(Belgian) Bank faulted over data transfers to U.S.

[deadparrot]

BRUSSELS The Belgian banking consortium Swift breached European privacy rules when it aided the U.S. anti-terrorism program by providing confidential information about money transfers, Belgium's privacy protection commission concluded Thursday.

"It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by Swift that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," the report said.

Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, has come under scrutiny for participating in a Bush administration program that allows analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency and officials from other U.S. agencies to search for possible terrorist financing activity among the millions of confidential financial transactions it oversees.

Washington has defended the secret program, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. But critics in Europe argue that it placed U.S. security interests ahead of European civil liberties.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/28/news/swift.php

[Kagemusha]

1. Took 'em long enough to make up their minds.

Should've been obvious within 24 hours of the original report.