SWIFT) violated the Fourth Amendment and financial privacy rights ... when it collaborated with [Bush's] 'Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.'

Judge gives go-ahead to lawsuit against Bush's bank transfer spying program | Michael Roston | Published: Tuesday June 19, 2007

A federal judge in Chicago last week rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against a Belgium-based bank transfer clearinghouse that collaborated with an anti-terrorism spying program led by the US Department of Treasury. The judge's decision will allow two plaintiffs to press their case that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) violated the Fourth Amendment and financial privacy rights of bank customers throughout the United States when it collaborated with president George W. Bush's so-called 'Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.'
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"Unfettered government access to the bank records of private citizens [is] constitutionally problematic," the judge wrote in his decision, in which he allowed two of the four complaints to continue to be considered.
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"Our plaintiffs are average Americans with checking accounts and credit cards," he said of Ian Walker and Stephen Kruse, who were named in the suit. "We're alleging that basic routine transactions were vacuumed up in a big data mining program. Some people may be fine with it because they think it may help catch a terrorist, but I think just as many people are uncomfortable with having their records sifted through in that manner." ...