Reports on secret U.S. prisons in Europe and economic spying has EU on edge
Present European disunity exploited by US "divide and rule policy" to dismantle EU as a world economic and political power
The European Parliament is to investigate allegations that the US uses electronic surveillance to spy on companies in the EU. The Echelon system, originally set up during the Cold War, is known to be capable of intercepting private telephone conversations, faxes and e-mails worldwide. A committee of the European Parliament on Wednesday heard allegations that it has been used to help American firms win commercial contracts at the expense of European rivals. A report commissioned by the European Parliament also alleged the UK was helping the US to spy on its European partners. The French Justice Minister, Elisabeth Guigou, said Echelon had apparently been diverted to keep watch on commercial rivals, prompting French companies to encrypt sensitive information. She said businesses now had to be particularly vigilant. "Communications must never carry vital information, especially when the link is made via a satellite," the minister said. She said that last year the government had enabled private firms and individuals to encode their communications to stop them from being intercepted. German Christian Democratic Euro-MP Christian von Boetticher told reporters he estimated the economic cost of the spying to European business to be 20 billion euros ($20bn). The Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said the alleged spying was unacceptable. The report, compiled by independent Scottish investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, includes allegations that sensitive commercial information gathered through Echelon meant the French company Thomson lost a radar contract in Brazil, and the European Airbus consortium lost out to the US's Boeing in competition for a $6bn aircraft contract.
After presenting the report to the European Parliament's Committee for Justice and Home Affairs, Mr Campbell urged the EU to take action to protect against unwanted interception of communications, insisting that the eavesdropping violated human rights. Mr Campbell alleged that national security agencies were using several major US corporations to aid their interception of data capabilities. He named Microsoft, IBM and a certain "large American microchip maker" as providing product features which allowed for the interception of information. Echelon's existence was only recently confirmed by the US Government through the declassification of secret documents of the US National Security Agency (NSA).
Comment EU-DIGEST: "The United States in its actions does not break U.S. law," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said earlier this week, "All its actions comply with the Constitution, and we abide by our international obligations. All we can do is do our best to try to explain that to publics around the world - to our own public and to European publics. ..." Unfortunately the record and history shows that in reality this is not true. Isn't it time the EU Commission and individual EU member states show some backbone, and snub Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Europe this week, until it gets some clear answers to a variety of pending murky issues. Instead, it is expected Condoleezza Rice will put European governments on notice that they should back off and begin to emphasize the benefits of intelligence cooperation to their citizens. Hopefully Europe for once will show some unity on these issues and tell the US that they have left the moral highground, and that Europe can not play along?"
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