The United States is no longer interested in ordinary espionage – the espionage of the Cold War and the era prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was thus that the U.S quickly put an end to the Russian Spies issue. A deal was struck, and the U.S received four of its spies in return for ten. In truth, the United States is primarily focused on controlling the global economy, and on maintaining the daily parameters of economy in its field of vision, (read: control). This year, the U.S won three battles: that of the revaluation of the Chinese Yuan, of breaching Swiss banking secrecy, and recently, it won its battle with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). Following the approval of the European Parliament in Brussels, the United States can now have access to the data of those parties dealing through the SWIFT network. As a trade-off in the interest of counter-terrorism, the SWIFT network is now wide open to U.S counter-terrorism detectives to examine the Europeans' banking data. The agreement gives the United States access to most of the data carried by the network, which is responsible for the execution of millions of daily bank transfers. Washington considers this deal to be of great importance in the fight against terrorism, as part of its program to track terrorist financing established in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001. Despite the objections of the European Parliament last February, that the protection of privacy is ‘inadequate', its approval of the agreement was not sufficiently justified. The European Commission acknowledges that the information transmitted through the American program to track terrorist financing may contain information concerning the identity of the senders and recipients of transfers, including names, addresses, ID card numbers and other personal information related to financial remittances. In this regard, the allocation of Europeans to monitor the work of American investigators, or entrusting the European police agency (Europol) with the responsibility of assessing the need for certain information and its relevance in counter-terrorism operations prior to being sent to the United States, may not make much difference. Regarding the right of European citizens to bring cases before U.S courts whenever they believe that their private information is being misused, the European Digital Rights group says that there are no adequate checks and balances in this new deal, which allows the transfer of large volumes of data to the United States. The group adds that it very much doubts that the European citizens affected will have any legal rights in the United States to demand compensation for the damages they may incur. The group also demands that the requests related to counter-terrorism be considered by a European judicial body, and not the Europol. Meanwhile, the economic significance of having access to SWIFT's data lies in the fact that this network is the only global network of its kind through which commercial financial remittances are made. For even though it was established in 1973 as a European cooperative association among European and American banks, with the aim of unifying electronic payment systems and exchanging the various types of financial data, SWIFT led to the establishment of a unified global system, through a safe network that maintains the confidentiality of the financial information being exchanged. In fact, it was not revealed that the United States had been secretly hacking into SWIFT's banking data until the autumn of 2006, when the European Digital Rights group announced that the United States' espionage against the network is in breach of European laws. What happened was that Washington, over time, managed to render the financial remittances system into a system that monitors individuals' bank transfers, something that is otherwise known as economic espionage. And in reality, and through the SWIFT network, the United States not only managed to gain access to the remittances bound for the United States and the personal information connected to them, which are of interest to its intelligence agencies, but also managed to access the European national transfers or those among the countries of the European Union. To preserve the integrity of its confidentiality, SWIFT then rebuilt its structure to manage its global operations through its headquarters in Belgium. By the end of 2008, remittances made through the SWIFT network accounted for 9.3 percent of the volume of world trade, i.e. 1.6 trillion out of 16.1 trillion dollars in trade. This then fell by about 4 percent last year, only to regain around 5 percent of its previous in the year's last quarter. 8300 financial institutions in 208 countries are linked to the global network, with a daily average of 8 million transfer notices with the value of 5 billion dollars being exchanged. 80 percent of these remittances are done in the dollar, 16 percent in the Euro, and 5 percent in other currencies. The goal of the SWIFT network is to secure communication among the members in a fast, accurate, standard and secure manner. To achieve this, the main headquarters in Belgium were furnished with special equipment that link all the special equipment installed by the member banks. A code was designated for each member bank, comprising of eight digits. Remittances are then sent by means of special forms. To prevent any abuse of the system, secret and invisible SWIFT codes that are embedded within the system are exchanged, and the transfer notice cannot go through the system unless it correctly clears these coded protocols. The adoption of SWIFT thus maintains the confidentiality of the information, and reduces the probability of fraud. However, what the United States is asking is nothing short of economic espionage sanctioned by the European Parliament.
