Four EU Countries Resist U.S. Access to European Bank Transaction Data

The most highly indebted nation in the world, the USA, is running into a bulwark of resistence in its desire to record European bank transaction data, Austrian daily Kurier reported on Thursday. According to the report, the USA wants to access all money transfer data and snoop into European bank accounts, including data on domestic and international money transfers. The so called Swift agreement has now been rebuked by 4 European countries. Unfortunately Kurier failed to list the other 3 countries who say that if any such kind of agreement becomes reality, they want complete reciprocity, i.e. giving European authorities the same right to check out all US-based accounts.

The USA has illegally siphoned off data from Swift, Europe's biggest clearing house for money transfers, since 9/11 and now hopes to retroactively legalize its illegal snooping on innocent European account holders.

A draft prepared by the EU commission and the current Swedish EU presidency says that the intrusion on banking privacy shall be limited to accounts that are associated with terrorist activity. It also says that data has to be deleted as soon as an account turns out to not be involved in terror activity. The draft includes a paragraph that requires US authorities to announce all their intended scrutinization to the authorities in the respective EU country.

It is highly questionable that the intended US move will help in reducing terorrism finance which is rather relying on unofficial channels to transfer money. After all, the SEC has been unable to find out who bought put options on those US airlines that crashed into the World Trade Center.