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MEPs Vote To Suspend Data Sharing With US
New submitter mrspoonsi writes with this news, excerpted from the BBC: "The European Parliament has voted to suspend the sharing of financial data with the U.S., following allegations that citizens' data was spied on....The European Parliament voted to suspend its Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) agreement with the US, in response to the alleged tapping of EU citizens' bank data held by the Belgian company SWIFT. The agreement granted the U.S. authorities access to bank data for terror-related investigations but leaked documents made public by whistleblower Edward Snowden allege that the global bank transfer network was the target of wider U.S. surveillance."
and we are all surprised?
How will this stop the US from tapping into their cables?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"MEPs vote to suspend US data sharing"
How do they plan to stop it? I am being serious here. It sounds like the NSA has taps on all their data already, whether Europeans give it freely or not.
How long before we hear calls to declare the whole EU as terrorist sympathisers?
As more of this comes out, I hope others join the EU and we start looking at a embargo on sharing information with the US until it learns.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Have gnu, will travel.
The TFTP was a pretty one-sided agreement, and it's therefore politically fragile and the first thing that's likely to be pulled when the trust in the USA's respect of EU data breaks down.
The EU members won't share data with us that we want! If only one of our intelligence bureaus had a way to get data from other countries without their consent...
Every child knows that if you abuse a privilege it gets taken away.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
That's THE LEAST that ought to be done.
NSA tapped the firehose ( internet meta-style) getting all EU data. I'd be one pissed EU citizen.
Hopefully, other countries will cease cooperating with the US until we reign in the NSA. Bring on the blowback!!
Why Europe should honor US intellectual property if the US government is officially ignoring the intellectual property of all EU citizens, including the one of their leaders?
I wonder what repercussions this may have regarding EU countries' compliance with FATCA?
From article "The vote is non-binding but illustrates MEPs' growing unease [...]" . So parliament showed right amount of outrage, won some brownie points among electorate and managed to do it without pissing off USA. Good job.
Europe is a lot closer to, and has been more impacted by, terrorist strikes than the US. A reduction in data sharing will impact both sides of the Atlantic.
Of course, MEPs aren't really -accountable- to anyone for their decisions, it's the European sovereign governments who will be left holding the bag if terrorist strikes increase.
The NSA is chartered to do that by a specific nation. The USA.
Why should independent nations not react to the (very real and ilegal) actions ot the NSA against those nations' interests and citizens?
For anyone that is minimaly informed about history and politics, the desire of the NSA (or any other inteligence agency) to have access to EVERYTHING is obvious.
My surprise is limited to the extent to which the NSA as been allowed to gain that information.
The level and volume of information that it is said that the NSA acquires regarding communications inside european countries would'nt be possible without:
- A faily big operational capability (which isn't neither new nor chocking in itself)
- Cooperation from local entities , government and private (which is very unsettling)
- The belief by those that make the decisions, in Europe, allowing access by the NSA to local resources, that that access wouldn't be abused. (which was unbelievable as it is mind-bogllingly STUPID).
Putting it bluntly, these actions by the NSA are illegal in most (if not all) of the european countries.
- It's agents and enablers are breaking laws. Those should be punished legaly when caught (yes, prison).
Also, "good will" with regards to access to some information sources should be re-evaluated.
Those include the aforementioned finantial data and should also include the passenger information now routinely shoveled out by the EU to the US, even regarding flights that don't touch the USAs airspace.
but doesn't have to say "Please and Thank you"
What about actually arresting and prosecuting the criminals who spy on European citizens, governments and companies, funded by our so-called friends at the other side of the Atlantic?
That makes EU a terrorist state.
"So we found out that even though we're giving you all that information for free, you're also spying on us and taking it secretly. That seems kind of redundant. It'd save money if we just let you steal the info yourself instead of handing it over."
I am sure the Chionese government is very happy that you are OK with them spying on anything in the U.S. they like and violating any American law they please, as long as it is in accordance with their own laws.
The TFTP is being phased out in favor of FTP. Everyone is tracked financially, not just (presumed) terrorists.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
With a name like that it should have been obvious that US was going to FTP all EU data Trivially.
Well it would, if the EU were a state, but the point holds. The War on Tourism is going well.
get caught spying, get expelled from NoValueIstan. this is the same thing.
otherwise known as shit on the neighbors, they won't like you any more.
something three-year-olds catch onto quickly, but governments never do...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The time when EU started to agree with the US and made SWIFT hand over the data willfully was after the London Subway bombings...
Looks like we will need another attack to convince them to continue handing over the data.... ehehehehehehhehe
That's like saying "the army did what they were chartered to do and we are all surprised?" upon encountering mass graves. Or "Collateral Murder" videos.
North America is NOT a major tourist destination for Europeans. It's a destination where people travel on business because they have to.
First of all, the actual effect of your data hungry KGB is debatable. Secondly, the EU is a lot less keen on annoying the muslim world than you guys are. We may be a slightly softer targer, we are a lot less attractive to the idiots.
Even Anglo-US relations are tenuous nowadays. You've just pissed off the French and the Germans. That's pretty much the three biggest economies/countries in the EU. There's not much of a step left until the whole of the EU has problems with the way you do things.
What are they going to do? We have far more military might than the EU combined, and the EU doesn't have a military chain of command worth speaking about.
So this info "sharing" (aka data fealty) agreement is going to end. Perhaps this is for the best even for the US. As a citizen of the world, I think it's a move in the right direction.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
All I can get from this cold-war type move is that Info Sec will be a hot market in the coming days. Intrusion / CounterIntrusion will be the new game by which big organizations (including governments) thrive or suffer.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
So how the hell can being chartered to do that be of ANY FUCKING POINT WHATSOEVER?
Saddam's gassing of the kurds was done by people whose actions were as ordered by legal authority in their own country. This, however, didn't stop a pogrom against the poor daft bastard, did it.
"Oh, no don't go with THEM, they're MUCH worse! Honest! You know I won't lie to you. OK, you're leaving because you found out I lie to you all the time, but I've never lied about something like THIS!"
Not buying it. FOAD, merkin.
Signed,
Every Human On The Planet
Grant Edward Snowden political asylum and an EU-citizenship of choice.
I mean, it doesn't have any authentication or authorization methods at all. What's wrong with these Europeans? It's not my fault they didn't guard their router configs...
What are they going to do? We have far more military might than the EU combined
As surprising as it apparently is to a certain kind of American, not everything in international relations has to be resolved with violence.
The US is committing hostile acts against EU member states, and measures like withdrawing cooperation in these programmes are a reasonable and proportionate response. Trade sanctions would be a more serious step up: no-one would win in the short term if that happened, but the US would probably lose a lot more. There would be direct costs, of course, but also probably irreparable damage to the United States' wider international credibility and reduced cooperation from other nations who were already less predisposed to support the US on matters of mutual interest.
From the outside, it seems very strange that so many people in the US are so proud of their vast military-industrial complex and security services. Here in the UK, the most damaging coverage of the US recently had nothing to do with spying or wars, not that those are winning many friends here. The really sad stuff was shots of pathetic posturing from the political leadership of both the main US parties, juxtaposed with footage of federal workers in DC holding banners saying "Please do your jobs so we can get on with ours", and stories of couples whose wedding days were spoiled, and descriptions of children with very serious health problems who weren't getting experimental drugs that were their only hope because the programmes to trial them were suspended. The idea that such a dysfunctional government, run by politicians so completely out of touch with the basic needs of their own people, should be trusted with anything of significance, security-related or otherwise, just seems bizarre at this point.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
'Merica Kiiiiiks Asssss!!! rrraaaAAAUUUURRRR!
This particular vote is non-binding, but the same is true about a lot of votes in national parliaments. You are also wrong to say that the Europarliament "[is] very weak and has limited influence"; actually it has equal power with the European Council over all EU legislation, and it has full veto pwer. For instance, MEPs rejected ACTA last year, meaning that the EU is unable to sign the treaty. It also rejected the software patents directive (remember that?) in 2005. Also because of the principle of separation of powers, MEPs are independent of both the Council and the Commission: there is no "payroll vote" as in most national parliaments, and consequently party discipline is much weaker. The situation is similar to that of US Congress; a US President cannot bank on unqualified support from Congress even when both the House and Senate are controlled by his own party. Finally the European Commission is indeed the executive branch of the EU, but it is NOT "directed by national governments": you are probably thinking of the Council, which is indeed made up of representatives of national governments. You can think of it as a kind of unelected Senate. Commissioners are appointed by national governments of each country, but once appointed they are independent of the government that appointed them.
I see talk about trade sanctions and so on as a way for the EU to "punish" the US.
Germany are leading the way in that regard. I work for a UK company with subsidiaries in Germany. We are looking at moving various services in the cloud (management's bright idea), including Office 365 and one of the cloud based authentication services to tie it all together.
At the moment Germany are pretty much vetoing it. Nothing can be US hosted. That rules out Office 365 for email, anything running on AWS or Azure... unless it's hosted in the EU (or for some data, Germany itself) they tell us it's not compliant with their data protection laws.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.