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US surveillance revelations deepen European fears
- rb2k_ 13y agoHe's not the German Justice Minister. He's "the justice minister for the German state of Hesse".
- pgeorgi 13y agoWhile Mr. Hahn isn't directly involved in last week's Blockupy incidents in Frankfurt, one of his colleagues (the state's Minister of Interior) is and certainly benefits if public outrage is targetted on someone else for a while.
- BjoernKW 13y agoWhile I appreciate this statement I doubt that Germany and the EU is fundamentally different from the US in that matter. Sure, in Germany recently we've been quite successful in fending off planned legislation that would've allowed massive privacy intrusions but in general the political establishment over here isn't exactly a champion of civil liberties either. Besides, I'm certain both German and EU administrative bodies closely cooperate with the US on intelligence matters and would more than gladly accept sharing those findings.
- Ihmahr 13y agoYes, they closely cooperate. But EU agencies (except for UK) don't have a record of torture, abduction and overly use of secrecy. Comparing the budgets of the various secret services should be informative. US agencies are WAY bigger and I think much too big. UK is the exception - being in line with US.
- ims 13y agoWell that's a facile statement, since the EU is only 20 years old. Individual countries in Europe absolutely do have a record of torture, abduction, and secrecy in varying degrees. Are you completely forgetting the 20th century?
- dnautics 13y agodidn't several EU countries (I'm thinking poland) aid the US in secret detention facilities?
- youngerdryas 13y agoThe title was "German State Justice Minister Calls for Boycott of US companies". I think the only way to roll this back, if it even can be rolled back, is to attack from the states using state power. If CA, NY, TX, UT, VT, every state, starts making their own privacy laws to hamstring the Feds they may have to change their tune for practicality.
- akiselev 13y agoFederal laws will overrule state laws every time in this case. The gov't will just claim national security/intelligence laws aren't covered by the 10th Amendment. The only thing the states could do is pass a Constitutional amendment but that has never been done through state assemblies before.
- smhinsey 13y agoI'm not sure that the states have any power here. If there's a federal law legalizing it, it doesn't matter what the state laws are. It's basically the reverse of the medical/legal marijuana scenario.
- pessimizer 13y agoIt seems to be working there, though. Also for gay marriage which has become an inevitability.
- mpyne 13y agoMarriage as a concept has always been left to the states. The NSA is by statute international in scope (they are defined as signals intelligence pertaining to foreign nations), and that has always been left to the Federal government exclusively. The individual states don't even have a dream here.
- youngerdryas 13y agoThere are federal laws against marijuana but the Feds don't bust people in MA for smoking weed, though apparently technically they could.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- octagonal 13y agohttp://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_of_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_o... Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union Article 8 Protection of personal data 1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. 2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified. 3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.
- gambiting 13y agoExcuse me? I am from a EU country which DOES have a constitution, and just like the US one, it is the most important document in the country, overruling any EU-law.
- krzyk 13y agoActually, the opposite is true. When you join EU you sign a document that basically makes any EU law above given states constitution. Unfortunately it's not common knowledge.
- gambiting 13y agoBut, as it has been proven time and time again - any EU country can(and has) disregard any EU law if that is what they want to do. EU can then try to punish them for doing that, but that never really worked.
- lazyjones 13y agoThe EU commission is a bunch of hypocrites. I am an European and I am appalled by the lack of integrity of our politicians: they hand over data on flights, credit cards, SWIFT transactions to other countries and keep trying to pass ACTA in its various forms despite strong opposition of the EU population, they created their own mass-surveillance laws (active in many european countries) and then they pretend to be outraged at the mass-surveillance of the US they themselves have helped facilitate in its full breadth. Cretins!
- doe88 13y agoIndeed! I think the only reason Britain or France still don't have the same mass-surveillance systems in place is their lack of budgets. Otherwise I'm sure we wouldn't be better protected than the americans in the US. Although, the irony being that certainly the US knows more on us (europeans) than our own countries.
- EliRivers 13y agoAlso the phenomenal incompetency of our (British) gubbermint when it comes to buying any item of IT more elaborate than ordering an iPod from Amazon. One of the greatest defences we have against the encroachment of the state in the UK is the amiable ineptness of it at every stage.
- lazyjones 13y agoThe US secret services are also convenient scapegoats, our own government agencies can simply ask them for information on EU citizens that would be illegal to collect in the EU and they probably do so frequently.
- omd 13y agoWe lack the budget because that's the government we voted for. And the reason we don't spend a third of our budget on defense is not because we can't but because we don't want to. I'm glad we don't have a mass-surveillance system and I would like to keep it that way. I don't get this attitude of "we're no better so who cares". What the US government does in the US is their business and what ours does here is our business, but when a foreign government starts spying on me that pisses me off. I wonder what your reaction would be if it was China reading your emails.
- flexie 13y agoWhereas we in the EU have our own dubious surveillance programmes, at least they are made by governments we can overthrow ourselves. Also, European governments mostly grant us basic human rights, have no secret overseas prisons, no death penalty for "treason", no decade long imprisonments for whistle blowing or hacking, no secret military tribunals, no recent record of torture, almost no drones, small military, tiny intelligence budgets etc.
- notatoad 13y agofrom my very basic understanding of EU privacy laws, the big win is that they treat everybody equally - the rules say what data you can retain, what data you can't, and that's it. What really scares me about all this FISA and PRISM stuff is that they treat foreigners as essentially non-persons. They at least make some effort at pretending there's a due process for american citizens, but if you're a foreigner with your data on a system owned by a US company, you literally have no rights at all.
- aswanson 13y agoYeah, that attitude in the u.s. scares me; the labels we put on noncitizens. Those labels, I believe enabled our compliant media to sell that idiotic Iraq war to the public. I don't recall them tracking the Iraqi civilian deaths at all. I mean, after all, they weren't born in the u.s. so who cares, right?
- dnautics 13y agoit's merely formalizing the truth that because they can't vote, the government is not accountable to noncitizens. Do you seriously think that the European Union treats everyone within its borders equally? If that were the case, why are there the banlieues of Paris? Why does Italy treat african boat people so poorly? Why are there stateless individuals of Turkish descent in Germany?
- flexie 13y agoThat's a very good point - in the last months the world listened in on Americans debating whether drones can be used against Americans or just against us foreigners, as if we are worth less. Now we learn that the American government speculates that maybe foreigners don't deserve the same degree of privacy.
- danmaz74 13y ago"Statements from the U.S. government that the monitoring was not aimed at U.S. citizens but only against persons outside the United States do not reassure me at all." I couldn't agree more. It's no fun when they state in such a clear way that we're second-class users, whose rights aren't so important after all.
- lambtron 13y agoI wonder how China is thinking as it actively pushes its own web titans and forbids the entrance of Facebook and Google and the like within its national borders.
- kriro 13y agoGermany already exports a lot of data to the US. That includes banking data, flight plans and so forth. So that fear is mostly fake. Hopefully the current developments provide a small chance of revoking those laws but I highly doubt it. I agree on the cloud stuff though. Some companies even use it in advertising (your data stays here and is covered by our data protection laws)
- transfire 13y ago"designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning" Assuredly the U.K. and Israel say the same thing to their people. Of course, never mind that all three countries swap information. Total surveillance is easily achieved. And it's all perfectly legal.
- eaxbin 13y agoOn the 14th of September 2007, Denmark initiated our Anti-Terroism Surveillance act, wherein ALL phonecalls, texts & internet traffic is saved for at least 2 years. Welcome to Denmark.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoHave you got many terrorists in Denmark?
- malandrew 13y agoI think the biggest worry I would have if I were in Europe is the same worry I would have as an Amazon Marketplace Seller. An Amazon marketplace seller is essentially sharing all their sales performance data with Amazon. This pretty much guarantees that the best way to make money is to see lots of low volume items. Anything that sells in any considerable quantity will not go unnoticed by Amazon and they will start carrying the product themselves. Anyone in the EU (or any other country) that frequently discusses valuable information via any US service is vulnerable to exploitation. This includes politicians, beaurocrats with gatekeeper positions, banks and other financial services firms, etc. all have information that in the hands of the right person in the US government can be used against them, their firm or their country. What if the US government deems it appropriate to watch what people in a certain country is saying about the US dollar? That information can be used to manipulate currency markets in favor of the US and we'd be none the wiser. Every single congressional subcommittee dealing with any foreign affair has an interest in asking the NSA to find out information on and private communication of their counterparts in other countries. If you want to exercise soft control over all other countries, what better way than to get important people in all those other countries to centralize much of their communications via US Cloud services that the NSA can conveniently eavesdrop on. You get instant access to the words any thoughts of any person you may interact with geopolitically. I think the worst part is that anyemember of congress could already be using illegitimately gained data and be none the wiser. At the end of the day they make an innocent request like "Get me all the information you have on XXX so I can make an informed decision." Next thing you know, this request is passed along like a game of telephone until a report is drafted up. Nothing stops those requests from making it to the NSA, where a rank an file employee deems it appropriate to spy on the personal communications of foreign nationals because they believe that it is in the best interest of the United States and its position in the World. That data is intercepted and distilled into a report and now that member of congress is operating with insider information, ill-gotten via PRISM, and he is none the wiser and can go on with his life thinking that its only being used for fighting terrorism.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago"If you want to exercise soft control over all other countries, what better way than to get important people in all those other countries to centralize much of their communications via US Cloud services that the NSA can conveniently eavesdrop on." They actually did exactly that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%80%932005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%...
- Torn 13y ago> Europe, which lacks internet giants of its own, has long yearned to contain the power of the U.S. titans that dominate the Web, Rubbish. The EU has quite strong notions of privacy and personal freedom, which the US doesn't have. It's not about 'containing' US internet companies it's about protecting the rights of EU citizens and fighting against the societal harms that come with the erosion of privacy.