The Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication (SWIFT) manages international payments between
banks. It hit the headlines in 2006 when it was discovered that
transfer details were being monitored by US authorities.
The organisation owned a 'mirror' server in the US which
duplicated all the activity logged on its European machine. That
server was being monitored by US authorities in a way which EU data
protection commissioners said was unlawful.
SWIFT's customers are the major banks, and it has told
OUT-LAW.COM that it allowed the authorities in the US to access its
data because it felt bound by a subpoena in a country in which it
operated.
Independent EU privacy advisory body the Article 29 Working
Party said that the actions broke EU privacy law.
"As far as the communication of personal data to the US Treasury
is concerned, the Working Party is of the opinion that the hidden,
systematic, massive and long-term transfer of personal data by
SWIFT to the US Treasury in a confidential, non-transparent and
systematic manner for years without effective legal grounds and
without the possibility of independent control by public data
protection supervisory authorities constitutes a violation of the
fundamental European principles as regards data protection and is
not in accordance with Belgian and European law," it said in
2007.
The Belgian and Swiss data protection authorities said that the
activity also broke their laws.
At a meeting of the EU's Council of Ministers, ministers from
all 27 member states agreed that the US should continue to have
access to banking data.
"The Council approved guidelines for negotiations with the
United States for an international agreement to make financial
payment messaging data available to the US Treasury Department in
order to prevent terrorism and terrorist financing," said a
statement from the Council.
Under an interim deal the US has access to the information that
passes through the US server but The European Commission's Justice
and Home Affairs Commissioner Jacques Barrot told a press
conference this week that he wants to extend those rights to
databases held in the EU.
"It would be extremely dangerous at this stage to stop the
surveillance and the monitoring of information flows," Barrot said,
according to news service Associated Press (AP). He said that any
deal that gave access to EU-only transactions would also increase
privacy protections.
SWIFT plans to open a new data centre later this year in
Switzerland that would only deal with EU transactions, and
negotiations will centre on what access US authorities can have to
this database.
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