The Finance Tracking Programme between the EU and US is in danger because of NSA spying

Sep 25, 2013 09:45 GMT  ·  By

The European Union is finally making its voice heard in a matter that called for immediate response a while back – NSA spying.

The Union is threatening the United States to suspend or terminate the EU-US terrorist Finance Tracking Programme after reports indicated the NSA spied on SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), International Business Times reports.

“I am not satisfied with the answers I got so far,” said Cecilia Malmström, EU’s Home Affairs Commissioner, about the requests she made to the US authorities, mentioning there’s need for more information and clarity.

The SWIFT network enables financial institutions across the globe to send and receive information about various transactions in a “secure, standardized and reliable environment.” With the NSA cracking the system, the standards don’t apply to any transactions.

“If media reports are true this constitutes a breach of the agreement and a breach of the agreement can lead to suspension,” said Malmström.

The Finance Tacking Programme was signed back in 2010, allowing US agencies some access to bank data transferred through the SWIFT network for situations such as tracking funds meant for actions that would put national security in danger, such as terrorist attacks.

While there have been other situations in the past three months that called the same reaction from the European Union, such as the NSA spying on EU diplomats and External Affairs offices of several countries, not to mention mass surveillance of entire countries, it was only now that the EU threatened the US with a serious punishment.

Reports about the NSA spying on SWIFT were made by Brazilian publication Globo, who had access to NSA documents through Glenn Greenwald, the journalist that Edward Snowden provided thousands of documents to.

The SWIFT network was mentioned alongside Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company, and Google.

The matter was denied by both some EU officials and SWIFT execs, claiming there’s no evidence.