The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Europe approves US mass data grab

Feds get all our bank info

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Europe has signed a deal to hand over all bank transaction data to the US in order to help the ongoing war on terrorism.

The SWIFT agreement was signed yesterday in Brussels by Spanish minister for home affairs Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and the US embassy's economic economic officer to the EU, Michael Dodman.

Rubalcaba welcomed the "excellent agreement", which he said had been reached after discussions with the European Parliament.

The treaty must now be approved by the European Parliament. Assuming it does pass it will be in force for five years.

IT gives the US Treasury access to bank transactions although there is now some filtering at the European end. The agreement will be overseen by Europol.

The Swift agreement was first approved in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It lapsed in February after the European Parliament rejected an earlier draft.

The European Data Protection Supervisor remains unimpressed and has questioned the need for bulk transfers of data and the time such data is kept without being investigated by US authorities. The EDPS has also called for better oversight of the process.

Most of the world's bank transactions are transmitted by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), based in Belgium.

Read more here. ®

Cloud based data management

Or

Payments to Eta or the IRA from the US?

11
0

... and in return we get ?

I am assuming that in return we get nothing ? Is there any reciprocal arrangement to see all those dodgy US drug deal bank transactions ? No ? Odd that...

9
0
Anonymous Coward

Not surprising, really

Clearest direct attack on European Citizens' right to privacy by the EU itself yet. In the form of giving it away. Giving it all away. On your behalf. Carry on european government.

7
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Number of cops abusing Police National Computer access on the rise
Only a telegram from the Queen can get you off it
 breaking news
NSA whistleblower to tech firms, Obama: 'Grow a pair!'
Ed Snowden: Email tracking grabs 'IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything'
NSA: We COULD track you by your phone ... if we WANTED to
Honestly, too much work, can't be bothered
Google flings another £1m at online child sex abuse vid CRACKDOWN
See, see, we're trying, ad giant tells Daily Mail UK.gov
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
SCO vs. IBM battle resumes over ownership of Unix
Zombie lawsuit back and wants to suck the brains out of Linux
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights