Official: Swiss Banks Broke Privacy Law

Yahoo ^ | October 13, 2006 | Associated Press

[ritewingwarrior]

Swiss Banks Broke Law by Passing Banking Data to CIA, Data Protection Chief Says

BERN, Switzerland (AP) -- Swiss banks violated the law by passing banking information on to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the country's top data protection official said Friday.

The banks, usually known for safeguarding the privacy of their clients, should have informed customers making international money transfers via the Belgium-based SWIFT money-transfer service that their data could be passed on to third parties, Hanspeter Thuer said.

Just the possibility of the data being leaked should have been grounds enough to warn customers, he said.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, SWIFT largely complied with U.S. requests for banking information in its anti-terror investigations.

SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, operates a secure electronic messaging service used by some 7,800 financial institutions to make international money transfers worth $6 trillion a day.

[ritewingwarrior]

Not only did we lose a valuable program, but the discovery of the US's communication with SWIFT has now made the possibility of future investigation much more difficult.

It is too bad that the Republicans are so busy trying to save their own jobs, that they ignore important issues like finding and prosecuting every individual involved in leaking the secret programs.

[EagleUSA]

It is too bad that the Republicans are so busy trying to save their own jobs, that they ignore important issues like finding and prosecuting every individual involved in leaking the secret programs.
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It is a tragedy for the real citizens of America, to witness, first hand, the complacency, the political selfishness, the corruption, the malfeasance, and the self-protecting of the Washington political class....the very fact we do not have NAMES AND POLITICAL FATALITIES by the large numbers of these leakers shows that Washington's politics far outweigh the security and system of laws that this country was founded upon.

Washington needs to be cleaned out and the criminal, malfeasant hacks that infest our Congress now need to be replaced with REAL AMERICAN PATRIOTS who still care about America and its foundation.

[gdc314]

bump