EU Data Protection Working Party Raises Questions About Need for Terrorist Finance Tracking System

On September 29, 2011, the European Union’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party expressed concerns in a letter to Commissioner Malmström (Home Affairs) about a plan to establish a Terrorist Finance Tracking System (TFTS).  The letter responded to the communication from the Commissioner at the end of July 2011.  The proposed TFTS would be a European equivalent of the current United States’ Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (US TFTP), a program established after the attacks of September 11, 2001 to identify ways in which terrorists finance their activities.  The program permits certain law enforcement actors to access information about the international bank transactions conducted within the EU which is stored in a large database and from which leads regarding the financing of possible terrorist activities can be retrieved by searching the system.