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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."
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.
Seriously? The US is in the middle of seriously pissing off all its allies, and your response is simply "We don't care! We'll do what we want and you can't stop us!"
And people use to wonder why the Middle Eastern countries hated America. This is Europe getting some of the same treatment.
They are talking about a specific program where the EU hands over financial data on suspected terrorists to the US. They will no longer be handing that data over willfully.
No, we're surprised that shills keep posting "we already knew this" and thinking they're clever.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
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?
Why do they need to even bother to stop it? If the US are doing things that we don't want them to do anyway, why go to ANY effort to help them do them legally? This is about removing our assistance that we give them to do it, not stopping them being able to do it.
Let them take the administrative burden (and I highly doubt they are monitoring every flight and every person on every flight, or else the agreement wouldn't have existed in the first place anyway), let them take the fall when the data is released by accident, and let it look to EU citizens like you're not caving in to the US (which is what we all accused them of when this agreement first appeared).
Nobody expects it to STOP the US stealing the data, but why should we help them do so at enormous expense to us? It's like piracy - the data is going to be stolen anyway, so why bother putting in a system of controls, contracts and everything else to our cost?
But, to be honest, this is nothing to do with data leaks or agreements. If you're not already reading this as the first step to broken EU/US relations, then you haven't been paying attention. That this happened is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than what's actually happened. No more easy rides for the US when they want something from us. (As it should be, because they never play ball when we ask for something).
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.
And then you can say bye-bye to us lending a hand for things like extraditions and terrorist bug-hunts. The EU followed the US into a pointless, long and very, very expensive "war" that never was (you can say what you want - it was NOT a war, legally or ethically - it's was a criminal hunt with guns in foreign countries), in the middle of massive economic troubles, and what did we see from it? Much stricter airport controls for ourselves, giving the US all our data (and getting nothing back), and lots and lots of expensive military action.
And what do we get back for our assistance? The US spied on us and then couldn't even be bothered to keep the information properly secret (Note: A whistleblower running around the world telling people all these things is TEN TIMES more damning than the fact that you spied them in the first place - it's just amateur). That's not how you treat an ally.
The biggest thing here is that the EU no longer wants to play ball with the US. If more things emerge, that distrust will deepen. You can play the "most important country in the world" card all you like, the fact is that the EU has more money in trade, and a much greater influence over other countries. It's going to hurt if the US continue to piss off the EU, and there aren't that many people in the EU who would care.
It's a question of how long before this affects US trade and before we're the ones imposing sanctions and forcing agreements on the US. Because, seriously guys, you might be big, but without the co-operation of your allies, you're in serious trouble.
And more specifically, they're talking about a program that undermines SWIFT. As a reminder, in the wake of 9/11 the Bush administration concluded that it could find terrorists through financial transaction tracking. The problem - global wire transfers and other financial messaging is controlled by a Belgian company. The CIA apparently had to be almost restrained from just immediately hacking them outright. Instead the US Treasury got involved and SWIFT were forced to hand over data by virtue of them having a US based datacenter (as a backup for their EU datacenter).
SWIFT have said, several times and on the record, that they are not happy about being abused for political purposes and immediately began constructing a second backup datacenter also in the EU. The USA, seeing that their leverage over SWIFT was starting to disappear, decided to apply heavy pressure the EU in order to avoid losing access to this data source even after the US datacenter was decommissioned. The result was the EU data sharing agreement.
The EU parliament was never particularly happy about this arrangement and insisted on there being auditing, etc, which turned out to be a worthless rubber-stamping exercise in which the EU appointed inspectors tried to visit the US Treasury and get reliable documentation on what the data was being used for, but were told to go fuck themselves and that the information they needed was classified. So basically the EU folded under pressure and was then abused, to nobodies surprise at all.
Now that the TFTP data sharing agreement is suspended, and SWIFT no longer need their US datacenter, the only way back in is hacking. And I'm sure the people at SWIFT know that, and will do their best to stop it.
Anyway, this is a very good thing. Next up - airline passenger data!
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.
Well SWIFT is based in Belgium. Now their failover datacenter is not in America anymore the US theoretically doesn't have much political leverage left, and will have to rely on hacking. How good their IT security is anyones guess, but they've been around a while and more importantly will be on the alert. A lot of this hacking was invisible for so long because nobody was looking for it. You'll notice that once Snowden started leaking the GCHQ operation against Belgacom was busted, Merkel's phone being tapped got busted by German intelligence, etc. Belgian counter-intelligence will probably be a part of defending SWIFT. They know 5 Eyes are coming for them, and when you know an attack is coming it's much easier to fight it off.
"There's no way our government would do that."
"There's no way we wouldnt already know if they were doing that."
And from the last several years,
"Obama is going to fix all the abuses of the warmongering Republicans. So whatever evils were there they will be going away."
In the end we have purchased what has befallen us, but not through informed consent. It's simply been done through willful ignorance and denial. It takes minimal awareness to recognize how clueless most Americans are, wholly consumed with the mind-rot like Jersey Shore or Facebook.
So yes, most are/were surprised.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
In theory we did. The US/UK NATO crypto offers for friendly embassy use was junk from the 1950-90's. It kept the Soviets out but let the NSA and GCHQ in. The UK and US press often hinted at plain text from embassy intercepts over many years. How far back do you want to go:
..."practices the United States uses in gathering intelligence information ... deliberately violating the airspace of other nations ... intercepting and deciphering the secret communications of its own allies ..." ...:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_and_Mitchell_defection 1960?
Thanks to Snowden we have the history needed for the dreamy sock puppets. I saw one offer that the US does not really 'use' the info for finance or domestic political needs.
A huge change from its not possible, would never work, would be found out, the data sets are too large, the US brands would never help, the political and legal protections
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
My experience with ISP administration, like my father's experience as a Telefonica engineer, is that you don't have to be a genius to have a very substantial level of technical responsibility - but you do have to be one of the lads.
And that means you're very chummy and utterly loyal to the environment around you. Your god-like powers give you god-like beliefs, especially over your ability to monitor the behaviour of others. After all, you have so much responsibility and so much control, which means you must know best, right?
As a EU citizen, I can only agree. We're increasingly seeing the US (government) as the actual terrorists, which is the only truth as far as i'm concered. I'm happy these economic and data sharing relations are crumbling down. Maybe it will knock some sense into the US government.
It's a pity for the social and human aspect though, I've been twice and love the country and people.
The amount of information obtained in the "french affair" isn't attainable via "tapping cables".
It entails access to switching equipment, call detail records, etc.
This access is via either of two ways:
- Backdoors
- Agents in place that have access to those systems.
It also entails some very fat "pipes" connecting to those systems.
These aren't new issues regarding security (and I don't mean "cyber security").
Maybe the powers that be need to start mandating more security to that part of the infra-structure.
That, and :
- Auditing of software and hardware (and not just rubber-stamping)
- Increased security for physical assets (data-centers, overland cables, etc...)
- And active enforcment of anti-espionage laws
will mitigate the problem.
What won't solve it, and will certeanly lead to more abuse and friction between states, is just shrugging
it of or brushing it under the carpet.
Yes, take America for example.
America is currently as much of a threat to the rights and freedoms of everyone else in the world as the people they purport to be watching for.
Why would anybody continue to trust the US when they're acting like a bunch of self entitled assholes who think their rights trump ours?
You don't seem to get it. TFTP is one direction only - there is no reciprocal program which gives EU authorities access to transactions within USA (at least nobody heard about one). So USA gets great amount of data particularly useful for industrial espionage (I am sure Boeing would just love to know how much money Airbus is getting, from where, how much it is paying subcontractors,etc.) and Europe gets nothing.
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.
I think Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News are already doing that.
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.
most Americans are, wholly consumed with the mind-rot like Jersey Shore or Facebook.
I have yet to see the proof that mindless entertainment has a negative effect on people using their brains. I suspect it's one of those things that simply sounds reasonable and appeals to our ego, but there's absolutely no proof of. Like sex, drugs, and violence in the media causes those things in real life.
I suspect it's actually that most Americans are consumed with trying to get by, or are too discouraged by the news to try to make a difference. Honestly, where do you start being active? CISPA II, climate change, the NSA, the patriot act, the war on drugs, budget cuts, patent reform, education reform, health care reform, scaling back TSA, scaling back the rest of the government, regulating chewing gum additives, decreasing defense spending, pro choice or pro life debate, electoral college reform, campaign finance reform, the debate of the minute about taxes, EPA standards, the carbon tax, gun control (pro or con), term limits, gerrymandering, third party politics, national ID laws, net neutrality, affirmative action, immigration, etc. No matter what your political beliefs, no matter your news source, it's tough to flip on the news and not come to the conclusion that everything is going to hell. That's kind of the goal of the news. After a while, most people get burned out if they ever cared.
I have no proof that THAT is the reason people are clueless beyond that's why I often ignore politics, but it's more plausible to me than Jersey Shore (which, by the way, ended about a year ago) or other entertainment forms you don't personally like ruining America.