The laws have been changed very recently in the United Kingdom as well:

Following Chancellor of the Exchequer (and probably Prime Minister in waiting) Gordon Brown's re-iteration of his "Bletchley Park" plans to track down terrorist finance in his

"Speech by the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on "Meeting the terrorist challenge" given to Chatham House, 10 October 2006"
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2006/press_72_06.cfm

"By putting to work the most modern of forensic accounting techniques and bringing the expertise of the private sector - the accountancy, law and financial sectors - together with the public sector, we can create what some will call a modern 'Bletchley Park' with forensic accounting of such intricacy and sophistication in tracking finance and connections that it can achieve, for our generation, the same results as code breaking at the original Bletchley Park did sixty years ago."

(Are the modern day equivalents of Alan Turing etc. all now working for the Her Majesty's Treasury ?)

The Labour Government has granted itself massive new powers (without bothering to have them debated in Parliament), which do seem to be exactly the sort of thing needed to put pressure on SWIFT or Western Union or VISAnet or PayPal or any other individual British citizen or company registered in the UK.
i.e.

"Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 2657
The Terrorism (United Nations Measures) Order 2006"
which into force on the 12th October 2006.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2006/20062657.htm

This Order in Council (therefore not debated by Parliament) includes:

1) The ability to designate anybody (not just alleged Taliban or AL Qaida members as previous, now revoked, Orders did) as a terrorist, and to freeze their funds or financial assets, without having to show any actual evidence to a Court.

2) Criminal penalties of up to 7 years in prison for trading financially with a "designated" person.

3) Up to 2 years in prison for breaching any Confidentiality orders, or for not handing over any document etc.

4) This probably also includes the power to demand any Encrypted document in plaintext i.e. the equivalent of an as not yet in force Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 section 49 Disclosure Notice, without the power to actually ask for Decryption Keys themselves.

5) A carte blanche exemption

"7. An action done under this Schedule is not to be treated as a breach of any restriction imposed by statute or otherwise."

i.e. the Data Protection Act, the Financial Services Authority rules on Insider Trading, the Common Law Duty of Confidentiality, and any European Union Directives are all circumvented.

6) The data can be handed over to

"(ii) any person in the service of the United Nations, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission or the Government of any country;"

i.e. a huge number of people could be legally made privy to your supposed financial "secrets".

7) An exemption from criminal liability for actions taken under this Order.

9) The power to delegate these Treasury powers under this Order to anybody.

There is no Statutory Code of Practice to limit the infinite powers granted under this Order.

See: "Chancellor Gordon Brown further extends his financial snooping powers"
http://spyblog.org.uk/2006/10/chancellor_gordon_brown_further_extends_his__financial_snooping_powers.html

Have the other world financial centres where SWIFT operates also now brought in new legislation to cover the backsides of the bureaucrats involved in the SWIFT scandal, with respect to current and future mass financial surveillance operations ?

The title of this post as published in a garbled form, and even the correction was wrong...