Several EU-U.S. agreements are under fire following revelations on...
Several EU-U.S. agreements are under fire following revelations on massive surveillance by U.S. and U.K. intelligence services, the American National Security Agency and the British General Communications Headquarters. During a meeting of the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament…
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Tuesday, Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said she was seeking “consultations” under the U.S. Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP), in an effort to see if there was a breach of the TFTP agreement that allows transfer of banking information of EU citizens to the U.S. Treasury Department, which is seeking leads into the funding of terrorist activities. Malmstrom said she was not satisfied with answers received from Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen, and awaited further clarification. Representatives of nearly all party groups supported a temporary suspension or even termination of the agreement. During the session, British privacy expert Caspar Bowden, former data protection officer at Microsoft, also recommended terminating the Safe Harbor Agreement, which eases the cross-border transfer of data from EU jurisdictions with stricter data protection regimes. He said such termination might put pressure on the U.S. for better data protection and privacy of non-U.S. companies. At the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners which opened in Warsaw Tuesday, civil society organizations warned against giving the U.S. a “free pass on privacy again” in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which is currently being negotiated.