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| Shielding Europeans from the billion-dollar phone tap | Shielding Europeans from the billion-dollar phone tap |
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| Douwe Korff (Comment, 24 June) is right to stress the importance of EU action to shield European citizens from snooping by intelligence services. MEPs have pushed Brussels for safeguards against intrusive intelligence powers for years. EU privacy legislation is under discussion. As a negotiator on the reforms, I'm demanding that it include a provision to ban a company complying with a foreign surveillance order unless a treaty between that country and the EU guarantees legal rights of appeal and redress for Europeans. The European commission caved in to US pressure and dropped such a clause before the draft legislation was published. It is disappointing that even now EU commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for data protection, is only promising to "not object" when MEPs push to reinstate it. | Douwe Korff (Comment, 24 June) is right to stress the importance of EU action to shield European citizens from snooping by intelligence services. MEPs have pushed Brussels for safeguards against intrusive intelligence powers for years. EU privacy legislation is under discussion. As a negotiator on the reforms, I'm demanding that it include a provision to ban a company complying with a foreign surveillance order unless a treaty between that country and the EU guarantees legal rights of appeal and redress for Europeans. The European commission caved in to US pressure and dropped such a clause before the draft legislation was published. It is disappointing that even now EU commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for data protection, is only promising to "not object" when MEPs push to reinstate it. |
| Of course the threat is homegrown as well as transatlantic and international. We need leadership not only from EU institutions, but also from the 28 national parliaments, to seek restraints and accountability on the surveillance powers of each EU state. In the new EU data protection law we aim to achieve strong guarantees for individuals in relation to those who originally collect and process their personal data. But the value of these will be fatally undermined if the security establishment is allowed to snoop at will, shielded from scrutiny and legal restrictions by compliant executives. Sarah Ludford MEP Lib Dem, London | Of course the threat is homegrown as well as transatlantic and international. We need leadership not only from EU institutions, but also from the 28 national parliaments, to seek restraints and accountability on the surveillance powers of each EU state. In the new EU data protection law we aim to achieve strong guarantees for individuals in relation to those who originally collect and process their personal data. But the value of these will be fatally undermined if the security establishment is allowed to snoop at will, shielded from scrutiny and legal restrictions by compliant executives. Sarah Ludford MEP Lib Dem, London |
| • Edward Snowden has revealed that GCHQ secretly accessed huge amounts of internet and communications data (Report, 22 June). It would appear that in the last 30 years not much has changed, apart from the technology. In 1980, while on the Sunday Times, I worked with Duncan Campbell of the New Statesman on a story about the interception of civilian communications. After months of work and for reasons hard to fathom, the Sunday Times did not publish our story, but the New Statesman did. | • Edward Snowden has revealed that GCHQ secretly accessed huge amounts of internet and communications data (Report, 22 June). It would appear that in the last 30 years not much has changed, apart from the technology. In 1980, while on the Sunday Times, I worked with Duncan Campbell of the New Statesman on a story about the interception of civilian communications. After months of work and for reasons hard to fathom, the Sunday Times did not publish our story, but the New Statesman did. |
| This is what we wrote about the Menwith Hill base on the Yorkshire moors: "Its business for more than 15 years has been sifting the communications of private citizens, corporations and governments for information of political or economic value to the US intelligence community, and since the early 1960s its close partner has been the British Post Office. The Post Office has built Menwith Hill into the heart of Britain's national communications system – and Britain, of course, occupies a nodal position in the communications of the world, especially those of Western Europe." | This is what we wrote about the Menwith Hill base on the Yorkshire moors: "Its business for more than 15 years has been sifting the communications of private citizens, corporations and governments for information of political or economic value to the US intelligence community, and since the early 1960s its close partner has been the British Post Office. The Post Office has built Menwith Hill into the heart of Britain's national communications system – and Britain, of course, occupies a nodal position in the communications of the world, especially those of Western Europe." |
| We wrote that Menwith Hill was the largest and most secret civilian listening post maintained by the NSA outside the United States. It appeared to be the biggest tapping centre in the world. We called it the "billion-dollar phone tap". Linda Melvern London | We wrote that Menwith Hill was the largest and most secret civilian listening post maintained by the NSA outside the United States. It appeared to be the biggest tapping centre in the world. We called it the "billion-dollar phone tap". Linda Melvern London |
| • The letter from the chair of the GCHQ trade union group (24 June) is a delicious irony, as it wasn't so long ago that unions were banned at GCHQ by Margaret Thatcher because they would potentially interfere with the spying activity of the US on the rest of the world. That the local trade union should now be supporting surveillance of nearly all UK citizens is quite amazing. I haven't read any denigration of the thousands who work at GCHQ, other than of the senior officers and politicians who have been happy to authorise the collection of private data by way of all-encompassing intercepts. The legality of such intercepts has yet to be determined in court. Quite rightly, this is now in the public domain and there should be a debate on what is an appropriate intercept and who authorises it. Tony Jarvis Gloucester | • The letter from the chair of the GCHQ trade union group (24 June) is a delicious irony, as it wasn't so long ago that unions were banned at GCHQ by Margaret Thatcher because they would potentially interfere with the spying activity of the US on the rest of the world. That the local trade union should now be supporting surveillance of nearly all UK citizens is quite amazing. I haven't read any denigration of the thousands who work at GCHQ, other than of the senior officers and politicians who have been happy to authorise the collection of private data by way of all-encompassing intercepts. The legality of such intercepts has yet to be determined in court. Quite rightly, this is now in the public domain and there should be a debate on what is an appropriate intercept and who authorises it. Tony Jarvis Gloucester |
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