Comment: EDRI on the New SWIFT Deal

European Digital Rights has a comment on the new SWIFT access deal signed earlier this week. It maintains that this deal has "no significant improvements from the Agreement rejected by the European Parliament in February 2010":

Unfortunately, the new adopted text still allows for bulk data transfers. The Parliament would have liked to replace bulk data with targeted searches carried out by an EU-based authority but according to MEP Birgit Sippel, "We cannot reduce the problem of bulk data for the moment as we do not have the technical
capability."

The retention period is still 5 years and there is no real system in place from the US on a binding legal redress. The US Privacy Act court clauses only apply to US citizens and legal residents. Therefore there is currently no right of judicial review for foreign citizens and residents (including EU) under the US law.

Another key critique to the current text is the role of Europol that should authorize the data transfer requests from the US. Besides the fact that Europol is not a judicial authority, as requested by the European Parliament in May 2010 Resolution, the incentive from this agency to limit the amount of data being transferred is extremely reduced due to the fact that they can actually request data searches from the US.