Hillarysworld

(AFP) – 17 hours ago

STRASBOURG — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the European Parliament not to block an EU-US deal on the transfer of banking data which Washington says is key to the fight against terrorism.

Euro members of parliament, concerned about protecting European citizens' personal data, are threatening to veto an interim deal when they vote on it Thursday.

European governments have already endorsed the nine-month agreement permitting US justice authorities to data from the interbank transfer service SWIFT, but the deal needs EU parliamentary backing to have legal weight.

The parliament's primary concern is that personal information, possibly including data from electronic bank payments, could be transferred to US authorities and handed on to other governments and agencies.

A longer-term agreement must be negotiated, and the assembly fears the interim deal may set dangerous precedents and tie EU hands in future negotiations.

However, Clinton in a letter to EU parliament president Jerzy Buzek stressed that The Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (FTTP) agreement "is important to our common efforts to prevent terrorism."

Clinton's joint letter with her Treasury colleague Timothy Geithner expressed "our sincere hope" that the European Parliament will consent to the interim agreement "which provides narrowly targeted and valuable data, fully protects individual data privacy and is subject to multiple layers of review and oversight."

The letter, seen by AFP, piles the pressure on from Washington after US Ambassador to the European Union William Kennard warned in a separate missive last week that Washington may stop working with EU institutions on terrorist data exchange if the deal is blocked and work instead with European capitals directly.

Clinton's message was a little more conciliatory, stressing that "any future negotiation with the EU on the FTTP must be conducted in a manner that enables the parliament to be able to make an informed decision on whether to grant consent."

The letter also voiced confidence that the "parliament's view will be heard, considered, and responded to by the (EU) Commission, Council and the United States," during negotiations on the successor agreement once the interim deal is in place.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), based near Brussels, deals with trillions of dollars in global transactions daily between nearly 8,000 financial institutions in 200-plus countries.

In 2006, SWIFT admitted that it had provided US authorities with some personal data in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks for the purpose of fighting extremists but insisted it had done its utmost to protect privacy.

A previous agreement no longer applies and the flow of data has been suspended since January 1.

US officials say the information is only subpoenaed once a month so it is only know that an intelligence gap is appearing.

A US official said that since the system was put in place in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, Washington had handed European authorities some 1,500 reports built from information gleaned from the data exchange system.

The European Union may not be always be aware of that as the source of the information is not routinely included, for security reasons, he said.

"

Source link.