(2 July 2007 – Europe) The European Union has agreed a deal with the US government on the handling of bank transaction data passing via the Swift network.The deal follows last year’s discovery that the US government had covertly scrutinised what it deemed to be suspect transactions sent over the network.
The EU has reached agreement with the US government allowing Washington to access data only for counter terrorism purposes and to keep any data for a maximum of five years with a European official monitoring use of the data.
“The EU has been given the necessary guarantees that the US Treasury will process data it receives from Swift’s mirror server in the USA in a way which takes into account EU data protection principles,” the EU said.
For its part, Swift claimed its US branch was subject to valid and compulsory subpoenas which required it to transmit some stored message data to the US Treasury.