European bank urges US to clarify snooping activity

[struggle4progress]

01.02.2007 - 09:27 CET | By Helena Spongenberg and Renata Goldirova

The European Central Bank (ECB) has called on the EU and the US to urgently clarify the line between data protection and fighting terrorism, saying there is currently no alternative to the SWIFT money transfer system where the US has received personal information on EU citizens since 2001 ...

SWIFT, a private Belgian money transfer company, violated EU data protection laws when it gave US intelligence information on millions of private European financial transactions, an independent EU panel concluded in November ...

It became known in June last year that officials from the CIA, the FBI and other US agencies had since 2001 been allowed to inspect the transfers as part of the global fight against terrorism.

But under EU law, it is illegal for companies to transfer confidential personal data to another country unless that country offers adequate protection ...

http://euobserver.com/9/23395

[bmcatt]

1. Uh-oh...

I worked for a bank back in the 80s in the foreign branch support programming area and *everything* that happened between the main office and all of the foreign branches was SWIFT. Likewise, almost everything that happened *in* the foreign branches was via SWIFT.

This could be *really* bad news for the banks or force SWIFT to completely change how they're dealing with US authorities.