Under the agreement, the US can use the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program to access information from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) [bylaws], an interbank money transfer system, to track the finances of suspected terrorists. To protect privacy concerns, Europol will check the validity of each US request, and an EU representative will monitor the use of EU citizens' banking data by US authorities. The agreement still needs to be approved by the European parliament, but EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ceilia Malmstrom indicated that the parliament will likely support the agreement. In February, the parliament voted down a version of the agreement that did not include EU oversight.
The EU and US have struggled to balance privacy concerns with anti-terrorism efforts in the past. In 2006, an EU panel said that SWIFT broke privacy laws by sharing data with the US. Revelation of the once-secret program [report], prompted sharp criticism from the Bush administration, which defended the initiative. The chairman of the US House Homeland Security Committee later encouraged the administration to press criminal charges against the media for publicizing the program, which allowed the CIA to monitor international financial transactions processed by SWIFT.
Source: Jurist
RSS Feed
Please wait...
