Recent years of what some have described as over-reaching US policy has lead to a backlash from the European Parliament.
SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Funds Transfers, is the mechanism by which nearly all international bank transfers are sent and received, and by which funds are verified internationally. SWIFT handles some 15 million international money transfers each day.
Secret deals during the last decade moved SWIFT servers from Europe to US Soil, so that US intelligence agencies could monitor money transfer activity over the SWIFT system. This arrangement met with severe opposition when it saw the light of day in 2009, as SWIFT defied US requests and moved its servers back to Europe.
Now the European Parliament is likely to spike a deal which would allow US terrorism investigators access to European bank transfer data. Privacy advocates oppose the deal and Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office says the data profiling is ineffective in counter terrorism efforts.
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