Clandestine intelligence collection

The CIA had been obtaining financial information from Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication operates a worldwide financial messaging network which exchanges messages between banks and other financial institutions...

(SWIFT), searching for terrorist financial intelligence (FININT)

Financial intelligence

Financial Intelligence is the gathering of information about the financial affairs of entities of interest, to understand their nature and capabilities, and predict their intentions...

. Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt announced that Belgium's Data Privacy Commission found that that SWIFT had improperly turned over data from millions of global financial transactions to U.S. anti-terrorism investigators. "SWIFT said in a statement that it had relinquished data to the U.S. Treasury Department only after it had been "subject to valid and compulsory subpoenas" from U.S. authorities."

The Prime Minister called the anti-terrorist monitoring "an absolute necessity" and said U.S. and European negotiators should find a way to bring it into compliance with European law. "The Bush administration has called its secret international banking surveillance program a vital tool in uncovering terrorist networks. When newspapers first reported the program's existence in June, President Bush called the disclosure "disgraceful."

"The program was begun without congressional or court approval shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With SWIFT's cooperation, U.S. investigators tapped records from the cooperative's banks, a total of millions of transactions, looking for suspicious patterns and links to terrorists...The prime minister added, "Fundamental differences exist between the E.U. and the U.S.A. concerning legislations and the principles governing the treatment of personal data, mainly in the domain of the level of protection, which is higher in Europe..."