Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP)

TFTP - The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) is a United States government program to access the SWIFT transaction database, revealed by The New York Times in June 2006. Based in Belgium, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) establishes common standards for financial transactions worldwide. The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is viewed as a tool in the "Global War on Terrorism". It is said to allow additional scrutiny that could prove instrumental in tracking transactions between terrorist cells. Concerns have been raised that this classified program might be a violation of U.S. and European financial privacy laws, because individual search warrants to access financial data were not obtained in advance.

In February 2010, on the basis of these privacy concerns, the European Parliament rejected the conclusion of an agreement allowing US authorities access to European financial transactions data. In May 2010, the Commission started negotiating a new agreement, with the aim of ensuring better data protection safeguards.

The EDPS adopted an opinion on the European Commission's draft agreement in June 2010 in which he called for further data protection improvements. In July 2010, the European Parliament gave its approval to the conclusion of a revised agreement.

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European Data Protection Supervisor, 02 August 2011 10:58:51,  http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/edps/cache/off/EDPS/Dataprotection/Glossary