No sooner does the world agree to one request from US law enforcers for the right to snoop on its citizens than they are back with yet more demands. This week, however, the US may finally have pushed too far: the EU is not happy – and it is pushing back.
First up is the news that, little over a month since signing up to the Swift agreement that both enables and restricts the US’ right to collect information about bank transfers in and out of the United States, the Obama administration has unilaterally decided to tear up the agreement and claim the right to monitor any and every financial transaction, whether it can show good cause or not. Following the events of 9/11, the Terrorism Finance Tracking Program was set up as a covert operation to tap into Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) data without the Europeans knowing about it. When this activity became public, in 2006, the US administration agreed to negotiate with the EU, while keeping the programme up and running. According to EUobserver, the European Parliament’s in-house paper, current rules mean that US officials can request European data relevant to a specific terrorist investigation. This request needs to be approved by the EU's police cooperation unit, Europol, and to meet certain requirements, including a lower limit on transactions monitored, of $10,000. However, the Washington Post reported this week that "transactions between European and US banks would be captured regardless of whether there is a substantiated need". It also suggested that the Obama administration now "wants to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country", describing this as "a dramatic expansion in efforts to counter terrorist financing and money laundering". For more information, visit here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/30/us_eu_snooping_row/ Regards Sandeep Thakur -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nforceit" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nforceit?hl=en-GB.
