http://www.democraticunderground.com/1268266

At the European summit, Merkel (Germany), Hollande (France) and Faymann (Austria) spoke of getting an agreement on protecting privacy and data by the end of 2014 or beginning of 2015. Eurpean elections will take place next year.

This is a serious matter, a serious breach of diplomatic protocols. Our surveillance of European communications was way beyond the normal snooping and intelligence gathering.

Unacceptable for sure. We just really exceeded the limits that friendship imposes. It's a demonstration of contempt for Europeans on our part. Typical of the Bush administration. If it has continued under the Obama administration, it sure appears to me to be the sort of thing that Bush and his buddies did. Remember the Freedom Fries -- contempt for France. And Bush squeezing Angela Merkel's shoulders -- contempt for the German chancellor. It is insulting to others to act toward them in this way. "Old Europe," remember.

I hope Obama makes this right. He may have to fire a few people in the intelligence service to get the point across.

hadn't seen that Group either, looks interesting.

I join you in hoping Obama takes a clear stand. Surely he has the political cover now, so to speak.

And you bet I remember "Old Europe". It echoes in many DU posts as well, unfortunately.

The French government has a history of spying on the US for industrial espionage (stealing US company tech and giving it to French companies). They were last publically caught in the 1990s, but there's little reason to believe the program ended.

Oh wait, we're supposed to believe the US is the only nation spying. My bad.

Also, an international protocol would work both ways. A Euro-American agreement would too. We are supposed to be entering into trade agreements with Europe. Maybe an agreement about coordinating surveillance and espionage will be part of that package.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#France_and_the_United_States

Follow the citations for more direct links.

the airbus.

Kurt Kleiner
Mother Jones November 1, 1999 (NOTE THE DATE 1999.)

No one is surprised that the United States uses sophisticated electronic spying techniques against its enemies. But Europeans are increasingly worried about allegations that the U.S. uses those same techniques to gather economic intelligence about its allies.

. . . .

National Security Agency, through an electronic surveillance system called Echelon, routinely tracks telephone, fax, and e-mail transmissions from around the world and passes on useful corporate intelligence to American companies.

Among the allegations: that the NSA fed information to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas enabling the companies to beat out European Airbus Industrie for a $ 6 billion contract; and that Raytheon received information that helped it win a $ 1.3 billion contract to provide radar to Brazil, edging out the French company Thomson-CSF. These claims follow previous allegations that the NSA supplied U.S. automakers with information that helped improve their competitiveness with the Japanese (see "Company Spies," May/June 1994).

. . . .

Fueling allegations of corporate espionage is the fact that defense contractors and U.S. intelligence agencies are linked extensively through business relationships. Raytheon, for instance, has large contracts to service NSA equipment, according to the European report.

More

https://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/991101-echelon-mj.htm

Note: This was Mother Jones from 1999. Another reason to oppose Hillary Clinton for our president. The Clinton administration had a history. We need someone with a cleaner past than Hillary.

I'm sure there's way more spying going on than we hear about.

That's part of why I dislike the massive focus on the NSA. It's missing the gigantic forest for one tree.

It needs to have teeth.

A company invests in research and development only to lose that investment to a company favored by a government that can steal secrets from the internet. That needs to be made illegal.

if we can show that we are not terrorists.

Nobody's actually shown them to be spying on us.

Oh sure, there's plenty of excited stories, but if you read closely they are non-specific about the targets. They just want you to assume US persons are being spied upon.

If you go through the docs Snowden leaked, you'll see that there was only one program that targeted US persons, the phone metadata program. Everything else that people have been talking about are programs that do not target US persons.

As for phone metadata, that doesn't belong to you. The SCOTUS ruled in 1979 that phone metadata belongs to the phone companies. As a result, collecting that isn't legally spying on you - you have no right to privacy involving that data since it's not your data. Plus the phone companies have been selling that same data to third parties for years.

But lots and lots and lots and lots of people are claiming spying on US persons is happening. But you'll note they don't actually include any proof in their articles and blog posts - they just posit it is true, or ignore the targeting information in the leaks they are talking about.

So what would you opt-out of? Gotta have an actual spying program first.

and that the phone company can sell or give it or just make it available to third parties, couldn't you buy the rights to your own data from the phone company? Couldn't you buy it just like any third party could? And couldn't you bargain with your phone company for a contract giving you exclusive rights to the data?

It would seem to me that a lot of wealthy people would pay fortunes to have sole rights to their own phone records. It also seems to me that contracts selling all rights to phone data to the person making the calls from that phone could stand up in court and not be violated by the US government. I could imagine a phone company that would offer that service to customers willing to pay for it. All the company would have to do is to agree that the identity of the person to whom a number is assigned owns the number and the right to keep his identity and the call data on the number private. Obviously the number would connect to other numbers, but the identity of the assignee of the number could be private.

Ok, let's assume the law is actually the law, and it isn't what you wish it to be.


They aren't selling the rights. They're selling the data.

Theoretically, they could offer to sell you the rights, but no phone company has decided to do so.


Except you can't create a contract to hide the data from the government. Well, not a legal contract.

The reason the phone company's ownership of the data is important in this debate is that removes the 4th amendment protections that would keep the government from it. The phone company's ownership turns the information into a basic business record, which the government is free to collect.

info. Others through NATO or another pact.

a concern for years.

EU leaders meeting in Brussels say distrust of the US over spying could harm the fight against terrorism.

A statement agreed by the leaders says that "a lack of trust could prejudice" intelligence-gathering co-operation.

>

The statement of heads of state or government, released on Friday, reflects the EU leaders' conclusions following their talks on Thursday.

It says the recent intelligence issues had raised "deep concerns" among European citizens.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24668286

I agree with him on the first, not on the second. I don't see how the US can be a trustworthy partner. You can't be for liberalising trade with a country that violates liberty on such a scale, no offense to ordinary Americans.

He's a neoliberal, so it's not very surprising he speaks up and tries to quell the talk of putting the TTIP in play. Otherwise, he's pretty sharp. He calls the American practices "rotten, bad and shameful for a democracy that wants to be an example to the world". His argument to continue with the TTIP is that halting it would be "cutting our own skin" - saying we would lose out.

What he means is that his corporate buddies would lose out. Even in his best sales pitch, we supposedly stand to gain 0,5 % of GDP. And for that we should run the risk of being flooded with GMOs and lawsuits against regulations that corporations find infringing on their profits? No thanks.

Source for what I'm saying: http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20131025_00808595 , in dutch.

which serve largely to protect US corporate interests.

I would guess that about 1 in a 1000 people here would know what it is. And what they know, is from Karel De Gucht's sales pitch at the start, which was copied and plastered all over the mainstream media, and since then, silence. DeMOCKracy.

That being said, I went to check whether the Commission can now negotiate all the way to the end, given the negotiation framework they've got. They can, but the final treaty does have to be voted on in Parliament again, and I'm not aware of any fast-tracky options over here.

Do you have a good resource about the TTIP? There's virtually nothing compared to the TPP.

Last edited Fri Oct 25, 2013, 07:01 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/comments/2013C18_mdn_schmucker.pdf



I've no doubt the following with respect to the TPP would apply too :

"TPP would give multinational companies the power to sue countries over laws that that might diminish the value of their company or cut into their expected future profits."

See Cali's post : http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023917984

Monsanto comes to mind.

"laws that might diminish the value of their company or cut into their expected future profits."

That is an absurdity. How can you measure whether something "might" diminish profits at some vague point in the future.

That should end the discussion on that agreement right away.

What court would make a decision based on "maybe somedays."

You usually have to prove your damages. I have wondered how they figure that in shareholder cases. Don't know that much about them. But it is even wilder if companies can sue about laws that might cause them losses in the future.

And what about balancing the costs and benefits of the laws. How would that be done on the international scale. Let's say that California is not allowed to pass a law that limits a large foreign corporation's or anyone's water use. How would you balance the rights of foreign companies to grab water with the rights of municipalities to continue to use the water they have always used.

This will not work. And it obliterates democracy, the right to pass the laws that apply to your region or state, city or town.

I hope we do not have to fight against that crazy, unworkable idea. It would eventually elicit a lot of public outrage. That's one that the corporations had better not try to put over on sovereign people (and I use the term sovereign people to differentiate a concept from sovereign nation. A sovereign nation can sign a treaty that binds it, but whether the people in that nation will accept and abide by the treaty is another question.)

Why bother to have local and state governments if the feds agree to this kind of treaty?