PRISM: The Price of Transatlantic Intelligence Co-operation

European flag outside the Commission (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

News reports that the Obama administration successfully lobbied the European Commission to strip its data privacy legislation of a measure that would have limited US intelligence agencies ability to spy on EU citizens should come as little surprise.  Dropping the “Anti-Fisa clause” is just another step in the EU’s willingness to compromise the rights of its own citizens to the US for the sake of the transatlantic partnership. Anyone who has had to travel to the US, would have witnessed the erosions after September 11, 2001.

However, it is unsurprising that Europe behaves in this way.  The US is still the world’s most dominant power with technological power far beyond that available in the EU – why antagonise the US when most data servers of large tech companies holding EU citizens data are in the US? Would the Anti-Fisa clause have made any difference to US requests to US based companies regarding handing over data on EU citizens – especially when they are supposed to be done in secret? More importantly, would the EU want to jeopardise US-EU relations at the same time that it is opening trade talks.

Ultimately, the US will continue to weaken data protection legislation, and the EU is likely to obligee such requests.  This transatlantasism isn’t an equal partnership, it is a relationship with one clear powerful player.

For a great read on this go to Transatlantic Counter-Terrorism Cooperation

Related articles

• EU warns Obama of ‘grave consequences’ from NSA intel scandal (rawstory.com)
• EU breaks silence on US snooping scandal (euobserver.com)
• Prism scandal: European commission to seek privacy guarantees from US (guardian.co.uk)
• EU to USA: WTF is PRISM? (venturebeat.com)
• EU Commissioner Reding to take US to task over PRISM in Dublin this week (siliconrepublic.com)
• EU justice chief seeks answers on PRISM (worldbulletin.net)
• U.S. secretly watered down Europe’s proposed privacy rules, report claims (gigaom.com)
• EU wants clarity from US on PRISM spying program (theverge.com)
• MEPs lambast Prism, will demand EU citizen protection at EU-US summit (wired.co.uk)
• EU justice chief demands explanation from U.S. on data spying (panarmenian.net)