World | USA
US carried out massive trawling of financial data
Financial transaction details may have been surrendered on a far greater scale to US intelligence agencies than originally believed as part of the "war on terror", privacy campaigners claim.
- By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor, International
- Published: 00:00 July 2, 2006
Dubai: Financial transaction details may have been surrendered on a far greater scale to US intelligence agencies than originally believed as part of the "war on terror", privacy campaigners claim.
Last month the New York Times broke the story that CIA agents and US treasury officials have been secretly monitoring financial transactions routed through Swift, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
Swift provides electronic instructions for transfers between virtually every bank, brokerage house, and stock exchange and routes 11 million transactions each day. The Brussels-based, industry-owned co-operative links 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.
American officials denied that information they received from Swift amounted to an invasion of privacy and said it was vital to anti-terrorism operations. They believe that the financial trail will lead them to terror masterminds who currently lurk in the shadows.
But privacy campaigners fear that the sheer amount of data submitted to US authorities indicates a massive trawling exercise of financial records across the globe. It means Washington may have access not only to financial data on its own citizens but everyone else's too. Privacy International, a campaign group, has now filed simultaneous complaints with 33 national data protection and privacy regulators, in an attempt to uncover the scale of the exercise. Simon Davies, the group's director, said: "We know very little, but it seems that the data are being sent regardless of people's nationality. If blanket authorisations are being given for millions of records, it would be impossible to separate them out."
Privacy International argues that the monitoring was carried out illegally, and that "the scale of the operation, involving millions of records" showed that it was "a fishing exercise rather than a legally-authorised investigation".
The European Commission has already said that EU law does not cover the handing over of financial data by Swift. The European Parliament will debate the US action on Monday.
Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has ordered an investigation into the activities of Swift, which is regulated by the Belgian central bank and is subject to Belgian law.
The United States came to an agreement with Swift immediately after 9/11. It was this agreement that the New York Times publicised last month, drawing the ire and fury of the White House.
John Snow, the US treasury secretary, said disclosure of the information was subject to "very significant safeguards". Swift spokesmen in Brussels said any data surrendered was subject to the strictest controls but they refused to say what these controls were.
Swift said the agreement concerned "limited sets of data from the office of foreign assets control of the department of the treasury". It added: "Our fundamental principle has been to preserve the confidentiality of our users' data while complying with the lawful obligations in countries where we operate."
Share this article
News Editor's choice
-
Anti-terror force enlisted for Haj
Saudi Arabia's special anti-terror force has for the first time joined security forces deployed for Haj duties with the pilgrimage beginning on Wednesday
-
English to stay as medium of instruction
Lack of funding of scientific research in Arab world criticised
-
Global Village opens with a revamped layout
Four gates will have themes making it easier to find specific pavilions
