Brussels, 10/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 7 June, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström said that she was “concerned” by the revelations in the Washington Post and The Guardian regarding communications espionage practised by US intelligence. The commissioner intends to request further information from the US authorities regarding this matter and the possible repercussions on the private lives of European citizens. The Commissioner stated that “we are, of course, concerned for possible consequences on EU citizens' privacy. For the moment, it is too early to draw any conclusion or to comment further. We will get in contact with our US counterparts to seek more details on these issues”. On 7 June, Françoise Castex MEP (S&D, France) called on the European Commission to investigate these practices and defend “the private life of European citizens”. The S&D Group also wants the scandal to be taken into consideration in the current trade negotiations.
On 6 June, the Washington Post and the British newspaper, The Guardian revealed that, on the basis of information provided by a former CIA employee, Edward Snowden, US intelligence was gathering phone records in the US and may have access to the servers of major groups such as Google and Facebook. Between 2007 in 2011, the Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple sites began to be integrated into a secret National Security Agency (NSA) programme known as PRISM. This programme enables analysts to consult, directly and in real-time, e-mails sent out on Hotmail and Gmail, as well as all conversations, photos, videos and internet chats on these sites.
The EU has negotiated several legal agreements with the US so that European data can be transmitted and examined by US Homeland Security services as part of the fight against terrorism, such as the PNR and “Swift” agreements. On Monday, Mina Andreeva, the spokesperson for Viviane Reding, explained that, with regard to these revelations, more information is required and, in the field of private data protection law, it is up to the respective national judges “to say whether this personal data can be legally transmitted to” the US. The matter will be raised at the end of the week in the EU-US ministerial meeting, which will bring together Commissioner Malmström and Commissioner Reding with the US Secretary of State for Homeland Security, the US Prosecutor General and the Lithuanian ministers for justice and home affairs.
The legal questions raised by this kind of situation are not new and the Commission has already discussed the subject with the US, particularly within the context of discussions relating to the transatlantic agreement on data protection, which will head up all data transfer sectoral programmes. The new directive, proposed by Viviane Reding in January 2012, on personal data protection in the context of police and legal cooperation (alongside the general regulation discussed on Friday June at the Council in Luxembourg), could also provide some of the answers to questions raised by the PRISM programme and help define standards in cases of data transfer to third countries as part of police operations. The member states, however, are dragging their feet and have only made slight progress in examining this text. (SP/transl.fl)