5 reasons why the SWIFT deal is very bad for Europe
Today I will list the 5 main arguments against the EU bank data transfer deal with the US.The background of the deal has already been described in my blog post yesterday.
These are the 5 reasons:
- There is no reciprocity: The US will receive EU banking data and the EU will NOT receive any US banking data. Basically the EU will outsource a data mining center to the US authorities and hopes to get back some interesting data on its own citizens.
- The bank data won’t stay in the United States: The transferred data is able to move outside the US for anti-terrorism mesaures. Given how many countries cooperate on anti-terrorism this is very worrying.
- No parliaments to be involved: neither the European Parliament nor any national parliment will be involved.
- No courts involved: no courts are involved before the transfer of data takes place. There is no possibility for European citizens or businesses to launch legal procedures against the data transfers. Compared to the data retention directive concercing telecom operations (which was heavily discussed in the European parliament, in media and at national levels) this is very very weak.
- Everything is done in completele secrecy: There is no press release, no memo. The draft agreement is not public and held secret until today. Hence there is very little media coverage, especially outside Germany.
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