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EU Committee Issues Report On NSA Surveillance; Snowden To Testify
Qedward writes with word that the EU Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee published the draft of their report on the impact of dragnet surveillance by the NSA on EU citizens (PDF). Quoting CIO: "... Members of the European Parliament say that it is 'very doubtful that data collection of such magnitude is only guided by the fight against terrorism,' and that there may be other motives such as political and economic espionage. The document urges EU countries to take legal action against the breach of their sovereignty perpetrated through such mass surveillance programs."
The same committee voted today to allow Edward Snowden to testify before them in a special hearing.
nope false alert, not gonna happen.
Or, if they're going to have him testify, they have diplomats collect him and bring him in on a plain covered by immunity, move him around in diplomatic cars, and house him in diplomatic residences.
Do you *really* think that it is impossible to basically "fuck you" and bring him there safely if there's the political will?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
RTFA: The former US National Security Agency worker would testify by interactive video link from Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum.
What if Snowden was a former employee/contractor for GCHQ, and he leaked documents illuminating GCHQ spying on the US, Russia, and other non European nations? Would the EU still allow him to testify, or would they be calling for him to return to face their courts?
Of course they do, because part of the mandate is to look out for US commercial interests in general.
The problem is they use the same program to spy for the terrorists, as they do for the economic and political espionage.
Which means, unless the US is willing to carve out JUST the security stuff (which, they won't), every other country more or less has to block this program on the premise that it's just a widespread "spy on everybody, some of them might be security risks, some of it might be political intel, and some can be given to the corporations".
That's kind of the problem from the perspective of the rest of the world -- any form of cooperation with this spying has far broader ramifications than just national security.
Hell, people here routinely defend it, but increasingly you might see other world governments saying they won't allow you to do it any more (in which case, it will be done anyway, just in a more clandestine manner).
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Perhaps the EU members will think that.
However, there is a major difference between say, Germany and America. The difference is, the German public will freak out and actually take to the streets.
I am reasonably sure that Germany would exit the EU if such a program was installed.
Same is true for France. They say that France is one of the few countries who does democracy right. The government is scared shitless of the people. Not the other way around like in the US where people fear their government. Hell, in France they will burn an entire city over a small issue.
Of course in England, they are even more willing to give up their rights than Americans.
They already kind of did that on 30C3 when Assange spoke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzhtGvSflEk
Or, if they're going to have him testify, they have diplomats collect him and bring him in on a plain covered by immunity, move him around in diplomatic cars, and house him in diplomatic residences.
The last time they thought that he was on a plane protected by diplomatic immunity, they grounded it and searched it at the request of the United States. That's also why Julian Assange is still stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London: The UK authorities have made it clear that they will pull him out of a diplomatic vehicle if they try to transport him to Ecuador.
I am officially gone from
If America is going to choose to 'point a gun' at the entire EU, then you can pretty much expect the entire EU to kick the US out of military bases, and generally GTFO of town.
The EU also has their own guns.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There was a story a few years ago that showed Boeing was successful in derailing an Airbus deal by using espionage and hacking to gather intelligence on the Airbus proposal, allowing Boeing to cut-in the proposition with their own submissions, finally realizing the deal at the expense of Airbus.
So says the man from America. The country who's population literally could not care less that their own government is spying on them as well AND systematically removing their rights and dismantling their constitution.
But you go on and talk about how stupid and cowardly we in the EU are. After all, we can see how strong your back bone is. After all, it is not we who have the backbones to bomb brown people "into freedom".
Except, at the heart of this is, has America lived up to their treaty obligations or cared about insults to allies?
If the answer is "no", then finding out the scope of this might be considered something which trumps how America feels about letting him testify.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It's worse than that. The EU is where the US gets its guns from, because the US is too incompetent to make its own guns any more. Most police departments use Glocks, which come from Austria, and the US military is going to use an H-K rifle from Germany for their next-generation assault rifle. The US military already uses the Beretta M-9 for its standard sidearm: Beretta is an Italian company. All the best guns come from the EU (or Switzerland, which is surrounded by the EU): FAL in Belgium with their P90 submachine gun and F2000 rifle (standard rifle used by many countries' armies including Pakistan), H-K in Germany with their MP5 submachine gun used by lots of militaries and police departments including probably every US SWAT team, Glock in Austria, SIG in Switzerland, HS in Croatia, Steyr in Britain, I'm sure there's lots more. The US gunmakers mostly only make historical replicas (e.g. Colt 45s from the 1800s) and copies of aging and obsolete guns like the 1911 and the AR-15. When they want something new and innovative, they import it from Europe and rebadge it (like the Springfield XD series, made by HS in Croatia).
A quick synopsis (so may contain stuff to quibble over) but the meat appears to be the action list (read the original document - link in article - for the rest):
Action 1: Adopt the data protection package
Action 2: Set up an overall agreement ensuring 'proper redress mechanisms' for EU citizens where data is passed to the US for law enforcement purposes.
Action 3: Suspend 'safe harbour' (covering personal data) until the US comply with 'EU highest standards'
Action 4: Suspend the 'TFTP' (Terrorist Finance Tracking Package) until a) Action 2 complete b) the EU have looked into it
Action 5: Worth quoting in full: "Protect the rule of law and the fundamental rights of EU citizens, with a particular focus on threads to the freedom of the press and professional confidentiality (including lawyer-client relationships) as well as enhanced protection for whistleblowers".
Action 6: Develop a european strategy for IT independence (that'll send cold shivers down the spine of certain US companies).
Action 7: Develop the EU as a reference player for a democratic and neutral governance of the internet (my translation: currently it's a US party, we want in on that).
All your ghosts are just false positives.
the plane that they grounded that time was headed to somewhere in Latin America (Cuba or Ecuador I think).
That would be Bolivia. Which, since it was Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane, is about as serious a diplomatic violation as you can get (imagine Russia or China grounding Air Force One and searching it).
I am officially gone from
It is highly unlikely that the EU will kick out the US military. Having the US military there strengthens their own defenses, but that's not the main reason. The main reason is economic. Having a US base there dumps a huge amount of money into the local economy. Kicking out the US military would be economically devastating the the areas surrounding the bases.
The EU and US are allies and competitors at the same time. EU government agencies rarely pass up a chance to tweak the US government. People on both sides talk about removing the bases from time to time, but it never happens because having those bases there benefits both the US and EU.
People from Germany, France, and other talk about how they would never put up with their governments spying. They don't trust their own governments, yet they expect the US government to trust their government? Blind trust of governments, your own or a foreign one is extremely foolish. People know that but they don't think through what that means.
As for the bulk data collection. I suspect that the administration will scrap the program and go back to requesting the data on individual cell phone numbers from the cell companies. However since our Supreme Court ruled decades ago that we don't have a reasonable expectation to privacy regarding such metadata held by third parties, it will have very little real effect. A warrant will still not be required to get the data from the cell companies. The pen register act requires a court order, but the standards for getting such an order are so low that the court is basically required to rubber stamp any request. It will take them more time to gather metadata and the process will be less efficient, but there will be no real increase in our privacy protections.
The document urges EU countries to take legal action against the breach of their sovereignty perpetrated through such mass surveillance programs.
What in the hell are they going to do? Tell the world-police on the... well, world-police?
I've been called troll for saying it in the past, but I'll try again here... If anything has come of "the Snowden release", it's only to inspire more hatred for the American government. This will always be taken out on the American people in the end. Assuming that 9/11 wasn't an inside job, and assuming that 9/11 was done by the people that were "charged" with doing so, could their reason have been hatred for "The People" of America, or "The Government" of America? And if that's the case, can we expect more of that same shit? Will it ever stop? Should American forever live in fear, based on the bullshit steps taken by it's "protective" government to stop such actions? It's so silly there aren't words to describe it without seeming like a troll.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.