Washington threatens to bypass Europe in battle for bank data
Found on DW-World on Friday, 05 February 2010
The US is threatening to stop working with Europe in the fight against terrorism after an EU parliamentary group rejected a proposed data-sharing agreement.
Members of a European Parliament subcommittee dealt a blow to US-EU relations by voting to reject a proposed bank data sharing deal between the US and Europe in a preliminary vote on Thursday.
Members of the parliament's civil liberties committee voted by 29 votes to 23 to reject the SWIFT deal, arguing that the deal fails to protect the privacy of EU citizens.
Sorry that european privacy laws are more strict than in the US. Unfortunately, I like it that way and if the US now throws a tantrum then I really don't care. Lyndon B. Johnson already said it: "Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private". Besides, the threat not to work with the EU against terrorism is meaningless; because it would fire back and I don't think that US politicans assume that the EU will work with them against terrorism while getting nothing in return. That aside, US terrorism investigations don't seem to be that valueable: Bin Laden still isn't caught and Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.