US to access Europeans' bank data in new deal

Source: BBC

Euro MPs have approved a new deal to allow US anti-terror investigators to access Europeans' bank data.

The vote followed tough negotiations with US authorities after a previous agreement was blocked by the European Parliament in February.

EU negotiators say the new deal gives EU officials authority to monitor the US investigators' actions.

The deal gives the US access to bulk data from Swift, a firm that handles millions of bank transactions daily.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10552630.stm

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"The fact that the US was secretly accessing Swift bank data did not come to light until 2006."

Hello BBC? More info on this please?

You'll probably find more on the subject if you just search back on DU to February '10 and last year too. Also if you just google "US to access Europeans' bank data" you'll now find 13 million links to the subject.

was a Big Deal in 2006. The NYT broke the news. I think it said it had been sitting on it. Perhaps that was some other classified program.

SWIFT is a clearinghouse for international money transfers. Every (or nearly every) international money transfer that goes through the modern banking system gets a unique transaction SWIFT number. If you want to track money internationally, that's where you look.

Supposedly the nabbing of Hanbali (?), an Indonesian Islamic Jihad leader, was through this. Other names didn't surface.

"Secretly" is an odd word because it's not clear who it was secret from. The SWIFT folk knew about it. European leaders mostly didn't. The US populace didn't.

A reasonably large part of the story was explaining what, exactly, SWIFT was. Most people didn't know about the clearinghouse, that all the information was in one place; most people didn't know about how it worked. Banks and institutions that deal internationally also get SWIFT numbers and if you're going to wire money to an obscure institution it's best to find out the SWIFT number ahead of time, so a fair number knew about those, just not how SWIFT functioned.

Personally, I think this story shouldn't have been published.

Source: Interpress News

BRUSSELS, Jul 6, 2010 (IPS) - Private information on innocent citizens will be handed over to U.S. law enforcement authorities under an agreement slated for approval by the European Parliament this week.

In February, members of the Parliament (MEPs) rejected a plan to allow data on everyday bank transactions be given to the U.S., citing concerns over fundamental civil rights. Four months later, however, MEPs are expected to endorse the same plan Jul. 8, having been granted a small number of concessions.

This has its roots in a U.S. move to snoop on data held by Swift, a Belgian- based company that facilitates exchanges between banks, following the Sep. 11 atrocities. Under the pretext of tracking the "money trail" of terrorists, the Washington authorities used subpoenas to gain access to Swift's data. Yet even though personal details on millions of individuals were transferred across the Atlantic, the public was not informed that such transfers were taking place until a report appeared in The New York Times in 2006.

Eager to allow the transfers to continue, the European Union's governments accepted an accord designed to give Washington the necessary legal cover in November last year. This accord drew angry response from civil liberties watchdogs, who pointed out that people whose data was abused would have no means of seeking redress. The new privacy legislation in the U.S. only offers protection against unlawful data processing to U.S. citizens and residents, not to outsiders under scrutiny by the U.S. authorities.

Read more: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52069

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The United States is collecting all banking transactions of US citizens from countries in Europe under the guise that it can track terrorist money transfers - as we all suspected - We the US Citizens are the Terrorists.

When Homeland Security can threaten American tourists with arrest who are merely filming their kids near the Lincoln Memorial, something is very wrong.

Meanwhile I bring aboard an airplane a device that looks for all intents and purposes like a hand held detonator and no one so much as grimaces when I go past the agents. (It's not a detonator, but a medical unit - but they don't even take a moment to query me or examine it.)

Go figure!

Agent Mike just saw that.

And have for years.

The scary part now, is that they want it all made legal and in the daylight.

Thought police, anyone?