EU threatens to suspend data-sharing with US

Scofflaw

The EU has threatened to suspend two existing agreements sharing travel and financial data with the US in the wake of the PRISM revelations unless the US can show it is respecting EU rules on data privacy:

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU's home affairs commissioner, wrote to two senior U.S. officials on Thursday to voice European concerns over implementation of the two agreements, both struck in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and regarded by Washington as important tools in the fight against terrorism.

"Should we fail to demonstrate the benefits of (the agreements) for our citizens and the fact that they have been implemented in full compliance with the law, their credibility will be seriously affected and in such a case I will be obliged to reconsider (whether) the conditions for their implementation are still met," Malmstrom said.

EU-U.S. relations are going through a "delicate moment", she wrote in the letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and David Cohen, Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

"Mutual trust and confidence have been seriously eroded and I expect the U.S. to do all that it can to restore them," she said in the letter, seen by Reuters.

Malmstrom is dispatching a team of officials to Washington next week for previously scheduled reviews of both information-sharing agreements.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) provides the U.S. Treasury with data stored in Europe on international financial transfers. The Passenger Name Record agreement covers data provided by passengers when booking tickets and checking in for flights. All such information is passed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

and

The European Parliament, some of whose members have long worried that the agreements granted the United States too much access to European data, called on Thursday for the scrapping of both accords unless Washington revealed the extent of its electronic spying operations in Europe.

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/eu-threatens-to-suspend-datasharing-with-us-over-spying-reports-29398085.html

Meanwhile, any action or commentary from our own government?

cordially,
Scofflaw

KyussBishop

Have been away so haven't been keeping track of this, but this looks quite promising; it is good to see Europe threatening serious action on this.

Our own government should definitely be making more noise about this, seeing as we are clamped right between the US and UK as the primary outlets for our worldwide Internet access (and thus, almost certainly subject to spying).

The US tried to use revocation of similar information-sharing agreements in the past, to threaten the UK against pursuing Guantanamo-related trials (Glenn Greenwald wrote about this in the past, though I can't find a good article at the moment); the kind of spying the EU is further uncovering now (specifically hitting political targets), is also something I remember the UN trying to laugh off when WikiLeaks cables revealed wiretapping and widespread bugging/surveillance at the UN headquarters.

Good to see this kind of spying (now with the scale of what is happening known) being taken far more seriously this time.

KyussBishop

Catching up with some RSS feeds, there is a decent analysis here:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/eu-demands-explanations-for-us-spying-threatens-data-pacts-and-trade-deal.html

Could be more difficulties here, beyond the information sharing agreements: Could adversely affect upcoming trade agreements, which would be a very good thing as these treaties are typically used to railroad through changes in domestic policy, without proper democratic oversight (think ACTA).

Scofflaw

Hmm. The EU apparently proposed to have two sets of talks - two working groups - discussing PRISM and more general espionage, but the idea of the latter has been vetoed by the UK and Sweden:

Britain has blocked the first crucial talks on intelligence and espionage between European officials and their American counterparts since the NSA surveillance scandal erupted.

The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA's Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two "working groups" on the espionage debacle with the Americans.

Instead, the talks will consist of one working group focused on the NSA's Prism programme, which has been capturing and storing vast amounts of internet and mobile phone metadata in Europe.

The disclosures in the Guardian over the past month have triggered a transatlantic crisis of confidence and threatened to derail crucial free trade talks between the EU and the US, also due to be launched in Washington on Monday.

The talks on Prism and data privacy have been arranged to coincide with the trade talks in an attempt to defuse the transatlantic tension. EU diplomats and officials say the offer of talks by the Americans is designed to enable the leaders of Germany and France to save face following revelations about the scale of US espionage – particularly in Germany, but also of French and other European embassies and missions in the US.

Other aspects of the dispute, such as more traditional spying and intelligence matters, will be off limits for the Europeans after Britain insisted the EU had no authority to discuss issues of national security and intelligence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/05/us-blocks-espionage-talks-europe-nsa-prism

To be fair, the UK and Sweden are quite correct here:

On Thursday, Grybauskaitė said the Europeans hoped to hold two separate strands of consultations with the Americans. By Friday she and José Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, conceded that the intelligence strand had been dropped. "Intelligence matters and those of national security are not the competence of the EU," he said, echoing the UK's objection.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Sierra Oscar

Scofflaw wrote: »

To be fair, the UK and Sweden are quite correct here:



cordially,
Scofflaw

Indeed there is some validity in their argument. It is no real surprise that the UK have tried to stop discussions relating to intelligence considering they are currently in a battle to regain power from Brussels.

Scofflaw

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Indeed there is some validity in their argument. It is no real surprise that the UK have tried to stop discussions relating to intelligence considering they are currently in a battle to regain power from Brussels.

That article is a marvellous example of spin, and a rather sad thing to take at face value - no offence intended!

The UK is deciding to exercise the opt-out the UK and Ireland have in Lisbon from the Justice and Home Affairs articles - that's it, no battle. Not only that, but it's probably a largely optical exercise which will result in the UK retaining the meaningful and useful EU rules in that section, and losing the ones that are largely ineffectual in a common law country.

It's hilarious that a newspaper would resort to petty triumphalism over something which is nothing at all in the sense of a "battle" - and to represent it as a victory against some sort of oppression is doubly hilarious, given that the reason the UK can do it is because the right to do so is enshrined in the supposedly oppressive treaties in the first place.

amused,
Scofflaw

Sierra Oscar

Scofflaw wrote: »

That article is a marvellous example of spin, and a rather sad thing to take at face value - no offence intended!

The UK is deciding to exercise the opt-out the UK and Ireland have in Lisbon from the Justice and Home Affairs articles - that's it, no battle. Not only that, but it's probably a largely optical exercise which will result in the UK retaining the meaningful and useful EU rules in that section, and losing the ones that are largely ineffectual in a common law country.

It's hilarious that a newspaper would resort to petty triumphalism over something which is nothing at all in the sense of a "battle" - and to represent it as a victory against some sort of oppression is doubly hilarious, given that the reason the UK can do it is because the right to do so is enshrined in the supposedly oppressive treaties in the first place.

amused,
Scofflaw

Its the Telegraph, I wouldn't take it at face value. Nonetheless the conservative party themselves are pushing this whole idea of there being a 'battle' to regain some form of sovereignty from the EU, and that they are winning. It has featured heavily in key conservative party speeches now throughout the last year. Its politics, it doesn't really matter if it is the UK's right or not to take back control over certain affairs - if they can spin it in such a way that they are seen to be standing up to Europe amongst their own electorate then that is the perception that sets in.

The electorate do not understand the treaties. If the conservatives can exploit that then happy days for them.

clairefontaine

The way I understand PRISM is the FRench are spying on their own people, while the Americans are spying on Americans, and they are swapping their information with each other.

I don't really know how to feel about this. Technically the US is at war,though asymmetric, and one can assume and expect espionage. That is a dirty fact of life, heightened at war times.

But now that it has saturated every means of communication, it feels sinister, expensive, and counter democratic, particularly with the NSA scandal and the secret Foreign Intellgence courts.