{"id":1028,"date":"2010-04-08T09:01:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T16:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harvardnsj.com\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2010-04-08T09:01:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T16:01:04","slug":"new-u-s-eu-agreement-on-tracking-terrorist-financing-possible-by-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/2010\/04\/new-u-s-eu-agreement-on-tracking-terrorist-financing-possible-by-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"New U.S.-EU Agreement on Tracking Terrorist Financing Possible by Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor –
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is hope that a tool for tracking terrorists\u2019 finances that was effectively eliminated by the European Parliament in February will come back online this summer.<\/p>\n

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) was started after the September 11th attacks as a way to identify, track, and pursue suspected terrorists and their finances.\u00a0 As one part of the program, the U.S. government would subpoena banking records from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a consortium of banks that serves as the middle man for billions of transactions each year.\u00a0 Although SWIFT is a Belgian company, the U.S. government was able to obtain SWIFT\u2019s records because many of its databases were housed in the United States.\u00a0 In January, though, SWIFT moved most of those files to the Netherlands, forcing the United States to get European permission to continue this part of the program.<\/p>\n

In February, despite intense lobbying from American and European officials, the European Parliament rejected an interim agreement to keep the program running while a longer-term agreement could be reached.\u00a0 The rejection, by a vote of 378-196, reflected the Parliament\u2019s dissatisfaction with the level of data protection as well as anger over being left out of negotiations.<\/p>\n

The European Commission has put forward a new proposal that seeks to address the Parliament\u2019s concerns.\u00a0 The proposal includes greater oversight, including requirements that the Commission regularly report to the Parliament concerning the amount of information processed and used for counter-terrorism purposes; approval by a judicial authority for transfers of data; absolute prohibition on transfers of bulk data to third countries; and a right of the European Union to terminate the agreement in the event of a breach of the safeguards. \u00a0(More information can be found here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

An alternative discussed by some European officials is for the Commission to develop its own terrorist finance tracking system.\u00a0 But such a system would be expensive and require E.U. member states to delegate powers to oversee the effort, an unlikely proposition in an area where member states still zealously protect their sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Once the proposal is approved by member states, the Commission will lead the negotiations with the U.S. government.\u00a0 The final agreement will then require the approval of the national governments and the European Parliament.\u00a0 E.U. Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said that \u201cwe have good hopes that we might be able to finalize this by summer.\u201d\u00a0 The U.S. Mission to the European Union stated that the parties should \u201cquickly move forward with constructive negotiations toward a long-term agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information, see The New York Times<\/a><\/em> and the E.U. Observer<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor – There is hope that a tool for tracking terrorists\u2019 finances that was effectively eliminated by the European Parliament in February will come back online this summer. The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) was started after the September 11th attacks as a way to identify, track, and pursue suspected terrorists and their finances.\u00a0 As one part of the program, the U.S. government would subpoena banking records from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a consortium of banks that serves as the middle man for billions of transactions each year.\u00a0 Although SWIFT is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZtUX-gA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}