Posted on 02/13/2010 10:50:17 PM PST by gibtx2
Members of the parliament overwhelmingly voted down the provisionally operating Swift agreement, which had allowed U.S. authorities to comb through millions of personal banking files to track terror financing. In a 378-196 decision, lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, voted to sack the deal, citing data protection and legal shortcomings.
"The agreement has supplied vital leads against those terrorists responsible for planning or committing attacks against EU citizens," a representative of the British government said Thursday.
"The safety and security of our citizens will be put at risk by the European Parliament's decision today," an unidentified EU diplomat told British newspaper The Guardian.
Yet MEPs defended their decision, arguing a better agreement was needed.
"Our laws are being broken and under this agreement they would continue to be broken. Parliament should not be complicit in this," Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, a Dutch liberal MEP, told The Guardian. "The security of European citizens is not being compromised. Targeted trans-Atlantic data-exchange will remain possible through other legal instruments. If the U.S. administration would propose to the U.S. Congress something equivalent to this -- to transfer in bulk bank data of American citizens to a foreign power -- we all know what the U.S. Congress would say."
Founded in 1973, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication -- Swift -- has access to the data of around 8,000 banks in 200 countries.
American law enforcement and intelligence agents secretly accessed such data after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to trace money transferred to terror groups. The practice didn't come to light until 2006.
(Excerpt) Read more at terradaily.com ...
I see that The European Parliament, grand as the name sounds, is not characterized by wisdom.
Unless it’s contemplating suicide.
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