Judge gives go-ahead to lawsuit against Bush's bank transfer spying program

Michael RostonPublished: Tuesday June 19, 2007
A federal judge in Chicago last week rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against a Belgium-based bank transfer clearinghouse that collaborated with an anti-terrorism spying program led by the US Department of Treasury. The judge's decision will allow two plaintiffs to press their case that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) violated the Fourth Amendment and financial privacy rights of bank customers throughout the United States when it collaborated with president George W. Bush's so-called 'Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.'
"I don't think any corporate entity should be given a blank check to spy on Americans whether it's their telephone conversations or their financial transactions," said Steven Schwarz, the lead attorney for the case's two plaintiffs, in a Tuesday morning phone call with RAW STORY. "Maybe that's how they do it in other countries, but we have one set of rules, and nobody gets carte blanche to shred the Constitution."
SWIFT facilitates $6 trillion a day in financial transactions among thousands of banks in hundreds of countries. In June 26, 2006, articles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal, SWIFT was revealed by the media to have turned over considerable information its database to the US Department of Treasury. Schwarz alleged that the government initially had filed a more limited subpoena for information.
(Note: Counterterrorism expert Victor Comras wrote just after the revelation that the US government's monitoring of SWIFT transactions first was noted in 2002 in United Nations publications.)

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