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EU Overturns Agreement With US On Banking Data
Following the lead of the civil liberties committee which last week recommended dropping it (against the wishes of the US), qmaqdk writes "The EU parliament overturned the previous agreement with the US which allowed US intelligence agencies to access EU banking data."
Hmmm, I was going to tear you an new one crying BS on high taxes & unemployment (the US & EU have essentially the same unemployment)...then I saw why everyone wants to claim residence in Monaco.
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Monaco/Taxes-and-Costs
Personal income tax: 0%.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It will soon be illegal for an American or any entity operating in the United States to use the SWIFT money transfer service.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
As a US citizen, the first thing that came to mind when I read this was "WHOO HOO!"
About the only ones that are going "Oh no!" are the people in my government that feel that they should be able to get away with/do anything they damned well please, and that the rest of the world should just bend over, take it, and like it.
Just to be perfectly clear on the matter, I am VERY much opposed to those tactics from my government.
I am VERY pleased to see the power hungry hands and arms of my government get bitch slapped like this. VERY pleased. The concept of "Soveriegnty" when it is applied to "Foriegn nations" is apparently something my government has serious difficulties understanding.
British courts did the right thing this week too- they ruled against the British government/US attempts to cover up US intelligence handed to the UK proving that one of our citizens was tortured before being moved to Guantanamo before being eventually released with no charges.
Turns out British intelligence was aware of the torture, which is why most people assumed our foreign office had such an interest in keeping it covered up in the first place.
Despite American threats to withdraw intelligence sharing if the data was released, our courts ruled that the data should be released, so it's a bit of a double win this week in standing up to oppressive American strong arm tactics of threatening to put us at risk from terrorists if we don't do what they say.
Are you sure you're not confusing this with other recent controversial agreements, such as the extradition of people like Gary McKinnon? That agreement has been controversial both for being asymmetric and for the low standard of evidence and poor guarantees of a fair trial.
In this case, AIUI, the issue is data protection and privacy. The EU has much stricter rules on these things than the US, and normally the law prohibits exporting such data outside Europe without proper safeguards. The US in general does not provide those legal safeguards, and in this case, it's not even the legitimate users of the data who would be working with it outside the protections, it's a foreign government.
There is simply no reason they should be entitled to claim that information in some unrestricted, open-ended fashion. With the lack of guarantees we have, they could just pass it back to European governments (who may or may not be legally allowed to demand access to that information en masse and without reasonable grounds themselves) or to US-based businesses to give a commercial advantage over their EU-based competitors.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
With regards to the torture thing, we do tend to get these unusual rulings in the UK around election time when there are points to score. I wonder if the ruling would have gone the same way had it happened in June when everyone was still waiting to see which way the wind was blowing.