Why can't we all just be friends?
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Published: February 11, 2010

NY Times: BRUSSELS — The European Parliament
on Thursday broadly rejected an agreement with the United States on
sharing information on bank transfers that was aimed at tracking
suspected terrorists through their finances. The vote in Strasbourg, France,
underlined differences between the United States and the European Union over how to
balance guarantees of personal privacy with concerns about national and international security.
A resolution to reject the deal passed 378-196, with 31 abstentions. The
vote means that the agreement, which provisionally went into force at
the beginning of February, cannot be used as planned. The
agreement would have freed the United States from having to seek bank
data on a country-by-country basis. But Washington still could press
for access to the data through such avenues.

Many members of the Parliament complained that the agreement — meant to last for nine
months while a more permanent arrangement was sought — failed to
guarantee the privacy rights of European citizens.Members also
were angered when ministers from the body’s 27 national governments
agreed on the interim deal with the United States one day before a new
treaty governing the European Union — one giving deputies in the
European Parliament a greater say over data-protection issues — went
into effect.

Underlining the importance of the agreement to the United States,
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had
promised to cooperate with the Parliament in negotiating a long-term accord.
European sensitivity is high after it was revealed in 2006 that the Society for
Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, which is
based near Brussels, had provided United States authorities with
personal data after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Swift registers
trillions of dollars in cross-border transactions daily for nearly
8,000 financial institutions. American and European leaders
have warned that rejecting the agreement would leave a security gap.
Some legislators said the use of the Swift data had already made it
possible to thwart attacks.

But a large number of European Parliament members complained that the
agreement would have granted the United States far too much power to intrude
into the lives of European citizens.A German member, Martin Schulz, said earlier this week
that he was concerned data on European citizens could be kept on file
for nearly a century.The agreement was signed in November 2009 but
needed consent from the Parliament to be legally binding.

Cecilia Malmström, the European Union’s commissioner for home affairs, had
argued in favor of the agreement, and on Thursday pleaded in favor of
postponing a decision.The United States could still use an
agreement on mutual legal assistance to seek the data. But that could
make the process of gathering the information more cumbersome.