services firm that focuses on data mining, including searching through and analyzing information. Among its clients are law enforcement and government agencies.

Palantir was partially funded by CIA venture-capital-investment arm In-Q-Tel Inc., which has collaborated with the NSA, the FBI, the DHS, DARPA, as well as the US Marine Corps and the US Air Force. In-Q-Tel is also working with tech start-ups, particularly focusing on those that aim to “advance ‘priority’ technologies of value.”

Credit Suisse is not the first bank that has implemented software to identify rogue traders. Last year JPMorgan launched a program that monitors trader activities, indicating who would be likely to break the rules.