Powerless, Europe Must Nevertheless Stand Up to NSA Spying (El Pais, Spain)
"Defending the rights of 500 million Europeans should be reason
enough to mobilize E.U. authorities - even if they are in quite a powerless position.
... We must not fall into the trap of discussing whether Snowden is hero or villain,
a pseudo-vigilante or an idealist. The debate should focus on abuses of human
liberties and the minimum level of loyalty the United States owes the European
Union."
The
mass spying on people, companies and governments cannot be accepted as
something inherent to the modern world. One of today's democratic challenges is
to put an end to the trivialization of intrusions on the private sphere like
those made possible by programs used by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) for collecting massive amounts of telephone records
and Internet communications. Defending the rights of 500 million Europeans
should be reason enough to mobilize E.U. authorities - even if they are in
quite a powerless position.
First,
this is due to the almost total reliance on American technology and digital
industry; and secondly, to the lack of a robust data protection legislation, which
has been blocked for many years by internal divisions among E.U. members. The Obama
Administration itself has successfully pressed Europeans not to erect obstacles
to requests to their telephone and digital technology companies for data, which
due to the force of events, have become global. The scandal over the PRISM
program now forces European authorities to act against their own
small-mindedness and reconsider the middle ground between security and freedom.
It
is also important for citizens to become increasingly aware that the use of a
mobile phone, a tablet, or a computer, is not something impermeable to big eyes
and ears. Once we're online, we enter a world that knows very few limits and restrictions.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
It
is true that even the most sophisticated spy networks have their Achilles heel,
which is individualism. Edward Snowden - like Bradley Manning with WikiLeaks -
has shown that one person is enough to defy the spider web of secrecy that which
the security organs of superpowers like the United States operate, and which is
so appreciated for other reasons. And of course, we must not fall into the trap
of discussing whether Snowden is hero or villain, a pseudo-vigilante or an
idealist. The debate should focus on abuses of human liberties and the minimum
level of loyalty the United States owes the European Union.
Without
a doubt, European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding
will seek an urgent and precise explanation from the U.S. attorney general. The
tone that has now been adopted by the commission is an improvement on the
excessive caution of her initial response, which was limited to an expression
of “concern” over press leaks that revealed the scandal. Of course, that was
quite similar to the wording Brussels employed 13 years ago when, before September
11, a secret surveillance network called Echelon was discovered, but was
promptly buried under the nebulous label of the global war on terror that began
after those attacks.
Europe
should see to it that this latest scandal isn't just forgotten. It must keep up its defenses against this current
incarnation of Big Brother.
