EU demands full explanations from US regarding NSA spying - which has not been forthcoming to date , Data and Trade Deals at risk of delay says EU Parliament .... Bolivia threatens to close the US Embassy after the imperial hijack !

Wayne Madsen speaks out on recent censored article......

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

Edward Snowden merely confirmed what was already reported -- over four years ago.

The Guardian and The Washington Post did not have the scoop on NSA collection of meta-data. This news site published that story in February 2009, over four years before either The Guardian or the Post. There is a reason why they call us "conspiracy kooks," they can't stand the competition.WMR excerpt:

February 4, 2009 -- SPECIAL REPORT.  NSA's meta-data email surveillance program exposed

WMR has learned details of one of the most important components of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program code named "STELLAR WIND." The highly-classified STELLAR WIND program was initiated by the George W. Bush administration with the cooperation of major U.S. telecommunications carriers, including AT&T and Verizon.

The interception of text communications by STELLAR WIND was a major priority of the NSA program.

The major NSA system for intercepting text communications is called PINWALE. On September 15, 2008, WMR first reported on how PINWALE was used to target Russian e-mails, "Code-named PINWALE, the NSA email surveillance system targets Russian government, military, diplomatic, and commercial email traffic and burrows into the text portions of the email to search for particular words and phrases of interest to NSA eavesdroppers."

WMR has learned additional details of PINWALE. The system is linked to a number of meta-databases that contain e-mail, faxes, and text messages of hundreds of millions of people around the world and in the United States. Informed sources have revealed to WMR that PINWALE can search these meta-databases using various parameters like date-time group, natural language, IP address, sender and receipients, operating system, and other information embedded in the header. When an NSA analyst is looking for Farsi or Arabic e-mails, the sender and recipients are normally foreign nationals, who are not covered by restrictions on eavesdropping on U.S. "persons" once imposed on NSA by United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18). However, STELLAR WIND and PINWALE negated both USSID 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by permitting NSA analysts to read the e-mails, faxes, and text messages of U.S. persons when PINWALE search parameters included searches of e-mails in English. When English language text communications are retrieved, analysts read the text message content to determine whether it contains anything to do with terrorism. However, rather than being deleted, the messages are returned to the meta-databases.

Text message records in PINWALE, a system developed by NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, are contained in three major meta-databases code-named LIONHEART, LIONROAR, and LIONFUSION.

Information that is already in the public domain can still be spiked and censored: Like this article on European Union countries complaining about NSA surveillance while they assist NSA is conducting that very same surveillance. This article in The Guardian was taken down because the surveillance powers are becoming uncomfortable in the sunshine.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/eu-demands-explanations-for-us-spying-threatens-data-pacts-and-trade-deal.html

FRIDAY, JULY 5, 2013

EU Demands Explanations for US Spying, Threatens Data Pacts and Trade Deal

Oh, this is getting to be fun!

The lead story at the Financial Times tonight is about how the European Union is threatening to suspend two data sharing agreements with the US. The pink paper also adds that this row has the potential to undermine the EU-US trade negotiations which are set to start next week (wespeculated a few days ago that this might come to pass). On our side of the pond, so far only the Wall Street Journal has weighted in, with a cheery headline U.S.-EU Trade Talks on Track Despite Spy Fears which is narrowly accurate since the trade negotiations have not been rescheduled but seems to understate the degree of unhappiness and ire.

The interesting question is how and why has this row escalated now? Mind you, the Eurocrats do have a lot to be angry about. Remember, the US was caught spying on EU officials. Der Speigel released information from Edward Snowden that charged that the NSA had bugged the European Union’s offices in Washington and the UN and hacked into their computers (which enabled them to monitor meetings) and targeted other missions.

If you remember, this story broke shortly before a G8 meeting in Dublin. Obama got the cold shoulder. The European officials appear to have cornered the Americans. This AFP story ran June 14, while the summit was underway:

The United States has agreed to share information with the European Union about its huge Internet and phone surveillance programme, a senior EU official said today.

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding secured the agreement from US Attorney General Eric Holder after talks with the American official in Dublin, Malmstrom said.

“Agreed with the US in Dublin to set up a transatlantic expert group to receive more info on PRISM and look at the safeguards,” Malmstrom said on Twitter, without elaborating…

The EU and US officials were meeting as part of already scheduled ministerial talks in the Irish capital.

The move comes days after the EU demanded answers from Holder and warned of a “grave” threat to the rights of European citizens from the intelligence programme.

As I am reading between the lines of the two FT stories tonight, US agrees to talks with EU on surveillance, and Brussels threatens to suspend data sharing with US in spying row, the Administration may be even more on the back foot that it appears. (I welcome input from readers of the European press, particularly those who have a good handle for how the EU deals with the governments of member states over jurisdictional issues).

On July 1, TechWeekEurope reported that (hat tip Lambert):

Free trade talks are due to start next week between the US and Europe, and Brussels officials have been hinting that the snooping allegations will throw a spanner in the works….

Even before the revelations of spying on the European authorities, the European Commission was already very concerned about US activities, according to a statement sent to TechWeekeurope: “We have seen the media reports and we are of course concerned for possible consequences on EU citizens’ privacy. For the moment it is too early to draw any conclusion or to comment further,” said home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström.

So if EU official were fulminating to the media, they had almost certainly been making unhappy noises through official channels too.

On Wednesday July 3, the EU threw a bomb. Notice the timing; they had to know this was before a major US holiday, but must have been completely frustrated by the lack of responsiveness of the US in light of the pending trade negotiations (as in they were not about to give up a huge bargaining chip, but the US was apparently going to try to keep the negotiations on schedule). I’m providing this speech in full because I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a reprimand like this between allies (emphasis theirs):

Plenary Session of the European Parliament/Strasbourg

3 July 2013

MAIN MESSAGES

1/ On the NSA spying allegations:

It is a matter of mutual trust and good practices in relations between friends and allies. It is clear that for negotiations on the trade agreement with the US to succeed, there needs to be confidence, transparency and clarity among the negotiating partners. This excludes spying on EU institutions.

2/ On the US PRISM programme:

The purpose [of the transatlantic working group] is to establish the facts and for the Commission to be able to assess the proportionality of the programmes with regard to the data protection of EU citizens.

The US appears to take our concerns regarding PRISM seriously. Attorney General Eric Holder committed, in a letter to me yesterday, to set up the expert group. We spoke yesterday evening on the phone and we agreed that the group will have its first meeting this month, and a second one in Washington in September. The Commission will report about the findings of the group to Parliament and Council in October.

3/ On the UK’s TEMPORA programme:

The message is clear: the fact that the programmes are said to relate to national security does not mean that anything goes. A balance needs to be struck between the policy objective pursued and the impact on fundamental rights, in particular the right to privacy. It is a question of proportionality.

As regards next steps, we will continue the discussion with the UK on the Tempora project.

4/ On the EU’s data protection reform:

PRISM and Tempora are a wake-up call for us to advance on our data protection reform for both the private and the public sector. A strong framework for data protection is neither a constraint nor a luxury but a necessity.

Various elements of the reform are of particular relevance. It will clarify the territorial application of the law, including to companies operating in the EU. It will have a broad definition of personal data. It will clarify regime for international transfers. It will impose obligations and responsibilities on processors as well as controllers of data.

[I]t has become urgent to proceed on a solid piece of legislation. Any delay in the data protection reform only plays in the hands of those who do not share the objective of a high level of data protection.

SPEECH

The news over the past weeks and days has been deeply disturbing. Revelations, claims and counter-claims have been made at a dizzying speed. This debate is a useful opportunity to explain the different strands of the issue and to make sense of what the EU can do to address the situation.

I believe that we should carefully distinguish between two aspects to the problem. The first concerns international diplomatic relations. The second concerns the rights of EU citizens.

As regards the first matter of alleged spying on EU and EU Member States’ diplomatic premises, the Commission has raised its serious concerns with the US. Yesterday, the President made a statement to this House in the context of the debate on the European Council Conclusions. The issue was also discussed by Vice-President Ashton directly with State Secretary Kerry. It is a matter of mutual trust and good practices in relations between friends and allies.

It is clear that for negotiations on the trade agreement with the US to succeed, there needs to be confidence, transparency and clarity among the negotiating partners. This excludes spying on EU institutions.

The second issue, related to the right of EU citizens, was debated here one month ago. I am happy to update you on latest developments.

In relation to the revelations on the PRISM programme and the Verizon case, I asked a series of questions in a letter to my US counterpart, Attorney-General Eric Holder, on 10 June. I have also spoken with him at the EU-US Justice Ministerial on 14 June in Dublin.

I raised our concerns regarding the impact of Verizon and PRISM on the fundamental rights of EU citizens. I asked for clarifications on the different levels of protection that apply to US and EU citizens. And I asked about the conflict companies can find themselves in when they are faced with competing obligations under US and EU law.

Some explanations for which I am awaiting written confirmation were given. But all questions have not been answered so far. This is why after the Ministerial I have written again, together with my colleague Cecilia Malmström, to our US counterpart asking for answers in particular on the volume of the data collected, the scope of the programmes and the judicial oversight for Europeans.

At the Ministerial in Dublin, we agreed with the US to set up a transatlantic group of experts to establish the facts surrounding these programmes. The purpose is to establish the facts and for the Commission to be able to assess the proportionality of the programmes with regard to the data protection of EU citizens.

The US appears to take our concerns regarding PRISM seriously. Attorney General Eric Holder committed, in a letter to me yesterday, to set up the expert group. We spoke yesterday evening on the phone and we agreed that the group will have its first meeting this month, and a second one in Washington in September. The Commission will report about the findings of the group to Parliament and Council in October.

At the EU-US Ministerial, I called once again for the conclusion of the negotiations for an EU-US Umbrella Agreement on data transfer for law enforcement purposes. An agreement that would guarantee equal treatment of EU and US citizens when their data is processed for law enforcement purposes. I urged my US counterpart to take the necessary steps to ensure real progress.

In response to media reports about the UK Tempora Programme, I have addressed a letter to Foreign Secretary William Hague and asked to clarify the scope of the programme, its proportionality and the extent of judicial oversight that applies.

The message is clear: the fact that the programmes are said to relate to national security does not mean that anything goes. A balance needs to be struck between the policy objective pursued and the impact on fundamental rights, in particular the right to privacy. It is a question of proportionality.

As many of you said in our last debate in June, programmes such as PRISM and Tempora are a wake-up call for us to advance on our data protection reform for both the private and the public sector.

A strong framework for data protection is neither a constraint nor a luxury but a necessity. It will help reverse the trend of falling trust in the way in which data is handled by companies to which it is entrusted.

That’s why our proposed reform is an important part of the answer. It will maintain the current high level of data protection in the EU by updating citizens’ rights, guaranteeing they know when their privacy has been violated and making sure that when their consent is required, the consent is real.

Various elements of the reform are of particular relevance. It will clarify the territorial application of the law, including to companies operating in the EU. It will have a broad definition of personal data. It will clarify regime for international transfers. It will impose obligations and responsibilities on processors as well as controllers of data.

Only a strong data protection regime can bring this trust both for EU citizens and for businesses and contribute to stability and growth of the digital economy. And trust is also the basis for EU-US cooperation in the field of law enforcement.

As many of you said in June, it has become urgent to proceed on a solid piece of legislation. Any delay in the data protection reform only plays in the hands of those who do not share the objective of a high level of data protection.

The whole world is watching us on this. And the debate on PRISM and similar programmes only reinforces that we have a chance to set a gold standard for data protection.

As regards next steps, we will continue the discussion with the UK on the Tempora project.

Together with the Presidency, we have started the discussion on the transatlantic expert group which will include experts from Member States. Based on the information gathered, the Commission will report back to the European Parliament and to the Council in October.

To underscore the seriousness of this speech, the EU Parliament voted on July 4 supporting the European Commission should it “wish” to suspend the data sharing agreements at issue with the US (see here for details) From ZDNet (h/t furzy mouse via DSWright).

This as a defacto pre-authorization. And the consequences would not be trivial:

Should the Commission decide it necessary to suspend the data sharing agreement of passenger details — including personal and sensitive individual data — it could ultimately lead to the grounding of flights between the EU and the U.S.

The Parliament also approved launching investigations into the surveillance of Europeans by the NSA.

Now let’s read the FT articles with this in the back of our minds. First, it provides some tidbits as to why the EU is even more ripshit than it otherwise might be. The EU approved the data sharing provisions only with reluctance and after top level arm-twisting (and one assumes reassurances):

Access to such information was considered so vital to the US that three years ago Joseph Biden, the vice-president, and Hillary Clinton, then-secretary of state, made a rare visit to Brussels to persuade EU lawmakers to back the deal.

And indeed, Obama prior to the July 3 dressing down did not seem to be taking the EU upset very seriously:

Earlier in the week, Mr Obama sought to play down the allegations by suggesting that most countries conducted similar forms of espionage, including on allies and partners.

“Every intelligence service, not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there’s an intelligence service, there’s one thing they’re going to be doing: they’re going to be trying to understand the world better and what’s going on in capitals around the world from sources that aren’t available through the New York Times or NBC News,” he said.

So what happens after the EU escalates the row? He calls Merkel, who, remember, is not an EU official and offer mere “parallel” discussions of security matters. Why don’t we call it “dual tracking” instead? Or as Lambert said, it’s like being the boyfriend presented with evidence of cheating but wanting to pretend everything is fine so he can buy that nice big house with his girlfriend. More from the FT:

The Obama administration has offered “parallel discussions” on its spying operations on Europeans alongside high-profile trade talks due to start on Monday, according to the president of Lithuania, holder of the EU’s rotating presidency.

Dalia Grybauskaite said the EU was sent a letter by Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, detailing the offer “targeting” a start date of Monday, the same day the first round of EU-US trade talks are due to begin. Ms Grybauskaite said she was given a copy of the letter by José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

She said it followed a phone call between President Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Wednesday in which the offer was discussed….

In Wednesday’s phone call with Ms Merkel, president Obama said that he “takes seriously the concerns of our European allies and partners”, according to the White House.

If I were at the EU, I’d be even angrier. Obama calls Merkel apparently in the hope she can muscle the EU. And they’ve only sent the EU, the party with the dog in this fight, a letter?

Germany exercises tons of sway on matters related to bailouts of periphery countries due to their checkbook, but I doubt they have the same clout on this issue. And the EU is on the austerity bandwagon, so they and Germany are largely on the same page on that front. Here, Merkel has been suspiciously quiet even though the Der Speigel disclosures have Germany in an uproar. You’d think Merkel would want to get on or at least fake being on the bandwagon until the September elections were past; her “say as little as possible and hope this blows over” posture suggests she is either awfully keen to curry favor with the US or feels she is at risk. (The FT points out that even the key pro-US German politicians are making harsh public statements).

Oh, and France’s Hollande, who called the US spying “unacceptable” hasn’t gotten a phone call from Obama. But he might now be busy with his own little spying scandal. The Guardian reports on Le Monde’s bombshell:

France runs a vast electronic surveillance operation, intercepting and stocking data from citizens’ phone and internet activity, using similar methods to the US National Security Agency’s Prism programme…

An investigation by the French daily found that the DGSE, France’s external intelligence agency, had spied on the French public’s phone calls, emails and internet activity. The agency intercepted signals from computers and phones in France as well as between France and other countries, looking not so much at content but to create a map of “who is talking to whom”, the paper said.

Le Monde said data from emails, text messages, phone records, accessing of Facebook and Twitter, and internet activity going through sites such as Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! was stocked for years on vast servers on three different floors in the basement of the DGSE headquarters.

The paper described the vast spying programme as secret, “outside any serious control” and illegal.

The metadata from phone and internet use was stocked in a “gigantic database” which could be consulted by six French intelligence and security agencies as well as the police.

The paper said Bernard Barbier, technical director of the DGSE, had previously described the system as “probably the biggest information centre in Europe after the English”.

Referring to the system as a “French Big Brother”, Le Monde said the French state was able to use the surveillance “to spy on anybody at any time”. The paper wrote: “All of our communications are spied on.”

Le Monde said that after Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s Prism surveillance programme prompted indignation in Europe, France “only weakly protested, for two excellent reasons: Paris already knew about it, and it was doing the same thing”.

When revelations about the Prism programme harvesting citizens’ data emerged, the French government did not immediately comment. But after fresh allegations about the US spying on the European Union and foreign embassies, including the French embassy in Washington, the president, François Hollande, said these practices must “cease immediately”. France demanded the suspension of talks on the EU-US free trade pact until it had received full explanations about surveillance.

If France can be believed, it may hold the moral high ground in one small respect: it says it didn’t spy on the US embassy in Paris.

But back to Obama. He’s in trouble with the EU and he calls only Merkel? If you have someone upset with you (particularly an institutional someone), you go and make a gesture of calming ruffled feathers, even if the resulting conversation is remarkably devoid of substance. You make a ritual acknowledgment that they are upset and they matter enough that you will do something about it (that “something” to be determined). That does not mean it needs to be Obama but it needs to be somebody pretty senior just from a protocol standpoint and then you turn it over to the juniors to schedule meetings. Does Obama believe he’s in charge of the biggest superpower and no one is gonna dare look too hard at the security state apparatus? Does he assume he can just treat this as a mere problem of optics? He seems to think he can ramrod his pet trade deal through over the EU’s dead body, which is a completely bizarre given that this is not a multilateral deal, but an EU-US pact. François Heisbourg of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique noted in the FT right before the July 3 EU dressing down that this deal was on the rocks:

As a consequence, the prospects for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership may be irreparably damaged. The timing is perfect for a debacle of great economic and political proportions. Discussions on TTIP are supposed to begin this week. Politically, the EU-US symbolism of the deal is now harder to sell. In substantive terms, TTIP would necessarily include data exchange and protection regimes – a difficult issue made potentially intractable given what we now know of America’s wholesale approach to data acquisition. Finally, there is a legitimate EU concern that its negotiators would be spied upon by the NSA without the US delegates suffering the same disadvantage.

The best that can be hoped for at this stage is that TTIP will be used by the Europeans as leverage for securing tangible assurances from the US regarding the downscaling of elements of NSA activities directed against Europe. All in all, one must wonder who in Washington decided that it was in the US interest to risk compromising such an enterprise for the dubious joys of eavesdropping on the palavers of the eurocracy.

For the sake of completeness, we need to give you the Journal’s chipper reading:

In recent days, European officials had expressed concerns about the spying issue but said the trade talks shouldn’t be affected. The overall tone in Europe appeared calmer than early in the week, just after German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported that the U.S. placed listening devices in EU offices in Washington, infiltrated computers there and electronically spied on EU bodies elsewhere.

I’m hoping savvy European readers will help calibrate. but the EU speech was hardly calm. And I don’t see the remarks from EU officials (as opposed to those of national leaders) as quite as comforting. The EU president said she “hoped” to separate the trade from the surveillance issues. Barroso, the head of the European Commission, tried to sound conciliatory without backing down on the data issues:

“We are committed to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, but we expect that in parallel we have work in the EU-U.S. working groups that will analyze the oversight of the intelligence activities, intelligence collection and also the question of privacy and data protection,” Mr. Barroso said in Berlin on Wednesday.

I suspect that factions within the EU are having a big slugfest, and the outcome is still in play.
As we’ve said earlier (see here and here) the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP would be terrible for ordinary Americans; they’s allow most regulations to be gutted as anti-competitive and are designed to produce a race to the bottom in terms of environmental, financial and labor market standards. So if the NSA disclosures wreck one of these deals, that alone would be cause for considerable cheer. Perhaps readers can find an 11th dimensional chess play here, but it looks from this remove that Obama is simply overplaying his hand and revealing himself to be a rube on the international front. The Europeans have caught out the Obama Administration in a Big Lie, and unlike ordinary Americans, they are in a position to retaliate. Whether they do remains to be seen, but if so, I hope we get to see some of the knife work.