EU About To Grant US Unlimited Access To Banking Data 277
An anonymous reader points out a blog post reporting that on Monday The EU Council is set to give US intelligence services full access to SWIFT banking data, despite a unanimous call by the European Parliament not to do so. "The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior ministers are apparently keen [on agreeing to] a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the US. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face to democracy in the EU. ... [W]hile the US will be able to access EU banking data, no access to US banking data by EU [authorities] is being foreseen."
Re:About Time! (Score:5, Informative)
Is it worth catching corporate criminals at the cost of civil privacy?
Also, there are lots of ways around Taxation laws, legally, that require NO money off-shore. Using Charity receipts, holding companies, and company expenses, you can essentially cut your profits down so you don't get taxed as much while everything you want to purchase is owned by various companies (which you own but not directly).
It's kind of like you run company A, and Company B owns your car, Company C owns your house, Company D buys food, etc etc, and while the paper trail exists, theres nothing illegal about it. Shaw Communications (Cable company here in Canada) has mastered this technique. Yeah, the CEO is driving his Porsche around Calgary, but on paper he makes under 30k a year.
EU Government take latest Chance to cheat (Score:1, Informative)
The EU governments are pushing the issue so they do not have to discuss it in the EU parliament. The Lissbon Treaty which will give the parliament a say in this matter is not in place right now. The parliament is strongly opposed of SWIFT.
Re:Banking INternationally (Score:5, Informative)
Theres none good sides on it. Or why do you think US wont open their banking data back to EU?
It's just another case of USA forcing their laws, ideas and politics to other countries. Only taking, and not giving back. Fuck yeah! [youtube.com]
You may want to look into who provides a lot of the equipment, personnel and funding for U.N. and NATO peacekeeping forces. I think the US/EU relationship is pretty symbiotic. While the banking data probably won't be given to the EU, 'not giving back' is untrue.
I've looked into it. From Wikipedia: "About 4.5% of the troops and civilian police deployed in UN peacekeeping missions come from the European Union and less than one percent from the United States (USA)." The ten biggest troop contributors by country are 8 developing countries, France and Italy. Regarding UN troop funding - the reluctance and tardiness of the US to pay its UN contributions is legendary, and they are currently $1.3bn in arrears [wikipedia.org].
As to NATO troop contributions -- the US is making a lot of noise that the Europeans are not supporting their War of Terror "peacekeeping" missions in Iraq and Afghanistan enough; but they knew that they didn't have most EU countries' support when they set up to invade Iraq in the first place...
Re:Pizza Analogy (Score:1, Informative)
Pizza is Italian.
There's no such thing as american pizza. Only american would-be pizza.
From what I'm told, the common implementation of the recipe of 'pizza' is very American and is different in Italy ... Chicago-style pizza (or tomato pies) might be closer to Italian but from what I've heard, the two have diverged [wisegeek.com].
Re:Banking INternationally (Score:3, Informative)
Why should we HAVE to worry about The Authorities overseeing our each and every transaction, as if we're all criminals until proven otherwise??
I would reply at length to this comment... but Daniel J. Solove says it best in his essay:
"'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy" [ssrn.com]
Re:EU Has Finally and Completely Lost It (Score:4, Informative)
I think you are confusing the Commission with the Council of Ministers. The Commission is completely unelected.
The Council of Ministers, as the name says, consists of ministers from the member states' governments. These ministers differ depending on the topic that's being discussed, but they're always ministers.
So unless your ministers are unelected (depending on the country either directly or indirectly), it's not really correct to describe them as "an unelected body of the usual group of money-grabbing power-hungry and our of touch morons who do whatever you want if you've got the cash."
That said, it is true that the Council is used a lot by member states to launder legislation that they would never even dare to propose in their own country. Later on they will then claim at home that they are obliged "by Europe" to implement these unpopular measures nationally, while they themselves are the reason that "Europe" does so.
The Lisbon Treaty also has a downside in this respect in that it makes many decisions require less stringent majorities (or a majority rather than unanimity). The result is that it takes more countries to oppose bad proposals, and generally that delegations will be less likely to even try to oppose something, because this costs political capital and there is less chance to win anyway.
Re:Banking INternationally (Score:4, Informative)
You, sir, combine ignorance and arrogance into one efficient package.
There was NO Lend-Lease material delivered to reds before 1942. None, Zero, Nada, Zilch.
In other words US materiel got forwarded to soviets after they proved to the world they could take everything nazis could thrown at them head on .. and scraped by the skin of their prick to not collapse.
Moreover the more significant part of the aid was actually in stuff like trucks, tires, railroad rails and so on. Soviet tanks, planes and arms were just better at nazi killing than the US counterparts of the time.
To wit, soviets made hell of a lot more germans die for the Vaterland than Amis.
[/offtopic]
Re:IBAN ? (Score:2, Informative)
The issue is that IBAN is also using SWIFT to transfer data between banks. IBAN is just a standard inside EU, SWIFT is the company that has the datacenters where it all is stored. So this really is a huge issue even if you don't use the SWIFT-code directly.
On a related note: I've never understood why our local government (Netherlands in my case) always wants to lick USA's ass so much. Sure you guys saved us from Hitler, thanks a bunch for that. After more than half a century though I would say the debt has been payed and we should stop bending over so much, especially for a country that keeps on abusing its power.
I wish the US would collapse already.
Re:Prepare for 10,000 Accusations of ... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh really [guardian.co.uk]?
The Home Office received 95 extradition requests from the US between 1 January 2004 and 31 July 2009; 47 of these have taken place, with 36 ongoing, five withdrawn by the US and seven refused by UK authorities. The UK has made 42 extradition requests to the US during the same period; 27 of these have taken place, with 12 ongoing, three withdrawn by the UK and none refused. The numbers of requests made between the UK and its extradition partners are often unequal – Spain extradited 104 people to us between 2004 and 2008 and received 27 – but this signifies no imbalance in the governing arrangements.
I don't know about the rest of Europe, but that one data point makes me question what orifice that extradition 'fact' came from, no matter how truthy it sounds.
Re:Banking INternationally (Score:1, Informative)
I've looked into it. From Wikipedia: "About 4.5% of the troops and civilian police deployed in UN peacekeeping missions come from the European Union and less than one percent from the United States (USA)." The ten biggest troop contributors by country are 8 developing countries, France and Italy. Regarding UN troop funding - the reluctance and tardiness of the US to pay its UN contributions is legendary, and they are currently $1.3bn in arrears [wikipedia.org].
Possibly because the United States foots a quarter of the funding yearly to the UN [globalpolicy.org] and yet does not have a single UN operation on its soil.
Re:IBAN ? (Score:3, Informative)
Do you actually know anything about banking?
IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is only a consistent identification scheme for bank accounts so transfers can be processed with STP (straight-through processing, eg without manual intervention to fix spelling errors / typos / inconsistent punctuation - as a student I had that job in a bank). The actual transfers are made using TARGET (Trans-european Automated Real-time Gross settlement Express Transfer System). This is is based on SWIFT communications with the clearing of funds effectively backed by the ECB member banks.
So yes, intra-EU transfers are using SWIFT.
Re:Prepare for 10,000 Accusations of ... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about the rest of Europe, but that one data point makes me question what orifice that extradition 'fact' came from, no matter how truthy it sounds.
Well, good for you. Question away! In the time you took to write that post, you could have typed "US UK extradition treaty" into Wikipedia (or found the first link to it on Google), read up on the Extradition Act 2003, and discovered that what I wrote was fair and your statistics do nothing to refute it. Never mind, though, this is Slashdot, and it's far more fun to use the words "orifice" and "truthy" than to actually check facts anyway.
Fear mongerer. (Score:1, Informative)
It is untrue that the Council's members are unelected. The Council is composed of the ministers of government from the member states. The exact minister who attends depends on the subject that is being discussed. For example, the when the Council is discussing agricultural policy, it is the Agriculture minister from each member state who attends. When the subject is foreign policy, it is the Prime Minister (or head of state) and the foreign minister. These people are all elected by the laws of their respective countries.
Nice fear mongering, though.