“....it seems we ticked EU off.”
From the end of the article: “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.”
The practice came to light IIRC jaz at the hands of the NYT. They exposed the cooperation between the EU, and the Bush Administration virtually making the enterprise useless, and endangering some involved in the operation.
Terrorist organizations simply went to other systems to transfer their ill gotten booty, so thanks to the NYT one of our major tools for information gathering on terrorist organizations was invalidated.
The fact that somebody in the Bush Administration leaked the information to the NYT caused great distrust between the formerly cooperative entities.
That’s how I remember the story anyway.