EU Committee Says No To Bank Data Sharing

krupert writes to let us know that the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament has voted to revoke the data-sharing arrangement by which US intelligence agencies have access to EU banking data via the SWIFT system. The US has threatened to withhold cooperation on terrorist intelligence if the bank data deal now in place is canceled, which it will be next week if the full European Parliament votes in line with the committee's recommendation. US intelligence agencies clandestinely tapped the SWIFT interbank clearing data from just after 9/11 until 2006, when the secret arrangement was made public. After that, Belgium-based SWIFT pulled their servers from the US and set up shop in Brussels, and the US had to negotiate with the EU to keep tapping the data.

Re:Who let US out of the playground again?

[sopssa]

@ http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1535624&cid=31011546 [slashdot.org]

(Ex 5-year professional PHP developer here, who actually managed to write properly designed software in it, and therefore knows extremely well what PHP is and can’t do.)

and now

LOL. I have an automatic replacer for bullshit words like “file sharing”.
Guess what it replaced “consfile sharing theory” with:

I have a funny consfile sharing theory for you: :)

Damn. I have to get into consfile sharing business!

I know what they say about most PHP programmers.. but you're making it too easy for them!

Re: withhold cooperation on terrorism!!!!?? WTF!!!

[Jesus_666]

The problem is, this doesn't just work against politicians. It also works against countries. The USA claim to have informations about terrorists, which they are unwilling to share with the Eurpean Union unless we hand over the data. Let's see what kind of headlines we can come up with based on that.

Generic newspapers:
USA Hold Free World at Gunpoint, Demand Bank Data for Continued Safety
USA Withholding Terrorism Data Until Demands are Met

Big, reputable papers:
America's Deadly Game - how Uncle Sam trades our safety for his convenience
Give Freely or Die - how Washington uses terrorists as leverage against our privacy
From the Land of the Free to the land of the spies - a timeline

Sensationalist rags:
ARE THE USA PART OF THE AXIS OF EVIL?
HOW AMERICA IS PROTECTING THE TERRORISTS
OBAMA BIN LADEN WANTS TO MESS WITH YOUR BANK ACCOUNT
CAN THE USA SUPPORT TERRORISTS? "YES, WE CAN!"


Yes, there's some horrible spin in there but I can really imagine seeing those headlines. It's really easy to spin this to make the USA look really bad and in a sense it's not even that wrong a viewpoint: The USA, who keep going on about how terrorism is the biggest problem of our generation, willingly keep terrorism-relevant information from others. Either they have been lying about how dangerous the terrorists are or their conduct is seriously unethical. Of course anyone with a bone to pick will have a ball going on from there.

Re:Who let US out of the playground again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I hear it's a great place to live if you're a white, christian, non-slavic person of northern european descent with a lot of money.

So, it's a kind of a European reservation for a minority, then?

Re:Who let US out of the playground again?

[rve]

the scenery is beautiful

I'll give you that one.

There aren't a lot of places where you can even see the scenery, with all these fucking claustrophobia inducing mountains blocking the view