This post is based on a press release by the pirate party Germany, I will only present the main thoughts and the interested reader may read the original in German. [1]
Apparently the EU-commission and especially the commissar for the Interior Jacques Barrot are trying to push the planned SWIFT agreement [2] through the institutions by using uncommon methods. This agreement should allow US-agencies further access to transaction data of foreign based banks. Some EU-states already voiced their concerns about the agreement, but the commission seems willing to continue the process of signing such an agreement. netzpolitik.org recently published a document [2-3] that shows how the commission tries to convince those member states to ignore their concerns and agree on the draft. It is no wonder that they are accelerating the process, because from December 1st on the parliament, with its new powers due to the Lisbon treaty, will have a right to veto such agreements.
Up to now the US have a full access to all transaction data because all data was mirrored to US-based servers. From January 1st 2010 this would change and the US is desperately trying to secure its access to data about international bank transfers. Even national transfers in Luxembourg could be concerned by such a broad access. The information includes origin of the transfer, beneficiary, account numbers, addresses and personal identification numbers (PINs).
The leaked document is meant to convince skeptics of the usefulness of the SWIFT agreement and imagines scenarios where the SWIFT-data was used to effectively solve criminal cases. But it is not shown how the data was used or could have been used and it was not analyzed if the solution of the case could have been possible without access to this data. It is also stated, that the agreement is in line with the European Parliament. Apparently this is not the case as showed in [4].
I would like that the Luxembourgish government and its commissar Viviane Reding should act as soon as possible and voice their opinion against such an agreement.
Sources:
[1] http://www.piratenpartei.de/Pressemitteilung-091125-Geheime-Tricks-bei-der-Durchsetzung-des-SWIFT-Abkommens
[2] http://www.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/SWIFT-Abkommen-2009-11-10.pdf
[3] http://www.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/COM-FAQ-Swift-2009-11-20.pdf
[4] http://www.netzpolitik.org/2009/geheimes-dokument-zeigt-die-schmutzigen-tricks-bei-den-swift-verhandlungen/
[5] http://bendrath.blogspot.com/2009/11/swift-agreement-not-in-line-with.html
