The UK privacy watchdog is to look into concerns that a US government-sanctioned spying mission into payment transactions involved the exposure of UK bank details, the Mail on Sunday has reported.
Recently, details were exposed of a US spying mission to monitor international payment transactions as part of an anti-terrorism drive in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Belgian company Swift was found to have assisted the US in its mission for over four years. The company is involved in clearing transactions in the UK.
Now the Mail on Sunday has reported that the UK’s information commissioner Richard Thomas is to investigate whether the spying operation involved the exposure of private banking details of UK held accounts.
The commissioner intends to focus on any possible exposure of the Clearing House Automated Payments System (Chaps) system, a British payment system owned by UK banks and mainly concerned with large B2B payment transactions.
Currently there is no conclusive evidence that UK payment details were given to the US investigators and, according to the Mail on Sunday, a spokeswoman for Chaps said that as far as she knew no data had been passed to the US authorities.
The UK development comes just days after the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding that payment bodies across the EU disclose how much they knew about such espionage activities.