US May Invoke "State Secrets" To Stop Banking Suit

An anonymous reader sends us to the International Herald Tribune for news that the Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn once again to a favorite legal tool, the 'state secrets' privilege. The administration wants to shut down a lawsuit brought against Swift, a huge Belgium banking cooperative that that the article calls the "nerve center of the global banking industry," after it was revealed that Swift secretly let the CIA comb through millions of private financial records. Quoting: "Two US banking customers sued Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. Many legal and financial analysts expected that the lawsuit would be thrown out because US banking privacy laws are considered much more lax than those in much of Europe. But to the surprise of many, a judge refused to throw out the lawsuit in a ruling in June."

Comments

Now SWIFT is an interesting subject

[A beautiful mind]

Basically, those are the guys who run international banking, with the message centers and the networking. As far as I know, their physical location is a secret aswell, only a few of these centers exist in the world. SWIFT is more or less owned by the largest banks in the world, roughly based on their marketshare and size. That was the only way they felt assured that noone is going to swindle them with 8 bit xor "encryption" on financial transactions.

If these guys are cooperating with Bush/the US Govt., then basically the largest banks in the world are cooperating with Bush, giving the US access to international banking.