4 Million British banking secrets sent to America

By John Steele

07/07/06 "The Telegraph" -- -- Details of 4.6 million British financial transactions are being secretly disclosed each year to American intelligence agencies, privacy campaigners say.

The practice is believed to have started four years ago, which means that as many as 20 million UK-originated transactions have been supplied to the Americans.

Privacy International, a London-based body, is trying to raise the issue in dozens of countries around the world.

It said its estimate was based on figures supplied by Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, based in Belgium, which provides electronic instructions for transfers between banks and stock exchanges.

Washington has suggested that the information has been "useful" in unspecified anti-terrorist operations. But the emergence of the practice, which the Home Office is said to have been aware of for four years, raises questions about the global reach of the US government and whether privacy laws are being breached in Britain and elsewhere.

Privacy International said: "This disclosure of data has been undertaken on the grounds of counter-terrorism, though once in US territory authorities would be at liberty to use the information in whatever way they see fit.

"Swift's annual reports show that in 2004-2005 more than 460 million financial transactions originating in the UK were sent through the network. Sources close to and within Swift have acknowledged that approximately one per cent of Swift's traffic is relevant to the agreement [between Swift and the US], resulting in most or all of the data being diverted to the US.

It is reasonable to assume that around 4.6 million records in that year were secretly transferred. A comparable figure can be derived for each of the four years that the programme has been in operation."

Privacy International has lodged complaints with data protection and privacy regulators in numerous countries.

The criteria by which the one per cent of information is released and whether any threshold amount of money is involved are unknown.

Privacy International is demanding the suspension of Swift's disclosures. It said it did not seek "to challenge the existence of provisions to disclose personal information on legitimate grounds of national security or counter-terrorism". But "such disclosures must be subject to established legal procedures".

Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, said: "This unlawful activity shows how the US disregards the privacy rights not only of its own citizens but also of foreign nationals. The scale of the operation is breathtaking."

The UK Information Commissioner's Office, which monitors data confidentiality, said: "Given the sensitivity of financial data, we take any such alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act extremely seriously. We are seeking clarification on the details of this case."

Swift's website says: "After the September 11 attacks, Swift responded to compulsory subpoenas for limited sets of data from the United States Department of the Treasury. Our fundamental principle has been to preserve the confidentiality of our users' data while complying with the lawful obligations in countries where we operate."

Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited

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