The SWIFT Battle Heats Up
Last year, I tracked European objections to continued US access to SWIFT data. In November, some Germans balked at pushing an agreement through before the new European government was put into place. In December I described the interim agreement put into place until the new government can negotiate a new one.
Only the EU parliament is none too happy that deal was put into place on the eve of the new government. (h/t cw)
A panel of European Union lawmakers urged the EU to scrap an agreement on transferring bank data to U.S. counter-terrorism investigators, risking a security gap weeks after an attempt to bomb a trans-Atlantic flight.The European Parliament’s civil-liberties committee said an accord under which the EU allows the U.S. Treasury Department to view records from the Swift global money-transfer system lacks adequate protection of personal data. The committee recommended today in Brussels that the full Parliament reject the agreement during a scheduled Feb. 11 vote.
Fighting terrorism “does not need to involve the endless erosion of civil liberties for whole swathes of innocent civilians,” said Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, a Dutch member steering the issue through the 27-nation Parliament.
In response, the US–which, under Obama, is supposed to be engaging more closely with our allies–has threatened to take its toys and go home.
The United States has warned that it may stop working with EU institutions on terrorist data exchange if the European Parliament next week blocks a bilateral deal on the issue.
“If the European parliament overturns the agreement, I am unsure whether Washington agencies would again decide to address this issue at EU level,” US ambassador to the EU William Kennard wrote in a letter sent to European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, according to news agency AFP.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also called Buzek and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton to voice Washington’s concern over the issue.
At issue is European demands that its citizens have some civil liberties protections (far more than Americans have over their own bank data) and the EU itself have some transparency into the process. But apparently the US wants its deal upheld, even after the underhanded way it pushed it through.
Imagine that!?!? Legislators who actually do something about others bypassing their prerogatives.
Located that article by Swiss professor published two weeks ago concerning what the varied history of the Lisbon process means for reorganizing EU since it took effect December 2009. I am thinking Kennard must be the very same as took over from Reed Hundt at FCC early in the Bushco admin.; going on memory here, Kennard was the leader who helped delay the eventuality of the loss in court over unbundling of telco network elements, essentially the turning point that restructured ilecs (incumbent telcos). Kennard was a voice for net neutrality.
Things go BOOM in Connecticut. Mass casualties at exploded power plant.
Old pipes, higher pressure steam due to demand, cracks, fatigue or corrosion in the pipes.
Old infrastructure. End of life failures.
The plant was under construction.
This ties in with a report on NPR that Europe’s economy is in big trouble. I recall hearing somewhere within the last 24 hours that Europe is no longer the economic powerhouse it was only a few years ago, and that the major action right now is in the “emerging markets.” So there are a number of angles on this story.
Bob in AZ
I think those concerns are overstated. Europe is doing just fine. American media and corporations bash it, in part, because it’s easy, it misdirects from their own eviscerating of this economy, and because the EU has the temerity to impose social obligations on its corporations. Many of them, including their largest and most profitable conerns, think that’s just dandy, even though, like Deutsche Telekom, they toss out such concerns and business standards readily when operating here.
The EU Parliament, unlike the oddly more amenable Commission, thinks the US deal stinks because it does not require of the US the protections their own governments and corporations are obligated to extend to their home citizens, and which their loss mandates be imposed in exchange for access to personal data on EU citizens.
It’s time for the EU and other countries to point out and to resist the damage that the excesses of the US’s “corporate governance” imposes on us and the world, while making no one safer.
You know, the US could have access if it just followed EU rules that require – what was that thingy – oh yeah, a judicial warrant (not an Exec branch schmuckity muck unilaterally deciding what he/she wants to accumulate or what a Booz Allen paid off participant oks)
This whole thing is basically an issue bc the US doesn’t want to go through courts. Gee, where else has that been a problem? And it’s an issue bc when they investigated how the “not going through the courts” thing worked back when the US was raiding SWIFT files in the US (using Exec branch threats rather than warrants) the investigation found that the what they were doing and even the later day addition of Booz Allen as “auditors” of the plan was still a huge problem.
Part of the sales pitch for this in Europe has been that the victims of incorrectly accessed info will have recourse under the Admin Proc Act (APA). So – with all the “incidents” they tout of the program helping to stop terrorism, do they mention ANY incidents of anyone getting recourse through the APA? Even though their initial investigation (that prompted SWIFT to move and take some jobs too) found problems – did anyone get recourse under the APA?
And with the US having an Obama based policy of using this kind of info for Executive approved: a) kidnaps; b) kidnaps to torture; c) kidnaps to execution; d) kidnaps to forever detentions; and e) assassinations – just how are those folks supposed to get APA recourse if we make mistakes? Did Khalid el-Masri get recourse? Did Errachidi get recourse? Did any of the civilians killed in drone attacks get recourse? Have any Americans, even, been given recourse to having their communications captured in violation of our own Constitution?
Seriously – the only judges who have looked at the TSP have said that it vioalted the Constitution and Walker has basically ruled that it was such a massive violation that the courts can’t administratively deal with the issue. Someone with the EU should take a look at his opinion – which says that if Gov violates on a massive enough scale, there is no recourse absent an act of Congress. That should be reassuring.
Obama is such a fan of bipartisanship – he should be happy. The US proposal has brought together all kinds of different parties in the EU
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,674789,00.html
Kind of sad – that members of the EU may have actual privacy protections put in place while our Executive branch has been given free rein here at home to violate law and the Constitution in its warrantless searches and seizures of US citizens information. Obama has managed to create an international situation where there is no quantitative or qualitative basis for believing that our Executive branch will follow the law or will have any consequence for not following the law.
European companies, in fact, are well ahead of their US counterparts on going green, from lowered carbon emissions, to recycling of electronic waste (which contains large amounts of lead, mercury, etc.), to treating their employees as if they were still people with whom they live in the same community. That makes them tougher competitors there, in other foreign markets and here.
The US government continues its mad rush to enact total information awareness, a prerequisite for the full functioning of the security state. Not coincidentally, it wants to keep its thousands of outsourced service providers (IT among them) busy. It may be afraid that US citizens may eventually wake up to that fact and ask just how on earth its many actions are remotely legal. They may even want to reverse that trend and either stop or slow that giant snowball rolling downhill toward our cottages, cars, homes and businesses.
Tougher stands by our allies would improve greater awareness of those events here, as well as defend the rights EU and other foreign nationals have required of their own governments.
Here’s another report on Europe’s collapsing economy:
Europe Risks Another Global Depression.
Bob in AZ
One could make more dire predictions about us. Europe isn’t quite as affected by the “corporate governance” virus as we are. Companies like GM are still trying to hollow out themselves by shipping part of what remains in their European operations to China. But they can’t do so as openly or as risk free as is true here.
As much trouble as Europe has with such problems as the unreformed financial system’s trailing liabilities, Greece, eastern Germany, and the loss of jobs to lower cost economies, Europe’s governments are still more responsive to domestic needs than is this Congress and president.
It is/was a brand new state of the art clean plant that hasn’t even fully opened yet.
Early life failure. Probably a bad weld.
God, I hope the Europeans stand up to us. Well, not to “us,” really — to “US”.
I say, “Europe, call his bluff!” and ditto what bluewombat said.