Europe doubts legality of bank monitoring by U.S.
A European Union working group is expected to
conclude this week that the Bush administration’s monitoring of
international financial transactions may violate European banking law and that
an independent auditor should be required to prevent possible privacy
abuses.
A European Union working group is expected to conclude this week that the Bush administration’s monitoring of international financial transactions may violate European banking law and that an independent auditor should be required to prevent possible privacy abuses.
“We don’t see the legal basis under the European law, and we see the need for some changes.”
The program, started in secret by the Bush administration only weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, allows CIA analysts and other American intelligence officials to search for possible terrorist financing activity among many millions of largely international financial transactions that are processed by a Belgian data-banking cooperative, known as Swift.
The Bush administration has strongly defended the effectiveness and legality of the once-secret program, and it sharply criticized The New York Times for disclosing its existence in June.
But legal experts said the program appears to conflict more directly in Europe with banking privacy restrictions, issued by the European Union and others, that impose tighter restrictions on how private banking data can be shared.
“The main item from my point of view,” Schaar said, “is that the fundamental civil rights of the European citizens have to be safeguarded.”
Anyone remember when our nation was governed by politicians who said stuff like — “the fundamental rights of American citizens have to be safeguarded” — and they didn’t include a whole parcel of unpublished “findings” that amended those same civil liberties into boilerplate?
Posted: Wed - September 27, 2006 at 10:24 AM