Brussels, 05/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - Which member states have worked, or are still working, with the NSA (American National Security Agency)? Why did the democratic control systems of the various international spy programmes not work? What were the data collected by the NSA and other intelligence services actually used for, such as the French information gathered in the various programmes for collecting data on French citizens and revealed before the summer by Le Monde? These are the very specific questions the MEPs of the committee on liberties of the European Parliament wanted to ask those invited to their first hearing on the activities of the American intelligence services, revealed in June by the Guardian and the Washington Post, on Thursday 5 September.
Speaking to Jacques Follorou, of Le Monde, the investigative journalist Jacob Appelbaum and Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian, the MEPs tried to find out about the extent of these programmes, their purpose and the intimidation which these journalists may also have been subjected to. The committee is planning to draft a report on this subject later this year, which will be the responsibility of British Socialist Claude Moraes (S&D). Amongst other things, the MEPs want to determine the consequences on the legality of these monitoring programmes and make recommendations to withstand them. The Commission, the Council and the member states are also taking part in a working group on the subject with their American counterparts. An initial meeting was held in Brussels on 22 and 23 July under top security conditions and the experts agreed to meet again in the second half of September. Commissioner Viviane Reding is to travel to Berlin on Thursday and Friday of this week to keep up the pressure on authorities in the middle of their election campaigns and to discuss the personal data protection dossier with them. (SP/transl.fl)