Europe warns US: you must respect the privacy of our citizens

[Catherina]

Source: The Guardian

Europe warns US: you must respect the privacy of our citizens
EU officials demand answers on what data snooping programmes entail and whether they breach human rights

Alan Travis, Spencer Ackerman and Paul Lewis in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday 11 June 2013 23.00 BST


The European commission has sent US attorney general Eric Holder Jr a letter demanding explanations for American data snooping. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty

European Union officials have demanded "swift and concrete answers" to their requests for assurances from the US that its mass data surveillance programmes do not breach the fundamental privacy rights of European citizens.

The European commission's vice-president, Viviane Reding, has sent a letter with seven detailed questions to the US attorney general, Eric Holder Jr, demanding explanations about Prism and other American data snooping programmes.

Reding warns him that "given the gravity of the situation and the serious concerns expressed in public opinion on this side of the Atlantic" she expects detailed answers before they meet at an EU-US justice ministers' meeting in Dublin on Friday.

She also warns Holder that people's trust that the rule of law will be respected – including a high level of privacy protection for both US and EU citizens – is essential to the growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business and the nature of the US response could affect the whole transatlantic relationship.

...

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/europe-us-privacy

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Read it all. They asked 7 very direct questions.

Looks like the shoe is on the other foot now. As the apologists have been saying for years, except this time I can say it about the government... If the US government has nothing to hide, it has nothing to worry about!

[Autumn]

1. Get real Europe, the US doesn't even respect the privacy of it's citizens.

rec.

[Catherina]

2. Lol! That's exactly what I said earlier. Rights? What rights?

[Autumn]

5. LOL yeah and Europe better watch out.

I'm sure there's information on their leaders phone calls the NSA can sift through.

[Harmony Blue]

3. This has to be the best post of the month easily

well said.

[frylock]

16. word

[Dawson Leery]

4. kick

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. There are many ways to skin the American tiger

And none are pretty

[Catherina]

10. Nope. Not gonna be pretty at all n/t

[struggle4progress]

7. Actually, Most Countries Are Increasingly Spying on Their Citizens, the UN Says

Olga Khazan
Jun 6 2013, 1:56 PM ET

... Google receives thousands of requests each year from governments ... In the UK, government authorities can "self-authorize" their own information requests, so there are 500,000 of these kinds of probes each year ... In October 2012, the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security proposed legislation that would allow the police to break into computers and mobile phones both within the Netherlands and abroad in order to install spyware and search and destroy data. "There is spy technology that we see on James Bond movies that we know have been bought by Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, and we know that it's being used," said Carly Nyst, head of international advocacy at Privacy International ...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/actually-most-countries-are-increasingly-spying-on-their-citizens-the-un-says/276614/

[timdog44]

8. I think

increasingly countries are spying on other countries citizens. I suspect that is the whole problem here. WE have started to cross into not only enemy countries but into out allies.

And I am sure what you say is being done. Too much spying. There used to be a cartoon Spy vs Spy. A cartoon come real.

[struggle4progress]

9. Living in Surveillance Societies: the normalisation of surveillance in Europe

Living in Surveillance Societies: the normalisation of surveillance in Europe and the threat of a bad example.
David Murakami Wood
C. William R. Webster

Abstract
This paper argues that surveillance is becoming increasingly normalised across Europe and that this is altering the landscape of liberty and security. It identifies this normalisation as a product of the globalisation of surveillance, the domestication of security, the desire of the European Union to create a distinct leading role in security, and the influence of the 'bad example' of the United Kingdom ... This short article has three main parts. The first part looks at the ways in whichsurveillance has become a key part of the 'organisational package' that accompanies late or advanced capitalism ... The second part will consider the ways in which this new normality is in no way 'natural' even within late capitalism, and in fact continually reinforced through the work of state and private sector actors ... Part three considers the nature of modern surveillance for thoseliving in surveillance societies. This is achieved by exploring dimensions of modern technologically mediated surveillance, dimensions which show that surveillance is not just ubiquitous, it is also subtle, deep, unobtrusive and selective ...

The Globalisation of Surveillance and the Domestication of Security
... The new surveillance economy has of course profited from the renewed hostilities that have gradually come to fill the perceived military vacuum left by the end of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Indeed, along with the creation of new civilian markets for military surveillance equipment, the language of combat also becamepart of the lexicon of politics: wars on drugs; wars on crime; wars, as Ericson (2006)put it, on everything. However, with the war on terror(ism), and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a renewed surge of military surveillance development ... It would be easy to put this down to a new American 'empire' .. but, as with the economic expansion, this is too convenient and simple an explanation. The form of the globalization of surveillance and the newpolitical economy that is evolving around it is as much a product of the practices of the European Union ... It does not mean either that the European Union is 'under the thumb' of the USA: the EU is quite capable, when it wishes, of carrying outdevelopment independent of or even in direct opposition to, the USA ...

Normalising Surveillance Society
... A key example is that of the spread of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) or video-surveillance, in the UK ... However what is remarkable about this is .. the popular enthusiasm for surveillance cameras and the demand for their installation in more and more places. This is all the more remarkable asindependent and state assessments have repeatedly revealed that CCTV is extremely limited in its effectiveness in preventing crime ... In the 2008 Counter-Terrorism Act, which came into force in February 2009, there are powers available to the police to limit the ability of citizens to take photographs or video footage in public places. Taken along with the expansion of CCTV, it seems that there is the beginning of an almost totalitarian attempt by the British state to regulate the production of visual information altogether ...

http://www.academia.edu/1069347/Living_in_Surveillance_Societies_The_Normalisation_of_Surveillance_in_Europe_and_the_Threat_of_a_Bad_Example

[cprise]

11. K&R

[struggle4progress]

12. Infographic: Survey Reveals Support for Surveillance

Rob Ratcliff, Content & Community Manager
11/06/2013
http://www.ifsecglobal.com/author.asp?section_id=414&doc_id=560161

[dipsydoodle]

19. The use of CCTV cameras concerns physical action in public

which isn't data snooping - the subject of the OP.

Can't speak for the results of the other EU countries but the UK result doesn't surprise me at all.

[Quantess]

31. CCTV cameras are not the same thing at all.

CCTV is more about street crimes. NSA spying feels a lot more invasive, at least to me.

[XemaSab]

13. I don't think foreigners living in the US

should have any expectation of privacy.

IOW, the constitution should not be applied to non-citizens.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Given under the constitution

(That damned piece of paper) guarantees the same rights to Americans and aliens living in this country, save voting, you are on shaky ground.

And we are talking of foreigners living outside the US.

[Posteritatis]

30. Your stance is as stupid as it is wrong as it is vile as it is dangerous. (nt)

[struggle4progress]

14. Some issues for your consideration:

(1) Surveillance infrastructure is typically supplied to governments by private companies that have a profit-motive in propagandizing for government purchase and use of their equipment/service

(2) Those who supply one type of equipment or service will propagandize for that equipment/service, while attempting to deflect the privacy debate onto equipment/services other than that which they supply. So in the US, where government-owned CCTV is rare, CCTV is often regarded as an intrusion into personal privacy, whereas in Europe, where CCTV is more common the privacy debate shifts to other topics. The rationalizations, however, remain largely the same: for example, where CCTV is common, it is contradictorily by the public as a warranted intrusion on privacy that limits crime

(3) Politicians everywhere prefer to deflect blame elsewhere: if EU politicians can appear to be taking a firm stand for privacy, by pointing the finger at Obama, it may save them the nuisance of addressing the privacy issues associated with their own actions

(4) Of course, it would be wonderful to negotiate a meaningful self-enforcing international treaty on privacy rights

[rug]

17. She's asked very good questions.

Reding laid out the seven questions she said needed to be answered:

• Are Prism and other similar programmes aimed only at the data of US citizens and residents, or also – even primarily – at non-US nationals, including EU citizens?

• Is access to, collection of or processing of data on the basis of Prism and other programmes … limited to specific and individual cases, and if so what criteria are applied?

• Is the data of individuals accessed, collected or processed in bulk (or on a very wide scale, without justification relating to specific individual cases) either regularly or occasionally?

• Is the scope of these programmes restricted to national security or foreign intelligence or is it broader?

• What avenues, judicial or administrative, are available to companies in the US or the EU to challenge access to, collection of and processing of data under Prism or other programmes?

• What avenues are available to EU citizens to be told if they are affected by Prism or other similar programmes and how do they compare with those available to US citizens?

• What avenues are available to EU citizens or companies to challenge access to, collection of and processing of their personal data under Prism and similar programmes, and how does that compare with the rights of US citizens?

[Catherina]

18. Agreed. I wish we could see the answers

Since they publicized their questions, maybe we will?

[christx30]

22. But those answers are classified.

But that's ok. A FICA judge has signed off on it. Which one? Classified. What reasoning did he or she use? Classified. Everything is fine. We shouldn't worry our pretty little heads over it.

[Catherina]

24. Amazing ain't it? n/t

[christx30]

28. Yet when someone like

Ellsberg or Snowden attempt to shine a light into the darkness, they are called traitors. Even on this board, I've seen numerous people call Snowden a traitor. I've seen people latch onto the smallest flaws in his character and malign his character. You know what? He's not perfect. He's no boy scout. But then no one that's going to be in that business is going to be a perfect angel of a human being. The important thing is that he is giving us this information that our fearless leaders don't want us to know.
Yes, these programs are technically legal. But so are tax avoidance schemes (like Apple uses). That doesn't make them right. And we shouldn't accept it.

[WillyT]

20. HUGE K & R !!!

[roamer65]

21. Hypocritical of the EU. Their nat'l governments have been feeding at our intel troughs for years.

Maybe we should expose what their national governments have actually received from our intelligence services.

The EU parliament is a waste of money and an impotent joke.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

23. But we are just trying to protect you n/t

[Catherina]

25. God save me from my government's peculiar idea of *protection*

They protect us from the threats they manufacture or cause for the profit of their 1%, like any mafia racket in Chicago. I suppose we should feel honored, USA! USA! We're number 1!

3 Trillion? That's kind of low-balling it no? Or are you deducting for their protection services lol?

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

26. Haha

Yeah, u got me... I'm low balling it.

Though we do charge other countries for our "protection" ask Japan for starters.

Bt apparently they have recently lost confidence in our capability, or our word.

[Catherina]

27. Here's hoping (there's that word again lol) we ever see a dime of it n/t

[Catherina]

29. Stunning. They got their answers and... EU official 'satisfied' with US spying assurance

Assurances from whom? Clapper? No, no, no, that's not how you do it with these guys. Now you need to go back and ask them to define the word "targeted".

Prism NSA surveillance 'did not collect European data in bulk'

EU commissioner says she has assurances that only those suspected of links to terrorism or cybercrime were targeted

Ian Traynor in Brussels, Sam Jones and Gwyn Topham
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 June 2013 18.18 BST


Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, said US collection of metadata via Verizon was 'mainly an American question'. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

...

At a meeting of US and EU justice and law enforcement officials in Dublin, Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said she was satisfied that US collection of metadata via the Verizon mobile phone network was "mainly an American question".

The much bigger issues, raised by Edward Snowden's leaks to the Guardian, concerned the NSA hoovering up data from social media and internet servers across Europe in flagrant breach of EU data protection regulations.

Reding said the US and the EU had agreed to set up a working group of security experts to grapple with the implications for the European public.

"Considering Prism, the US answers to the questions I have raised were the following: it is about foreign intelligence threats. Prism is targeted at non-US citizens under investigation on suspicion of terrorism and cybercrimes. So it is not about bulk data mining, but specific individuals or targeted groups. It is on the basis of a court order, of an American court, and of congressional oversight," said Reding.

...

Eric Holder, the US attorney general, said the Prism programme was aimed at "facilitating the acquisition of foreign intelligence information on targets outside the US". He said the programme was only used if it was "reasonably believed" that the "foreign target" was outside the US and was suspected of being involved in terrorism, cybercrime or nuclear proliferation. Use of the surveillance programme was subject to "extensive oversight".

"Everything is done consistent with the law," Holder said.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/14/prism-nsa-surveillance-european-data

[temmer]

32. Not really -

Reding is satisfied only with the Verizon issue, simply because Europeans are not concerned here.

Concerning PRISM, she only repeats what Holder told her (your quote). If she finds out that PRISM is, other than Holder says, indeed about bulk data mining, she might want to talk to him again. She's generally very outspoken when it comes to consumer's rights etc.

The problem with PRISM is that many details are still not known, but it's a developing story. So let's be patient.

[Catherina]

36. I think we're going to get another letter this week. Along with our partner in crime, the UK

Very good points. Trust me I'm being patient. I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The few slides that were just released today were so blacked out that you know this is just the tip lol! Reding is going to get major pressure now from the European Industries like Boeing who know they're being spied on and all the complaints they had related to that are going to be looked at in a new light (you know like industrial espionage, lost contracts, scientific research etc...)

I think we're going to get another letter this week. Along with our partner in crime, the UK
MAJOR International implications to NSA scandal heading our way... Spying on allied governments.

[Yo_Mama]

33. But I think the US government does have something to hide

One cannot blame Europe for this - they have the right and duty to defend the human rights of their citizens and residents.

[Catherina]

37. You'll get no argument from me n/t

[marions ghost]

34. K&R

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[quadrature]

35. whatever happened to internet remailers?

just curious