Yesterday, I invited a number of people to join the Facebook-group "Keep our banking data private - no automatic SWIFT data transfer to the US!". I added that it would be a different story if all those SWIFT data were available from the public library. One of my Facebook-friends replied:
Mikael I have so little money in the bank that this is not a group I would spontaneously join unless someone could provide me with pretty persuasive reasons why I should.
As an introduction to the issue, I suggested to read the article in Der Spiegel, 27 November :
"As part of the war on terror, American intelligence services have been monitoring European bank transactions since 2001. When the EU found out about it in 2006, they were outraged. But now it looks like the bloc will agree to a controversial deal that will allow the covert data transfer to continue".
At the beginning of this millennium, Ernest Backes and Denis Robert published an inquiry into the activities of Clearstream in Luxemburg. The book also contains interesting facts and thoughts about SWIFT, and about banking in general (se Robert & Backes: Révélation$ (Les Arènes, Paris 2001) this book was followed by La Boîte noire (2002), and other books by Denis Robert). Perhaps because I have worked with computer-mediated communication since the middle of the 1980s, Révélation$ made a stronger impression on me than on many others. The story which was told by Backes and Robert bears witness on the extent to which the world's financial system has become a software project. And this, in turn, gave the sociologist and librarian in me some food for thought.
As the banks increasingly become digital information management centers, how shall we distinguish between what is called "a database", or a "data bank" (a collection of databases) and what we intend with an "archive" or a "library" ? The digitalization of money and financial securities (documents concerning property and ownership) makes it necessary to re-think not only our concepts of 'bank' and 'library', but also the relation between these two old institutions. In the so called information society, who are to be the guardians of information: The private bankers or the public librarians? Or the secret intelligence agents of the USA?
In ATTAC, we call for regulation of the financial system, and for greater transparency. We need to remember, however, that the lack of transparency is not absolute. What the citizens, their political representatives, and the reporters of the financial press do not know, is indeed knowable and known by certain book-keepers and the CIA. The management of the financial data with fast computers and sophisticated software actually raises the financial transparency to an unprecedented level - for those who have access to the "collected works" of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).
The questions concerning the availability of, and the access to, the huge financial libraries of SWIFT and Clearstream is undoubtedly of immense social and political importance. These questions are closely related to our proposals on financial transactions taxation to aid the Citizen. In order to collect the tax properly, many loopholes must be filled, and the tax havens abolished. This can only be achieved if SWIFT, Clearstream and other central financial archives are controlled by the peoples. The private, digital, financial libraries should be turned into public ones. The transition from transparency for the few to transparency for everybody will no doubt require a thorough public debate and much democratic decision-making.
The de facto spying on the SWIFT books by the CIA has been known for some time, more precisely since the Bush administration loudly bragged about it in June 2006. What is at stake in the "SWIFT agreement" between the EU and the US, is not primarily if the CIA has or does not have access, but whether that agency shall henceforward be allowed that access by European law-makers.
The distinction between what is actually done, and what is done legally and thus with explicit consent from the representatives of the people, is by no means unimportant. Do we continue our fight to change our government and its malpractice? Or do we give up and give away the rights we are granted by our basic laws? On 1 December this year, the European constitution changed a little in this respect when the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force. The European Parliament should now greater power to stop the "SWIFT agreement" than previously, if there is a will to do it.
I enclose a couple of passages from the well-informed "Brussels blogger" 26 November 2009:
"SWIFT is now moving all its data centers outside the EU and the US, to Switzerland. In order to continue allowing the US authorities accessing all banking data a high level agreement between the EU and the USA is currently being negotiated. It is likely to be agreed on in the EU council of minister meeting next Monday, 30 November 2009.
The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior minister are apparently keen agree a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU's Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the USA. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face of democracy in the EU.
SWIFT handles 15 mio bank transactions daily for more than 9000 banks worldwide. Nearly every transnational bank transaction within the EU is recorded in the SWIFT data centers, including amount, sender, recipient, and transaction comments. The agreement will even allow to transmit "other personal data". "
See also the press release from the Council of the EU, Nov 2009, which says:
By the end of 2009, SWIFT will implement its new "systems architecture". For this purpose SWIFT will retain its existing EU-based and U.S. servers and will bring into operation a new operating centre in Switzerland. The net effect of this new arrangement is that a significant volume of the data which are currently received by the U.S. Treasury Department under the TFTP will no longer be stored in the United States. In order to ensure that the TFTP continues to produce the above- mentioned EU - and wider global – security benefits, it is necessary to put in place an international agreement that allows for data needed for the TFTP to continue to be made available to the U.S. Treasury Department. This is why in July of this year the 27 Member States of the European Union unanimously gave the EU Presidency a mandate to negotiate an agreement with the United States to ensure the transfer of the data and thereby the continuation of the TFTP. In July, it was not known when or indeed whether the Lisbon Treaty would come into force. Accordingly, the mandate is based on the legal mechanism of the EU Treaty which will cease to exist on 1 December when the Lisbon Treaty enters into force. To ensure that the European Parliament is able to exercise its new powers under the new Treaty in this regard, the envisaged Agreement is for a maximum duration of 9 months. The Commission will come forward with a new proposed mandate in early 2010 for a subsequent agreement based on the Lisbon Treaty. In the meantime, an interim agreement is needed to ensure that there is no lapse in TFTP coverage that would deprive the EU of important information related to terrorist attacks or investigations.
TFTP = the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme of the the United States Department of the Treasury