Bank faulted over data transfers to U.S
The Belgian banking consortium Swift breached European privacy rules when it aided the U.S. anti-terrorism program by providing confidential information about money transfers, Belgium's privacy protection commission concluded Thursday.
"It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by Swift that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," the report said

Ashcroft Is Denied Immunity in Case A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case.

Deficit comes in below projections, thanks to `off-budget' borrowing The U.S. government closes the books on fiscal 2006 Saturday, and politicians are likely to trumpet that the federal deficit came in almost $60 billion below projections. Problem is, they won't be using the same math you use.