November 21, 2006

U.S., European Union Working to Preserve SWIFT Surveillance Program

As European privacy watchdogs step up their criticism of a U.S. counterterrorism program that monitors global bank-transfer data, U.S. and European Union officials are quietly exploring ways to preserve the program while allaying privacy concerns. An EU committee this week is expected to back recent findings by Belgium's privacy regulator that Swift, a global banking-telecommunications network, violated European privacy laws when it gave information on cross-border wire transfers by EU citizens to the Treasury Department and the Central Intelligence Agency in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

U.S., EU Seek to Ease Banking-Privacy Concerns, Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2006.