A Question of rights and American Bullying

 Personal liberties and freedoms have been high on the agenda in the European Parliament recently.  Firstly there was the issue of body scanners being made compulsory at EU airports in wake of the recent attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas day, and more controversially there is the demand from the United States that all banking transactions are given to American Authorities.  What you probably didn’t know is that all the UK and European banks belong to a system called SWIFT, which facilitates transfers between accounts and in particular, foreign transactions.  The Americans believe having such information helps them highlight terrorist activity and stops the financing of such activity and so therefore they are insisting on receiving such information.  Originally the EU agreed to this request on certain individuals providing that an effective sifting process is in place to protect the personal data of innocent individuals.  Now it has become apparent that because of the cost, the SWIFT organisation has allegedly not been sifting and have been sending the Americans everybody’s banking transaction details.  When this became known the European Parliament went mad and at this time of writing, have refused to ratify the new agreement between the EU and the U.S., which the Parliament believes is inadequate and is a classic case of the United States trying to bully the rest of the world into agreeing to their security requirements, irrespective of people’s rights or data protection laws.  Sadly some member states including the UK, whilst recognising the proposed agreement is a poor one, does compromise the rights of the individuals, want the European Parliament to agree.  I am glad to say the European Parliament is resisting!