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No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner
- mtgx 13y agoMaybe, just maybe, this might get the US government to stop, or at least drastically limit its spying operations.
- cinquemb 13y agoOne would think so, but from Keith's mouth, it seems like the solution is to do more of the same (of which has taken us to this point).
- kintamanimatt 13y agoCriminals that go to jail aren't rehabilitated, they just learn to be better criminals. Governments that get busted doing shady shit don't rehabilitate themselves, they just learn to hide it better.
- oliverhunt 13y agoThis post makes no sense. Saying 'Criminals' become better criminals in prison is oppressive and discriminatory and how on earth it is related to this issue at all I do not know.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoPeople that get caught doing something they are inclined to do but shouldn't tend to become better at getting away with it next time.
- oliverhunt 13y agoPerhaps, or they just don't do it again. Not all people in jail go back. Generalising things like you have here is not helping anyones understanding on the issue
- kintamanimatt 13y agoNo, I wasn't especially precise but it's reasonable to assume that I'm rational enough to understand that not everybody that's released from jail re-offends, but it's fairly common: 60% for the US and 50% for the UK. [1] Likewise, sometimes governments fix their own wagon when they get caught doing some shady shit; often they don't. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Recidivism_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Recidivism_rates
- ajuc 13y agoYou mean the next government will be more careful at hiding shaddy deals. The previous won't be reelected ever again. So better analogy will be a criminal jailed for life, and other criminals perfecting their crimes because of fear.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoYou just exposed a cynical assumption I tend to make, that government continues more or less unchanged over long periods of time no matter who is elected. Much like a human replaces most of their cells every x years and is essentially the same organism, government just replaces most of the old faces with fresh faces that do much the same as the previous generation.
- jpdoctor 13y ago> Maybe, just maybe, this might get the US government to stop, or at least drastically limit its spying operations. And the irony would be that the US needed foreign gov'ts to accomplish what its own citizens could not do.
- theleethaxor 13y agoThese yuropoors are so funny. If they cancel it its only their loss.
- wazoox 13y agoFrankly, I can't see a single good reason for this trade agreement, and a lot of good reasons against, starting with that I (and all other Europeans) don't want GM food, hormone beef and chlorinated chicken in my plate any day soon.
- pasbesoin 13y agoAll the harder to see the good reason when it's negotiated in secret. (Unless you are a favored lobbyist.)
- kintamanimatt 13y agoWhat's wrong with any of those things? None of those things are harmful.
- Anon84 13y agoAh, but they sound harmful!
- bogger 13y agoExpecting downvotes for this: I strongly suspect that hormones in meat make Americans bigger. I am from Europe. I have met many Americans both of whose parents were born in my country. They don't look like us. My perception is that on average they are significantly bigger, and are both taller and broader than is normal in my country. I don't know if this has health implications, but I would rather not eat meat which contains growth hormones.
- jfoutz 13y agoI'm not a doctor, so i wouldn't claim your theory is impossible. But we americans have a horrible diet, and we eat tons of food. I can't say much about height, but breadth comes from 1300 calorie fast food lunches.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoI'm under the impression you're from Ireland judging by your username. Kids and adolescents that are well fed tend to grow more than those that aren't, and portion size in the US tends to be substantially greater than elsewhere, especially Europe. Also, there seems to be a greater focus on working out for aesthetic reasons in the US. All of this is, however, does appear to be changing, and moving more toward an American norm. You may also be suffering from confirmation bias! Or, you're right and something in American food is affecting growth rates, but there doesn't appear to be a lot of evidence to support this notion.
- oleganza 13y agoActual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.
- rorrr2 13y agoIt deeply saddens me that a tiny tiny percentage of the population can really fuck up the lives of everyone - financially, socially, politically, religiously. The real problem is in how we set up the governments. We give to much power to a few people. What we really need to do is let people vote on individual issues. Want to go to war that will affect everyone and will cost trillions? Let's have a vote.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- w_t_payne 13y agoOur democratic systems are not really as democratic as they claim to be. Indeed, it could be argued that the democracy that we have is a thin veneer that hides the autocracy instead. Certainly, in the UK, the unelected civil service wields a huge amount of power, and whilst they do answer to elected officials, and do have to implement the policies of the ruling party, in reality they have a huge amount of freedom on those matters not explicitly laid out in policy, and can lobby ministers very effectively to get what they want. If a minister is weak, he will end up acting (unknowingly) as the de-facto press officer for the department. In any case, we end up electing representatives, not delegates. Our power to influence policy starts and stops at the ballot box (actually, we have rather more power than that through MP's letters & party policy groups - but for the sake of argument we will ignore these). Indeed, even in systems with impeccable democratic credentials, decisions end up being made by relatively small numbers of individuals; individuals that can be effectively lobbied, influenced or coerced into making decisions that are not in the best interests of the nation, or of the people. We need a technological solution that will help facilitate a general broadening of participation in the legislature. Universality is unrealistic, but open and broad participation is both achievable and realistic - Why should we limit government to a small fixed number of permanently employed elected representatives? Why not a larger, more flexible group of part-time specialists, each participating in only one or two issues?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Create 13y agoUS to access Europeans' bank data in new deal The fact that the US was secretly accessing Swift bank data did not come to light until 2006. The deal gives the US access to bulk data from Swift, a firm that handles millions of bank transactions daily. A German Liberal MEP, Alexander Alvaro, said the deal "will ensure that terrorist financing can be traced back to its sources, but it will not affect day-to-day bank transfers of EU citizens". And the leader of the UK Conservative MEPs, Timothy Kirkhope, said it "sends the right signals about our resolve in fighting terrorism and our commitment to remaining a strong partner of the United States". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10552630
- smegel 13y agoI wonder if they will also grant Snowden asylum. I don't see how they could argue against doing so while kicking up a stink over the spying.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoI'm going to freely speculate here, but this seems obvious enough to any observer of international relations just to come out with it. Let's just call this story the way it is. EU governments have been in bed with the US for decades with spying. Yes, they've postured and done a bunch of things to make themselves look good -- Google had better watch their step -- but at the end of the day the EU is as guilty as any other country. If you don't understand that, you should read up more. Intel is traded freely among EU states and the U.S. What the EU states don't get from spying on their own folks, the U.S. provides them. And let's not even get into the "special" relationship that the majority English-speaking nations have with each other. Now that they're in a PR corner over the Snowden revelations, of course, it's time for a lot of invective, investigations, and all sorts of spectacles. None of which will dig out the truth. But it will be awfully exciting, and I'm sure my good friends across the pond will hang on every bit of new data. But there's no Snowden over there, so there's no huge revelation, and all the players have no motivation to start coming clean, so a full understanding of just what the various EU intelligence services are doing in regards to privacy is about as likely as scientists discovering the moon is made of bleu cheese. And for good reason. What's often overlooked in this discussion, and I rant about the security state as much as anybody else, is that some of this is absolutely necessary and proper for a free society to prosper. It's a question of limits, and of degrees of intrusion. It's not a black and white issue. The way forward isn't to tear it all down, it's to have a public investigation that sets some hard limits for what is and isn't acceptable to the populace. </rant>
- tokenizer 13y ago> It's a question of limits, and of degrees of intrusion. Great point. Honestly, my biggest issue with this is the secret nature of the FISA court and the near 100% approval for warrants. You NEED to have watchdogs for the watchers. You can't simply have massive ABC orgs having all of this information unchecked like it is now. The cat is out of the bag however. We can't simply stop using our technology, the question is like what you said: regulation and discussion of how to use this technology.
- mpyne 13y ago
- powertower 13y agoIt's political and economic theater. 1. Either the EU members did not want this trade agreement from the start, or they will use this as leverage to get a better deal, or something extra. 2. The various EU member countries knew full well what was going on. And have their own spying operations and networks in place. 3. The various EU member countries would do the same type of spying as the U.S. does - if they could. The idea that the U.S. should just "play fair" is so naive that it's self-destructive. Because no one "play's fair" in this world-wide, complicated, and high-risk/high-reward game. This is how the economical and geo-political game is. And this is why these leaks are so damaging to the U.S. and its citizens. It exposes the truth, for the sake of the truth, and does nothing else. Because for that something else to happen, whatever it is, it has to happen on a global scale, and since countries are in a natural state of competition for resources and benefits, it can't, and the game remains the same... That is, we can stop the spying, but no one else will. We can stop the exploitation, but no one else will. Doing so will just cause us to drop down to the lowest rank in this game, while everyone else runs to grab what's left on the table.
- embolism 13y agoWhy is this being downvoted? It's somewhat cynical, but pretending that international competition isn't a major driver in all of this seems bizarre.
- IgorPartola 13y agoI have a theory. I think that posts like this get upvoted because some people now use HN as their only news source and think that if world news does not make the front page, they will miss something vital. I promis, this is the last time this year I am going to complain about political posts being on the front page. I also promise to spend more time flagging this crap in the New section. At this point I would rather see a discussion of whether glass flows.
- csense 13y agoWhy should the US sign free trade agreements? The US was screwed by signing NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the USA and Mexico beginning in 1994). A bit of history: From c. 1950-1980, unions had a monopoly on labor supply in many industries. This allowed them to charge monopoly pricing, so employees gained a greater share of the wealth generated by their businesses. With the opening of US borders to foreign trade (NAFTA was a part of this trend, but I mark its beginning with President Nixon's visit to China), elimination of most tariffs, and lower worldwide shipping costs due to improved logistics and technology, manufacturing became fungible between countries. So manufacturers largely relocated to other countries like China or Mexico with lower wages and laxer regulations. I grew up in a manufacturing-heavy area that was economically devastated by these changes, and only now, decades later, is starting to recover. So I was exposed to the anti-free-trade position quite a bit, and I'm familiar with all its arguments; they sound convincing. And free trade's results look awfully poor. So can anyone explain to me the incentives of free trade agreements from the US's point of view? Or if there aren't any, the political or strategic reasons they've gotten signed regardless of their drawbacks?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ihsw 13y agoIf there is sufficient economic competition then free-trade agreements have limited economic impact, however the non-economic benefits are numerous. I'm not going to debate the legitimacy of 'monopoly pricing' and unions because that debate will degenerate quickly. In addition to elimination of tariffs, import quotas, and preferential sourcing of goods and services, FTAs enforce/encourage open-border policies that enable the free movement of people between different jurisdictions. FTAs are a step towards greater integration with other nations.
- saosebastiao 13y agoThe answer is simple. Imagine how successful your manufacturing union would be if it had a monopoly on manufacturing labor within your state. Now imagine how successful it would be if your employer couldn't sell the products you manufactured to anyone outside your state. Free trade gives American companies access to markets to sell their products, and it gives citizens (and not just those lucky enough to be in a union), access to products that would normally be more expensive if they were forced to buy from a monopoly (either on labor or on capital). That argument is strong enough that 87.5% (in other words, a supermajority of economists on both the right and left) would abolish trade restrictions altogether if they had their way. http://ew-econ.typepad.fr/articleAEAsurvey.pdf http://ew-econ.typepad.fr/articleAEAsurvey.pdf
- coopdog 13y agoHow can two companies negotiate when one knows every detail of the other, but not vice versa. One will always take everything 'left on the table' from the negotiation, and the other will just scrape along until a bump in the road, where they'll have no fat left to survive and will go bankrupt. The US needs to show that there are proper checks and balances on their information collection, that the data only leaves company servers when a judge signs off that there's reasonable suspicion of a crime, and that anyone subpoenaed gets automatically notified after some reasonable period of time.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoMust we continue to carry water for U.S. political factions by discussing this manufactured pseudo-news? How about we get back to the real story of the IRS election rigging that the administration desperately wants to be forgotten. Or the insane war in Syria where they are backing Al Qaeda and their nasty friends. No, we have to keep chewing over these planted stories about how we are shocked, shocked to find spying going on at the NSA. This week we are to believe that France, Germany, and Britain are poor helpless waifs who are going to pick up their alms bowls and go back to their orphanage because mean ole Unca Sam was sneaky. Echelon bait: nuclear, cosmic ray backscatter, intrusion countermeasure.
- aqme28 13y agoHow is this "pseudo-news"? It sounds very important and "newsworthy" to me.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoBecause it is not news! Every nation gathers as much information as it can, generally with total disregard for politeness and fair play. From time to time a competent journalist will write an exposé of the NSA, MI6, the FSB, etc. The exposés generally sink without a trace as the public finds signal and analysis nerds to be boring. So why is this time different? Why does a narcissistic leaker like Snowden stay in the press for weeks, when exposés with deep, careful rsearch get ignored? Because somebody needs the story to have staying power. It is a distraction from the real story, the wholesale rigging of the American politics by the IRS. We have a pretender in the White House and what we get are endless papparazzi stories about what hotel Snowden mght be staying in.