EC halts proposed data deal with Israel

meglome

EC halts proposed data deal with Israel

The European Commission has halted a proposal to allow Israel access to potentially sensitive data on European Union citizens following concerns expressed by the Irish Government.

The concerns arose following the use of forged Irish passports in the murder of a Hamas operative, allegedly by Israeli agents.

In a surprise move this morning, the Commission said they would withdraw the application to effectively recognise Israel's data protection standards as being on a par with those enjoyed in the EU.
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According to a spokesman for the Department of Justice, the European Commission acknowledged the concerns expressed by an Irish official about the reliability of the Israeli data protection regime.

It is understood of particular concern to the Government is the fact that the manual examination of passports at Israeli border controls are not covered by Israeli's data protection rules.

While electronic data is covered by Israel's data protection regime, it appears that data gathered manually is not.

An official from the Department of Justice is in Brussels today and was due to vote against the procedure recognising Israel's data protection system.

It was presumed by officials that it would be a largely symbolic gesture because a majority of countries appeared to support the measure going ahead.

However, the European Commission decided to withdraw the procedure for now, although it may well proceed later down the line if the concerns expressed by Ireland are addressed.

Decision welcomed

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has welcomed the decision, saying he thinks the Commission recognises the need to make sure any decision on this matter is consistent with EU standards.

Mr Martin said the Irish Government had raised concerns in the context of the fraudulent misuse of information on Irish passport holders for an extra judicial killing in Dubai and had articulated its anger about that on a number of occasions.

The objection, he said, was a further manifestation of this anger and protest at what had transpired in relation to, what was in essence, the stealing of data from legitimate Irish passports.

Mr Martin added, however, that he has made it consistently clear that Ireland wants good relations with Israel.

But over the past 18-24 months, he said, a series of events had happened which had put a strain on that.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0902/israel.html

Sorry couldn't find the thread which mentioned this happening as a conspiracy.

digme

meglome wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0902/israel.html

Sorry couldn't find the thread which mentioned this happening as a conspiracy.

cool,but why is usreal accessing our states data anyway in the first place?
Or even the EU for that matter.

me_right_one

Good, I'm glad the Irish govt. stood up to those Israeli scumbags. Its bad enough that they kill their own, but who knows who'd be assasinated next if they had info about EU citizens.

demonspawn

me_right_one wrote: »

Good, I'm glad the Irish govt. stood up to those Israeli scumbags. Its bad enough that they kill their own, but who knows who'd be assasinated next if they had info about EU citizens.

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised myself. It's nice to know we still have some people looking out for us in the Dail. Any chance we know who made the objection in the first place? I wanna send that man a chocolate cake.

Edit: I still don't like my personal info on some EU database though.

Richard tea

As if Ireland has a choice. Dont kid yourselves.

Jeboa Safari

What info does the eu hold about us on this database?

demonspawn

Richard tea wrote: »

As if Ireland has a choice. Dont kid yourselves.

Good point. It could all be a song and dance to make our scumbags....I mean politicians look good. A bit like Gormley's protest of the incinerator. He knows it's going ahead, just wants to look good for his constituents.

Richard tea

Nah, we would need a scary terrorist attack in Europe to justify them in taking personal data. There was talk recently of the real Ira attacking mainland England. This would be enough for people to accept their personal data been put into an open market.

Maybe we will have to vote on it ( and keep voting until its passed ):)

jay93

And if they attack england then so what it does not give them the right to access my information they are nothing but stalking freaks them isrealis are i taught the USA was bad !!!

Jeboa Safari

whats on this database? I'm genuinely interested, never heard of it before, is it a criminal database? And why would Israel need access to it?

kasper

the first thing our government done right , i read it was dermot ahern that protested

demonspawn

Seems the politics heads scour the CT forums for ideas for new threads. :rolleyes:

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056020319

Woulda been nice to give meglome the credit for posting this first.....

humanji

demonspawn wrote: »

Seems the politics heads scour the CT forums for ideas for new threads. :rolleyes:

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056020319

Woulda been nice to give meglome the credit for posting this first.....

Or maybe they just checked RTE.

meglome

humanji wrote: »

Or maybe they just checked RTE.

Stop stealing my glory.

Brown Bomber

Reuters
04 September 2010 10:16:15 Oman Time




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Dubai: Concerns over Israeli access to BlackBerry data, and the use of the device by the United States to spy on the United Arab Emirates are behind the Gulf state's moves to curb the smartphone, Dubai's police chief said.

"The Unites States is the primary beneficiary of having no controls over the BlackBerry, as it has an interest to spy on the UAE," Dhahi Khalfan Tamim said in remarks carried by the website of the daily al-Khaleej on Friday.

"The West has accused us of curbing the liberties of BlackBerry users, while America, Israel, Britain and other countries are allowed access to all transferred data," Tamim added.

Tamim, who has been outspoken in blaming Israeli agents for the assassination of a top Palestinian militant at a Dubai hotel in January, did not say why Washington had an interest in spying on Western-allied UAE.

The UAE, where BlackBerry maker RIM has 500,000 users, has said it would suspend BlackBerry Messenger, email and Web browser services from October11 until the government could get access to encrypted messages.

Blackberry won a reprieve on a shutdown in India last month, after RIM agreed to give India access to secure BlackBerry data, according to an Indian government source.

BlackBerry's Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf where it is a popular business and social networking tool. But because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be tracked locally.

That has raised fears in security-conscious Gulf states, especially in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, that a lack of access could fetter their ability to ferret out potential spies, assassins or Islamic militants, analysts say.

http://www.timesofoman.com/innercat.asp?detail=39142

Brown Bomber

meglome wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0902/israel.html

Sorry couldn't find the thread which mentioned this happening as a conspiracy.

EU's Israel data transfer deal to proceed despite Irish veto
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1112/1224283152213.html

PanchoVilla

EU's new national anthem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8

pablo_escobar

Brown Bomber wrote: »

EU's Israel data transfer deal to proceed despite Irish veto
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/1112/1224283152213.html

It's truly amazing..I can't believe they would allow this to go forward.

MossQaeda can now easily steal an Irish persons identity and go from country to country committing crimes.

So much for sovereignty....this confirms it doesn't exist.

The trolls on the forum will say this is great news of course.

Joshua Jones

Why would a non-EU member wish to gather personal information on EU citizens?. And why would the EU allow them?.

meglome

pablo_escobar wrote: »

The trolls on the forum will say this is great news of course.

I, as one of these supposed trolls, started this thread. I supported our governments actions (for a change) but we were using delaying tactics on it. Once the Israelis can meet the data protection standards there's nothing to stop it going through.

Brown Bomber

meglome wrote: »

I, as one of these supposed trolls, started this thread. I supported our governments actions (for a change) but we were using delaying tactics on it. Once the Israelis can meet the data protection standards there's nothing to stop it going through.

Yeah our own elected government has no say A big thanks to all those who voted yes to Lisbon.

meglome

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Yeah our own elected government has no say A big thanks to all those who voted yes to Lisbon.

What has this got to do with Lisbon? There was a vote and no one supported our position, there could have been vote before Lisbon too and the result would be the same.

humanji

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Yeah our own elected government has no say A big thanks to all those who voted yes to Lisbon.

Actually because of Lisbon Ireland had a chance of stopping this because of the whole QMV system. Before Lisbon we wouldn't of had a chance.

My name is URL

However you look at this, it shouldn't have went ahead. Just because it was legally sound and bureaucratically agreed upon does not mean it was either logical or correct. That's the way the world works though, it certainly isn't exclusive to this case.

meglome

A view from the EU forum.

Coyler wrote: »

Before responding, I'd like to make it clear, up front, I don't like this. That said..

Nothing particularly odd about it. Some people within the EU talk a good game but that doesn't mean its official EU policy. Rubber only meets road once the issues hits the EU Council and either the Member States leaders or foreign ministers arrive at a policy. Of course there is the High Representative, Catherine Ashton, but she will still have policy dictated to her by the Council.

So the question is why doesn't the Council take a harder line with Israel. Well its because there are Members who don't want to, plain and simple. You can decide for yourself if its because they support the Israeli policies or they don't want to be seen as critical to the Jewish people. Whatever the reason its perfectly within the democratic right of those countries to take that stance.

Ireland was the only Member State that opposed this development and we pushed it to a vote. To suggest that we had a veto overruled is clearly false along with suggestions that it was undemocratic. Reading a little further it seems we did manage to get a concession though;

However, the Government has said the EU accepted Ireland’s demand for information manually processed by Israel to be monitored in the new arrangements. This usually concerns passport information recorded manually or photocopied at border points.

Although Israel still resists such monitoring, Ireland argued that EU and Israeli data protection officials want manual records included in Israel’s data protection legislation.

“We were not satisfied and are still not satisfied that Israel meets the necessary criteria. We pushed it to a vote but were the only country to oppose the go-ahead,” said a spokesman for Mr Ahern.

“It is now effectively a done deal, although we take some comfort from the fact that we were able to build into the process the monitoring requirement or an oversight mechanism.

So if I'm to understand this properly, Israel must alter its data protection laws in order for the deal to take place, something Israel government opposes. The article doesn't make this at all clear so shoot down my analysis, by all means. Perhaps a question to the TalktoEU people is in order.

PanchoVilla

humanji wrote: »

Actually because of Lisbon Ireland had a chance of stopping this because of the whole QMV system. Before Lisbon we wouldn't of had a chance.

As I said in the other thread, there was no QMV because not all member states were sitting during the vote. At least that's what the article says.

humanji

PanchoVilla wrote: »

As I said in the other thread, there was no QMV because not all member states were sitting during the vote. At least that's what the article says.

Yes, because Ahern didn't pull his finger out and organise them, as you'd expect would be his job.

It's sh*t that it got through, but that's politics for you. You'll find that the EU will have gotten something quite juicy out of it.

Brown Bomber

humanji wrote: »

Actually because of Lisbon Ireland had a chance of stopping this because of the whole QMV system. Before Lisbon we wouldn't of had a chance.

I'm op3n to correction but as Data Protection comes under Security and Justice pre Lisbon it would have taken an unaminous vote to pass.

humanji

Brown Bomber wrote: »

I'm op3n to correction but as Data Protection comes under Security and Justice pre Lisbon it would have taken an unaminous vote to pass.

I was sure it didn't. I'll ask in the Politics forum. They know their stuff.

edit: PanchoVilla beat me to it.