Sleep safe, SWIFT is watching you

A few days before I was at the bank to do some business. As a part of the transaction, I was given a contract to sign. I was attracted by one of the conditions, stating that "by signing this document, the customer agrees that should any SWIFT (Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) service is used, the data related to this financial transaction will be transfered to them. The SWIFT institution is based in Belgium. For security reasons, these data are then transfered to special backup database that is kept in the United States. In this database, similar data from all European Union banks are recorded and the US authorities (such as the Department of theTreasury) targeting to terrorism and illegal activties revenue legalization avoidance have the right to access it".
So, to make it more clear: our web transactions between countries are all kept and recorded by a Belgium-based institution for the sake of the US government. At my question about whether a third party has the right to access the database (i.e. a country being interested on a certain transaction and not belonging to the transacting parties), the bank clerk answered me: no.
Back home, I googled a part of the conditions and as I was expecting, the search returned very few results:only 21. This gives a scale on the mysticism that usually obscures the handling of such sensitive and personal data transactions. A US institution using general terms such as "terrorism" and "illegal activities" gains the sole access to common people 's personal information. And no other country has the right to access it! Unbelievable concession!
Searching further about the matter, I found some links about this problem:
SWIFT
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
Privacy International - Belgian Prime Minister about the SWIFT transasctions
Avis 37/2006 de la Commission Belgique de la protection de la vie privée (in french: Resolution of the Belgian Commission for privacy protection about the SWIFT transactions relay to the US Department of the Treasury)
Keep your eyes wide open...


For the greek-speakers, here 's an excerpt of the contract 's conditions:
"O πελάτης είναι ενήμερος ότι, εφόσον για την ολοκλήρωση της συναλλαγής χρησιμοποιηθούν οι υπηρεσίες της SWIFT (Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) που εδρεύει στο Βέλγιο (διαδικτυακός τόπος www.swift.com ), τα δεδομένα που αφορούν στη συναλλαγή θα διαβιβαστούν σε αυτή, η οποία στη συνέχεια τα διαβιβάζει για λόγους ασφαλείας σε εφεδρικό αρχείο (back up) που τηρεί στις ΗΠΑ. Στο αρχείο αυτό, στο οποίο καταχωρούνται όμοια δεδομένα από τις Τράπεζες όλων των κρατών μελών της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, δικαίωμα πρόσβασης έχουν αρχές των ΗΠΑ (όπως το Υπουργείο Οικονομικών), με σκοπό την καταπολέμηση της τρομοκρατίας και της νομιμοποίησης εσόδων από παράνομες δραστηριότητες."