EU and
human rights and privacy groups welcome pledge, which follows pressure in wake
of Snowden revelations
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| Eric Holder, the US attorney general. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters |
The Obama
administration has caved in to pressure from the European Union in the wake of
Edward Snowden's revelations on surveillance by promising to pass legislation
granting European citizens many of the privacy protection rights enjoyed by US
citizens.
The
proposed law would apply to data on European citizens being transferred to the
US for what Washington says is law enforcement purposes.
After the
first Snowden revelations appeared in June last year, the Obama administration
irritated many by insisting that while US citizens were protected by law from
snooping by US spy agencies, this did not apply to non-Americans.
On
Wednesday the US attorney general, Eric Holder, promised at a US-EU meeting of
home affairs and justice ministers in Athens that legislation would be sent to
Congress to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens.
The EU, as
well as human rights and privacy groups, welcomed Holder's announcement but
coupled it with expressions of scepticism, describing it as a vague promise.
Viviane
Reding, the EU justice commissioner, said it was an important step in the right
direction but added: "Words only matter if put into law. We are waiting
for the legislative step."
Human
rights groups said the US Privacy Act, in spite of being touted as a beacon for
the rest of the world, had a relatively weak regulatory framework. They said
Holder's pledge did not address many of the other issues raised by mass
surveillance worldwide by the NSA and its partners, including Britain's GCHQ.
Speaking
after the Athens meeting, the EU home affairs commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom,
said: "EU-US relations have been strained lately in the aftermath of the
Snowden revelations but we have worked very hard to restore trust."
Holder
said: "The Obama administration is committed to seeking legislation that
would ensure that … EU citizens would have the same right to seek judicial
redress for intentional or wilful disclosures of protected information and for
refusal to grant access or to rectify any errors in that information, as would
a US citizen under the Privacy Act.
"This
commitment, which has long been sought by the EU, reflects our resolve to move
forward not only on the data protection and privacy agreement but on
strengthening transatlantic ties."
The US and
the EU have been negotiating for three years over personal data protection, but
the discussions took on a new immediacy with the Snowden revelations.
Emotions
have been strongest in Germany, given the history of mass surveillance by the
Stasi, and this was compounded when it was revealed that the US had been
snooping on Angela Merkel. The German government has pressed Obama, Holder and
other members of the US administration to set out how they would curb spying on
non-Americans.
Over the
last year Obama has made repeated overtures to Merkel and other EU leaders only
to be rebuffed. European governments, as well as the European parliament, has
called for concrete action rather than just soft words. Even a speech in
January in which Obama said he had asked Holder and the intelligence community
to develop safeguards for foreign citizens met with scepticism.
Holder said
the data protection agreement under discussion related to personal data shared
with the US by European countries for law enforcement purposes. He framed it in
the context of transnational crime and terrorism, in particular fighters
travelling to and from Syria.
"One
consistent theme ran through all our discussions: in a world of globalised
crime and terrorism, we can protect our citizens only if we work
together," Holder said. "At the same time, we must ensure that we
continue our long tradition of protecting privacy in the law enforcement
context."
Gus Hosein,
executive director of Privacy International, said: "It is a good step
forward. Nonetheless, there are three massive impediments to achieving
equivalent protection under law. First, Congress needs to act on this and we
haven't seen many positive steps on protecting non-Americans' rights."
Secondly,
Hosein described the US Privacy Act as "an unfortunately weak legal
regime" and, thirdly, he wanted worldwide privacy protections against what
he said was the accumulation of massive amounts of data by US intelligence
against non-Americans.
Cynthia
Wong, senior internet researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: "It may be a
small step in the right direction but much more needs to be done to address
data protection in the US and to rein in the sheer scale of what the NSA is
collecting."
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