The EU needs to start protecting its own citizens from the American global spying initiatives and quit being “hypocritical” when it comes to reforming its own data protection system, said the EU’s Justice Commissioner.
Viviane Reding, a vocal critic of American cyber surveillance,
lashed out against EU member states’ reaction in wake of Edward
Snowden revelations, urging the bloc to protect citizens’ private
information and seek more legal assurances from Washington.
“There's been a lot of hypocrisy in the
debate,”Reding said at the Centre for European Policy
Studies in Brussels on Tuesday. “If the EU wants to be
credible in its efforts to rebuild trust, if it wants to act as
an example for other continents, it also has to get its own house
in order.”
“The EU itself should also look carefully at some of its
[data protection] laws. Neither the Commission, the Council, nor
the European Parliament can be proud of the Data Retention
Directive.”
The Directive requires telecom companies to store all telephony
metadata, including geo-location data. Criticizing some aspects
of the Directive, Reding said that the data “is kept for too
long, it is too easily accessed and the risk of abuse is too
great.”
“One cannot simply use ‘national security’ as a trump card
and disregard citizens' rights. That is what others used to do.
The European Data Retention law needs a health check. The EU
Charter of Fundamental Rights is the medicine,” she told the
audience in Brussels.
EU member states are currently engaged in negotiations on a new
data protection law which would require companies like Google,
Facebook, or Twitter to ask for permission from authorities
before using personal information. But governments have yet to
agree on the wording as the EU Parliament threatens to block the
law if privacy concerns are not properly addressed.
In particular, Reding criticized Britain over its role in helping
the US spy overseas, warning that if allegations of the UK’s
involvement in intercepting and storing personal data from fibre
optic cables were true, she would launch “infringement
proceedings”. While stating that EU has no power over its
member’s national security operations, Reding called for a strong
response.
“If I come across a single email, a single piece of evidence
that the TEMPORA program [British spy agency GCHQ surveillance
program] is not used purely for national security purposes, I
will launch infringement proceedings. The mass collection of
personal data is unacceptable.”
The European Commission wrote a letter to the UK government
expressing its concerns about the scope of the TEMPORA program.
The response was evidently not what Brussels had anticipated.
“The response was short: ‘Hands off, this is national
security’,” Reding said.
At the same time, the EU’s justice chief urged the US to provide
more legal safeguards to strengthen the Safe Harbour data privacy
agreement. If such provisions were not met, Reding warned she
would work to suspend the agreement that allows companies that
gather consumer information in Europe to send it to the United
States.
“For Safe Harbour to be fully roadworthy the US will have to
service it,” she said. “Safe Harbour has to be
strengthened or it will be suspended.”
Commenting on the latest leak that implicated the NSA and its UK
counterpart, GCHQ, to have the ability to harvest sensitive
personal data from phone apps that transmit users’ data across
the web, such as the extremely popular Angry Birds game, Reding said:
“Now I know why the ‘Angry birds’ look so angry. Often with
applications, the rule is 'take it or leave it'. That’s when
trust evaporates. That's when people feel forced to part with
their privacy.”
Reding also drew on the interconnected issues of data collection
by private firms and spying activities by governments.
“Backdoors have been built, encryption has been weakened.
Concerns about government surveillance drive consumers away from
digital services.”
Private data should not be kept forever simply because storage
has become cost-effective, Reding said. “Data should not be
processed simply because algorithms are refined. Safeguards
should apply and citizens should have rights.”