EU Parliament: Citizens' Rights Still Endangered By Mass Surveillance 53
New submitter hughankers writes with this slice of a press release from the European Parliament:: Too little has been done to safeguard citizens' fundamental rights following revelations of electronic mass surveillance, say MEPs in a resolution voted on Thursday. They urge the EU Commission to ensure that all data transfers to the US are subject to an "effective level of protection" and ask EU member states to grant protection to Edward Snowden, as a "human rights defender". Parliament also raises concerns about surveillance laws in several EU countries.
This resolution, approved by 342 votes to 274, with 29 abstentions, takes stock of the (lack of) action taken by the European Commission, other EU institutions and member states on the recommendations set out by Parliament in its resolution of 12 March 2014 on the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens, drawn up in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations.
This resolution, approved by 342 votes to 274, with 29 abstentions, takes stock of the (lack of) action taken by the European Commission, other EU institutions and member states on the recommendations set out by Parliament in its resolution of 12 March 2014 on the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens, drawn up in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations.
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The people that came from countries like Syria actually came to Europe to flee extremism (and war and no jobs and no safety, etc.).
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Weeeeeelll..... the failure there just MIGHT also have to do a teeny weeny little bit with us propping up dictators that hand us cheap oil in exchange for the tools to oppress their people.
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Nah. It's not about oil. Bush Sr. said so. I heard him, it was sometime after the "Read my lips, no new taxes!" pledge.
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His lips moved? So, in other words, he lied.
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Actually most of the time when Bush Sr. spoke he never really said anything. He'd talk for hours and not one thing of any substance, The one time he got emphatic it was a fucking lie though. I got the feeling at the time he meant it but he just didn't have the balls to follow through.
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The problem is, if history is any indicator, then that chopping off some heads and getting rid of a government doesn't really solve much. All you get is another, at least as bad, asshole on top.
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Those in power who are working against the people (pretty much most of them now) need to be removed from office, charged for their crimes, and new representatives of the people be voted in
that's the point isn't it?
Without entirely new mechanisms for keeping wealth from owning the Corporate Money Machine, the new thieves just replace the old thieves.
I give you the Contract ON America for example
The Party of the 10% came to change the world, and stayed to keep the change.
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Well, one would want a proper, justified warrant to search all this online data, anyway. It's a struggle to get even that.
Without it, imagine what a guy like Putin would do observing political enemies. It's bad enough where warrants even exist, there is no technological barrier, or even recording system, stop or even note the abuses.
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Warrants! How quaint. No one reads that old dusty Constitution nowadays anyway.
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Many countries require warrants and court approval for police investigations.
Most countries have national security and other exceptions for spying on their own citizens. European governments have been spying on their citizens under such exceptions since their founding, and they show no sign of changing those policies.
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You prove again that utter stupidity is indistinguishable from advanced sarcasm.
There *is* a guaranteed right to privacy (Score:4, Informative)
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR), article 7 right to privacy, article 8, right to protection of personal data.
That's just some of the ways the EU has jurisdiction here. It also has 2002/58/EC, 2006/24/EC, 2009/136/EC, etc etc etc.
http://loc.gov/law/help/online_2012-007949_RPT_PART_ONE.pdf
The danger is the people who are supposed to enforce this are turncoats.
Why, for example, should my visit to that URL be logged for surveillance? What business is it of anyones that I researched that URL? I didn't consent to it, I use Duck Duck Go specifically to reject Google's surveillance for example. Yet turncoats in certain governments, like Theresa May, are putting in mass surveillance laws that would permit warrantless searches for that URL. Why?
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We're considering as a set of those "unalienable" rights. I guess the founders of the USA never really thought stuff like that would be necessary since they put those amendments 4 and 10 into the Constitution. I guess they didn't count on corrupt judges on the Supreme Court re-interpreting the Constitution to mean what they'd like it to mean. Kind of like the definition of is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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In that case, Bill Clinton was right. The question was "Is there a relationship...", it should have been "is there now, or was there ever ...".
But a better example of the how the Supreme Court has modified the plain text of the constitution is how the interstate commerce clause is interpreted. The court is quite open about this: it claims that the Federal government can regulate anything that affects interstate commerce. But the word "affects" does not appear in the cl
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Oh come on. Is means is. If the question was wrong that doesn't make any difference about the definition of is. Is has a very simple definition. I do agree with the rest of your comment though.
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You have to be careful as words do change their meanings, sometimes drastically, in the course of a few centuries. In the case of "is", the meaning seems to have been stable for the last 4+ centuries. Other words not so much, take the etymology od "nice",
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"Is" means present tense. Now, currently. Bill Clinton was asked "Is there a relationship". He replied "no" and later, when accused of perjury on this point, by making the statement about the definition of "is", he was really pointing out either the deficiency of the question put to him, or the questioner's understanding of "is". The relationship was in the past, not current, so the correct answer to "is there a relationship" was "no".
You won't ever stop them (Score:1)
It's too easy to spy and collect/store information without anybody knowing. The only way to deal with it is to make sure what they have can't be used against you. Also, let's do more spying on them.
Ignoring sticks in own eyes (Score:2)
The feigned outrage is especially hypocritical with the E.U. since the world leader in mass surveillance, the U.K., is a member. They not only have mass cyber surveillance, but their population willingly submits to mass video surveillance as well.
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The feigned outrage is especially hypocritical with the E.U. since the world leader in mass surveillance, the U.K., is a member.
Hopefully not for too much longer.
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This.
And I think the obsession of European media and European governments over US surveillance serves three purposes: (1) to distract Europeans from domestic issues, (2) to make Europeans believe that compared to the US, things are pretty good, and (3) to pass legislation that forces data of European citizens to stay within Europe where it is easier for European spy agencies to get at.
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Because going through the US is a big hassle and US intelligence agencies generally only give out information when actual terrorism is involved (not because they care about the privacy of EU citizens, but because they can't be bothered). EU governments want much more detail and much easier access to private information, to pro
Pot, meet Kettle (Score:1)
No word on mass surveillance conducted by Europeans on Europeans? According to leaks, UK was even more egregious than US,
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/18/world/britains-gchq-the-brains-americas-nsa-the-money-behind-spy-alliance/
and the information sharing with US counterparts was done not only by Google and Facebook but also by German BND with NSA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/nsa-scandal-r
I do not live in the EU (Score:2)
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So the US and UK found all the expert Germans they could without asking any background questions.
Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
TICOM programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and the Gehlen Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So the US and UK soaked up a lot of skills and people with no understanding of their orig
Do We Do IT? (Score:2)
Still? More than ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems to be a concerted propaganda campaign suggesting that things are getting better. They are not. They are getting worse and worse.
Another non-binding resolution (Score:2)
This is another non binding resolution. The EU parliament is a fake parliament, which cannot really force the commission into doing something (I understand it could revoke it, though, but I am not sure since it never hapened)
The EU court of justice did the hard work, though, when it stroke down the US-EU safe harbor agreement..