Fergie's Tech Blog

SWIFT Must Defend Itself Against Violation of Privacy Accusations

A Bloomberg newswire article by Andrew Harris, via The International Herald Tribune, reports that:

Swift, the banking cooperative based in Belgium that has aided U.S. government efforts to trace terrorist financing, must defend a lawsuit accusing it of violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens, a judge has ruled.

Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is an industry-owned group that enables more than 8,000 banks and financial institutions in more than 200 countries to trade information and process transactions, according to the group's Web site.

Judge James Holderman of the U.S. District Court in Chicago said that the complaint brought by two bank customers contained sufficient allegations to support a claim that Swift had violated the U.S. Right to Financial Privacy Act, a law limiting the right of the government to view bank customers' records.

"The Swift program is another example of reckless disregard for the Constitution and values that make us who we are as a nation," Steven Schwarz, a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, said Friday.

posted by Fergie @ 6/18/2007 07:13:00 PM