Slashdot Mirror
US Reneges On SWIFT Agreement
Windrip writes "It seems the US is not living up to its end of the bargain when it comes to the SWIFT data agreement. When the agreement was signed last year, every EU citizen was guaranteed the right to know if the American authorities had retrieved their banking information, and which authorities had requested the information. Now one European Parliamentarian, Alexander Alvaro says that, once again, the Americans are not honoring their treaties."
...and I don't agree with the stance my government is taking. Just in case all the non-US slashdotters go on about how X, Y, and Z America is. It's not all of us, scouts honor =)
Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.
I'm not sure where to find a list of treaties that the United States has failed to honor (did a quick search and nothing obvious popped up), but it seems to me that as time goes on the Americans are losing more and more credibility on the world stage. The start of the real decline seemed to happen with the latest invasion of Iraq and really accelerated through the term of G.W. Bush. This is my perspective as a non-American living outside of the United States, but do the majority of people inside the U.S. realize how much they've lost on the world stage over the past decade?
In a way the decline reminds me of the local police - 30 or 40 years ago the local police were your friend - someone you could go to and talk to and who would be willing to help you out. These days it seems like you're best off staying as far away from the police as possible.
Does anyone else see things in a similar way?
TFA talks about Alvaro's efforts to obtain information about U.S. access to his account data from the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BFDI). From the article BDFI seems to be some Kafkaesque bureaucracy. He submitted the original request in October. After repeated requests for more and different personal information, the BDFI finally forwarded the request to the U.S. authorities at the beginning of this month. The hang up here does not seem to be on the American side.
Stop me if I make any mistakes here...
When another country does something that the USA doesn't like, the USA gets all up in arms about it and either invades the nation with the intent of "setting them free", or else they impose quite intense political and/or economical pressure on the nation to comply with their expectations.
When the USA does something that another country doesn't like and the other country dares to point this out, the USA basically goes "Meh." Because they figure that there's squat all that anybody else can do about it.
Just wanting to be sure I know where things stand.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I don't think that's an accurate summary. When describing the delay, the article says "There was, still no agreement between the US authorities and the BFDI. The American authorities would require still more data from the applicant." That sure sounds as though there were discussions taking place with the Americans, and the Americans were unclear or inconsistent about what was needed.
There's also the quote from the MEP, ""The German authorities have not yet been able to find out whether data has been accessed at all. As such, the rights of EU citizens on correction, deletion or blockage of the data are being violated."
And the headline of the original article: "Problems with Transparency. Brussels Eyes a Halt to SWIFT Data Agreement"
So I think in this case Slashdot got the anti-American sentiment of the article about right.