The controversy around SWIFT's practice of divulging individuals' banking and transaction data to US security and fiscal authorites has been extensively reported. It has led to the intervention of European data protection authorites, and a decision by SWIFT to relocate its European client data processing to Switzerland.
I was therefore interested to see a report that a US district court has thrown out actions brought by two individuals alleging Swift had infringed their privacy rights. Given the apparently overwhelming weight of opinion in Europe against Swift's actions under european data protection laws, I wondered if here was a US court standing up for the rights of the US government to have its way in everybody else's jurisdiction.
Nothing that exciting - it sounds like the plaintiffs simply failed to make their case. The report suggests that among the facts they failed to establish were such arcane technicalities as :
- Who they actually bank with;
- Whether the Bank(s) concerned is/are are members of SWIFT;
- Whether any of their personal data was actually disclosed.
The US Government seems to have been sufficiently worried by the case that it was considering invoking state secrecy privelege, but this hardly sounds necessary... Did anyone in this case have a lawyer, or was the judge the only one to mention the "e word" - evidence ?
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