European Parliament to hear Snowden testimony

Whether you think Pope Francis or Edward Snowden was the man of last year, there is no denying that Snowden’s revelations on the extent of the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance, aided and abetted by the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was the biggest scoop of 2013. Today (9 January) 36 MEPs out of 39 on the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) voted to invite Snowden to testify as part of its inquiry into mass surveillance of EU citizens. The testimony will consist of responses to questions sent by MEPs and will not be live because of the risks that this might pose to his security - at present, a date has not been fixed for the showing of this evidence.

Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the US Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, when asked at a European Parliament hearing in December if the NSA had spied on the Brazilian oil company Petrobas, replied that the US and NSA did not and would not be involved in commercially motivated espionage and swiftly went on to lambast China’s, admittedly poor, record in this area – but the question wasn’t about China. I would be loath to doubt the integrity of Congressman Rogers, a former employee of the FBI, but either he is lying or is being kept in the dark by the NSA – which is more than plausible, given that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence has already been shown to have lied to Congress. While not wanting to go into the vexed question of US campaign funding, it is worth noting that Congressman Rogers’ top campaign contributor is ManTech International, an organization that specializes in technologies for national security.

Recent leaks that have emerged reveal that surveillance went well beyond the ‘war on terrorism’ and well into the field of trade and commerce. Whilst al-Queda is by its nature a rather murky organisation, it would be surprising to find that the Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Competition Policy Joaquin Alumnia and Chancellor Angela Merkel were on the side of Holy Jihad. An even more embarrassing leak involved the revelation that an organization dedicated to improving the lot of cotton producers in some of the world’s poorest countries through WTO negotiations was being spied on by a country that provides huge subsidies to this sector. And ’poor’ includes countries such as Mali, where 50% of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.

Pressure is mounting in the US. A recent editorial in the New York Times called for an amnesty for Snowden, since he showed that  government officials had routinely and deliberately broken the law, because he did express his misgivings but was ignored and because there is no proof that the information leaked has damaged national security – though it has somewhat tarnished the US’s reputation. Tech companies rounded on Obama at a recent discussion originally billed to consider Obamacare’s IT problems and some of the major tech players have called for surveillance reform. In addition, a US court has ruled against the government, finding that the indiscriminate and arbitrary collection and retention of phone records was unconstitutional and ‘almost-Orwellian’.

Parliament recommendations

Claude Moraes MEP has drafted a report making a number of recommendations, including the immediate suspension of the ‘Safe Harbor’ agreement, this will be discussed on 15 January at the European Parliament’s plenary in Strasbourg.

In addition to this recommendation, Claude Moraes has called for a European Digital Habeas Corpus. Habeas corpus was developed under the English legal system and is recognized as a fundamental legal instrument in safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary state action. The principle of habeas corpus ensures that a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention when there is insufficient cause or evidence. Moraes is proposing that posted, processed, stored and tracked information for an individual constitutes their ‘body of personal data’ and that this should not be ‘imprisoned’ or stored and used in an arbitrary way that infringes an individual’s right to privacy.

To see all recommendations in Claude Moraes’ draft report click here. The deadline for amendments is 18h on 22 January.

Click here to see EU Reporter’s interview with Claude Moraes MEP.

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