EU: SWIFT in violation of EU data protection laws

The “Article 29 Data Protection Working Party”, an EU agency made up of data protection supervisors from the 25 member states, found that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) violated EU data protection laws by giving US authorities access to millions of private financial transactions contained in its database. This follows the domestic inquiry in Belgium, that concluded in September that SWIFT had violated European privacy rules by allowing the CIA to track financial transactions on its database. In October, the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) found that Swiss banks violated national secrecy laws by failing to inform SWIFT customers of the potential disclosure of their personal data to third parties.