http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/europe-gives-us-terror-trackers-access-to-its-citizens-banking-details/story-e6frg6so-1225807496606
Europe gives US terror-trackers access to its citizens' banking details a.. From: The Sunday Times b.. December 07, 2009 12:00AM THE CIA is to be given broad access to the bank records of millions of Britons under a European Union plan to fight terrorism. The Brussels agreement comes into force in two months and requires the 27 EU member states to grant requests for banking information made by the US under its terrorist finance tracking program. In a little-noticed information note released last week, the EU said it had agreed that Europeans would be compelled to release the information to the CIA "as a matter of urgency". The records will be kept in a US database for five years before being deleted. Critics say the system is "lopsided" because there is no reciprocal arrangement under which the British authorities can easily access the bank accounts of US citizens in the US. They also say the plan to sift through cross-border and domestic EU bank accounts gives US intelligence more scope to consult British bank accounts than is granted to law enforcement agencies in Britain or the rest of Europe. In Britain and most of Europe, a judge must authorise a specific search after receiving a sworn statement from a police officer. Civil liberties groups and privacy campaigners warned on the weekend that the program, introduced as an emergency measure in 2001, was being imposed on Britain without a proper debate. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "The massive scope for transferring personal information from Europe to the US is extremely worrying. No one is saying that allies should not co-operate, but where is the privacy protection? Where are the judicial safeguards?" The US program mines thousands of transactions by sifting through records from the nerve centre of the global banking industry, a Belgian co-operative known as Swift that routes about pound stg. 3 billion ($5.4bn) between banks and other financial institutions each day. According to the EU note, the US can request "general data sets" under the scheme based on broad categories including "relevant message types, geography and perceived terrorism threats". The Sunday Times a.. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
