As to the creation of instruments for data-sharing; this is moving quite quickly within the EU, but I’m less knowledgeable on the generally bi-lateral agreemetns with third countries. But I do know that a data protection directive on the specific applications within justice and home affairs has been in draft form for at least a year, but hasn’t yet see the light of day.

Seán Sweeney, compliance officer at the Irish data protection commissioner’s office, said he could not comment on whether an investigation was ongoing in the Swift case.

But he said in such a case the commissioner would have to establish a few key pieces of information early on. “Has the personal data of people resident in Ireland been accessed? If so, by whom, how and from where? The access point will be very important in determining jurisdiction. If Irish data are accessed in Belgium, it will be necessary to establish the conditions under which the data were supplied to Swift, in order to determine what power the commissioner may have to investigate.”

Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa said the Swift case was yet another example of the erosion of EU citizens’ civil rights in the name of the US “war on terror”.

“It is not acceptable that the CIA or FBI can access records like this,” said Mr De Rossa, who urged the Government to hold an inquiry into the monitoring of banking records and called on the Irish Central Bank to explain what it knew about the CIA programme.

Several central banks in Europe knew that Swift was passing on details to the CIA from its US offices, but it is understood that many did not tell their governments.

The Irish Central Bank refuses to confirm or deny whether it knew.

Allow me to non-surprise you: the Belgian National Bank admits it was in the know, but sort of didn’t pass the news along; now the Belgian DoJ, alerted by media reports, is investigating the SWIFT program.

Some excerpts in anticipation of link-rot:

Belgium’s national bank (BNB) admitted yesterday that it knew that the US was monitoring financial transactions via the Swift system, which is based in Belgium, as part of its “war on terror”.

Earlier the country’s justice ministry said it had launched an inquiry into the covert US spy programme.

Spokeswoman Anaik De Voghel said Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx had ordered the Belgian intelligence services to investigate the programme, confirmed by senior US officials Friday after it was leaked to US media.

“We had the information in the context of our monitoring activities” of Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions), a BNB spokesman said, refusing to say when it had that information.

“We were alerted informally in the framework of our contacts with this enterprise,” he said.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=93906&version=1&template_id=39&parent_id=21

And:

Belgium’s government is investigating the legality of counter-terrorism searches by U.S. officials of thousands of private records held by Brussels-based international bank cooperative SWIFT, a spokeswoman said.

… Belgian Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinx learned of the searches from the media and asked Belgium’s national security services and counter-fraud office to produce reports into the matter before the end of the week, a ministry spokeswoman said.

“She wants to know if these actions taken by the U.S. and SWIFT are okay under Belgian law,” Annaik De Voghel told Reuters on Monday. Security officials will discuss the issue later this week, she added.

A spokesman for European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs Franco Frattini said it did not appear that the European Union’s executive body had any competence in the matter.

“At first sight there is no European legislation covering this type of transfer and (it is) therefore a matter of national law,” he said.

Belgium’s central bank sought to distance itself from the affair, saying in a statement on Sunday that its role as head of the oversight body for SWIFT was limited.

“The monitoring of SWIFT’s activities that do not affect financial stability is not a matter for the oversight group and therefore the U.S. Treasury subpoenas of SWIFT were outside the purview of central bank oversight,” the statement said.

Henry’s correct that as far as the law is concerned everyone has an obligation not to do things which are illegal. If central banks don’t have the authority to clear them the fact that SWIFT told member central banks what was going on doesn’t excuse them.

But as public authorities responsible for monitoring the banking sector don’t central banks actively have positive obligations? If they knew someone was doing something illegal then why didn’t they act to uphold the law? If they didn’t know then can’t we question their competence?

But I’m getting sick of these idiots, and their sycophants, braying about how they’re making us safer when so many of their actions have exactly the contrary effect.

As I said in the post, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people in the govts in question did know what was happening, and tacitly went along with it. I haven’t seen any evidence of this, but I wouldn’t be surprised. But the point is, that unless I’m wrong (and I could be – not a lawyer as stated – although I have been following legal developments in this area as a political scientist), SWIFT’s cooperation was illegal. Government knowledge or lack of knowledge makes no odds here as far as I can tell. If the member states of the EU had entered into some sort of protocol with the US regarding this information, or even if individual member states had done this, it would be a different kettle of fish altogether. And as best as I can tell, SWIFT seem to share this analysis – they were clearly highly uncomfortable about the situation they were in, and to the extent that they have articulated a public defence, it’s been a conflict of laws defence (which is unlikely to cut much ice afik).

Steve Labonne – I didn’t pronounce on the rights or wrongs of this too heavily, but I’m actually considerably less perturbed about this than about various other forms of information gathering that we’ve been finding out about. As best as I can tell from publicly available information there were some checks and balances here, and the information has been used for the relatively narrow purpose of fighting terrorism. That said, I think this will be a highly emotive issue for Europeans – as stated, I think that they’ll feel as strongly about this as Americans would under similar circumstances.

No, they won’t. American nonwingnuts won’t notice either: I don’t think that there was one single article that mentioned anything else than “American citizens” in the receveing end of all that spying. A navel the size of a continent.