The news continues to get worse about the fall-out from the New York Times article. It now appears plausible that the US will no longer have access to SWIFT via its European partners:

Legal experts who specialize in European data protection law said Swift may have breached European rules, which forbid companies to transfer confidential personal data to another country unless that country offers adequate protection.

Kristof Van Quathem, a data protection advisor at Covington & Burling in Brussels, said the EU did not consider that the United States offered sufficiently robust protection of individual data because it does not have comprehensive laws on its books.

"The key question is where the data originated," Van Quathem said. "If it was transferred from the EU to the U.S., then that could breach European rules. A court in Iran can't just ask for a European company to reveal the sexual preference of a private individual, nor can a U.S. court ask for private financial information about a citizen on the grounds of national security."

He said Swift could face fines or an order to halt the transfers if it was found guilty of breaching laws in countries where the complaints have been filed.

So what we may be facing now is an end to monitoring of these types of transactions.

What that means is that, not only can we not use this valuable tool in the tracking of terrorist networks, the terrorists may now be able to use the network with impunity, without having to worry about the US tracking their large money exchanges.

So, uh, yeah, thanks New York Times! We're o glad we elected you to selectively decide when to abide by laws governing classified material, and when it's OK to ignore them! You obviously have such a more profound understanding of the consequences of outing a program than, say, the people who do that sort of thing for a living.

(h/t Captain's Quarters.)