German State Rules: US Gov Spying Of Int'l Wire Transfers Is NOT Legal

[kpete]

Exclusive: German state bans US spying on wire transfers

RAW STORY
Published: Friday August 25, 2006

A state within the Federal Republic of Germany has ruled that US government monitoring of international wire transfers is not legal, RAW STORY has learned.

The Data Protection Commission within the German lander (or state) of Schlewsig-Holstein published an analysis of the handing over of transactional data from the agency SWIFT in Brussels to the US government. It found that the practice violates German and European data protection law because there is no legal basis for the transfer of intra-European transactional information to the US SWIFT processing center, and because US-EU transactions do not have their data properly safeguarded by the US.

With the Commission finding a lack of legal basis for the SWIFT monitoring, it called for an immediate cessation of the mirroring of European data in the US SWIFT data center.

The previously little known monitoring of financial transactions by SWIFT came to light on June 23, 2006 when the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times all published articles showing that the Department of Treasury and the CIA were gathering data in a Terrorist Finance Tracking Program. The New York Times was strongly criticized by the government and conservative press outlets for publicizing the program. Victor Comras at the Counterterrorism Blog claimed that the program had long been known to global finance experts and was not a secret.

more at:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/German_state_bans_US_spying_on_0825.html

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. This is BIG news. K & R n/t

[Ganja Ninja]

2. When does Bush's extradition begin?

I dream of the day when that MF'er is rotting in jail in another country somewhere.