Will the EU Ever Stand up for Its Citizens?
This spinelessness is just sickening in the extreme:The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement allowing law enforcement and security agencies to obtain private information — like credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits — about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The potential agreement, as outlined in an internal report obtained by The New York Times, would represent a diplomatic breakthrough for American counterterrorism officials, who have clashed with the European Union over demands for personal data. Europe generally has more stringent laws restricting how governments and businesses can collect and transfer such information.
- Laws which are apparently being chucked away purely because America wants to disregard them. This is what happens when European governments mouth fatuities about the so-called "war on terror": they then get hoist by their own rhetorical petard.
What's amazing is that probably 90% of Europeans would be against giving this kind of data to the US if they were ever offered any way to choose. Which they won't be, of course: that's democracy?