U.S. Spy Law Authorizes Mass Surveillance of European Activists, Journalists and Politicians

[Salon / 10.01.2013] The new European report [pdf] stresses that the U.S. government’s ability to extract information from the cloud without a warrant has “strong implications for EU fundamental rights.” U.S. companies with a presence in the EU can be compelled under a secret surveillance order, issued by a secret court, to hand over data on Europeans.

The report’s author Caspar Bowden, formerly chief privacy adviser to Microsoft Europe, told Slate that FISA since 2008 has given “a carte blanche for anything that furthers U.S. foreign policy interests.” Ryan Gallagher reported that it “legalizes the monitoring of European journalists, activists, and politicians who are engaged in any issue in which the United States has a stake.” As Bowden put it, the act makes it lawful for the U.S. to do “continuous mass-surveillance of ordinary lawful democratic political activities.”

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U.S. Spy Law Authorizes Mass Surveillance of European Citizens
[slate / 08.01.2013] Europeans, take note: The U.S. government has granted itself authority to secretly snoop on you.

That’s according to a new report produced for the European Parliament, which has warned that a U.S. spy law renewed late last year authorizes “purely political surveillance on foreigners' data” if it is stored using U.S. cloud services like those provided by Google, Microsoft and Facebook.
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