The European Parliament and the EU Ombudsman have been denied access to a report drafted by the EU:s own police agency Europol–because the US say so.
The purpose of the report is to evaluate how the EU-US terrorist financial tracking programme (TFTP) is being implemented, including handling of data about European bank transfers.
Earlier evaluations have been heavily redacted, but have still managed to point out serious problems with the TFTP (a.k.a the SWIFT agreement). There is reason to believe that the US don’t keep their part of the agreement. And there is information that the NSA has broken into the SWIFT bank transfer system anyway.
The European Parliament has demanded that the TFTP should be suspended–because of US mass surveillance and the fact that the US doesn’t respect the “safe harbour” agreement (regulating how US companies should protect personal data about European customers).
However, the European Commission has refused to do anything of that sort–so the TFTP agreement is still in effect.
This is so wrong… The people’s elected representatives are not allowed to scrutinize the TFTP. And they are not allowed to revoke the agreement on their own. All they can do is to watch when data about European citizens and companies bank transfers are shipped in bulk to the US.
The Dutch liberal member of the European Parliament Sophie In’t Veld comments the latest TFTP information cover up in the EU Observer…
“If the US says ‘No disclosure’ then it won’t be disclosed, which is ridiculous because we are EU citizens, we vote, we pay taxes, we have EU laws, and we decide what happens on this continent. Nobody else.”
Read more over at the EU Observer: Europol chief takes instructions on document access from Americans »
/ HAX
Update Sept. 9th: Techdirt »
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