Report: Data Agency Broke Privacy Laws

[cal04]

A report by an EU panel released Thursday said the bank data transfer agency SWIFT broke European privacy laws by handing over personal data to U.S. authorities for use in anti-terror investigations.

The Belgian-based company, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, ''committed violations of data protection laws'' by secretly transferring data to the United States, without properly informing Belgian authorities, the EU's data protection panel said.

The panel's report calls on SWIFT, financial institutions and EU authorities to ''take the necessary measures'' to end the transfer, which it said contradicts Belgian and EU data protection rules. SWIFT is still transferring data under U.S. subpoenas.

EU spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said the report was adopted unanimously by the 25-member panel which also chided the role of the European Central Bank in the affair. It demanded clarification from the ECB over its role in the affair. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has acknowledged his bank knew of the transfers but could not prevent them.

''SWIFT is expected as well as financial institutions to take the necessary steps immediately to remedy the present illegal infringement,'' Ahrenkilde Hansen said, adding the group will monitor the implementation of the recommendation by SWIFT and the ECB and other national banks which sit on SWIFT's oversight board.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-EU-US-Data-Privacy.html

[acmavm]

1. How can this be rectified? The info is already being used by the

thugs who wanted it.

Too late.

And it won't be the last time, either.

[Trillo]

2. Data should not only be private,

it should be owned by those who create it.

Besides the ability to opt out of others' transferring of one's data, a royalty to the creator that respects said ownership should be paid with each data access. How that would be verified would surely be a problem.

The system we appear to have now is one where the data banks often get paid for their aggregating of data instead of the people who created the data, though I have read that they freely share this data with the Federal government and police agencies.

This means that we have data welfare for the rich, and data confiscation of the people.

I suppose that another way to approach the issue is to make all data completely transparent, but I have zero confidence that government would be willing to make all of its various secrets public, which then goes back to what secrets are allowed to be kept secret, not only for government, but also for people.

I know that when I purchase something the only reason I give the merchant my bank account number (such as is printed on the check) is so that the merchant can transfer my designated funds to his account. All other uses of that data, I would say, is a breaking of merchant/customer confidentiality.