Europe Panel Faults Sifting of Bank Data

[cal04]

A European Union panel has serious doubts about the legality of a Bush administration program that monitors international financial transactions, the group’s leader said Monday, and plans to recommend tighter controls to prevent privacy abuses.

"We don’t see the legal basis under the European law, and we see the need for some changes,” said Peter Schaar, a German official who leads the panel, in a telephone interview Monday. The group is to deliver a final report this week in Brussels, and Mr. Schaar said he expected it to conclude that the program might violate European law restricting government access to confidential banking records.

The program, started by the Bush administration weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, allows analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency and other American intelligence agencies to search for possible terrorist financing activity among millions of largely international financial transactions that are processed by a banking cooperative known as Swift, which is based in Belgium.

The European Union panel will not call for the program to be stopped, officials said. But it is expected to recommend that additional safeguards be put in place to check how financial records are shared with American intelligence officials. For the last three years, a Washington consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, has audited the program, but Mr. Schaar said his panel would recommend that an outside auditor from Europe be brought in to protect against abuses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/us/26swift.html?hp&ex=1159243200&en=90e73cc230cbabe6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[rodeodance]

1. yes, the US needs oversight.