EU Committee Issues Report On NSA Surveillance; Snowden To Testify 177
Qedward writes with word that the EU Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee published the draft of their report on the impact of dragnet surveillance by the NSA on EU citizens (PDF). Quoting CIO: "... Members of the European Parliament say that it is 'very doubtful that data collection of such magnitude is only guided by the fight against terrorism,' and that there may be other motives such as political and economic espionage. The document urges EU countries to take legal action against the breach of their sovereignty perpetrated through such mass surveillance programs."
The same committee voted today to allow Edward Snowden to testify before them in a special hearing.
EU to grow balls, News at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
nope false alert, not gonna happen.
so says (Score:5, Insightful)
So says the man from America. The country who's population literally could not care less that their own government is spying on them as well AND systematically removing their rights and dismantling their constitution.
But you go on and talk about how stupid and cowardly we in the EU are. After all, we can see how strong your back bone is. After all, it is not we who have the backbones to bomb brown people "into freedom".
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After all, it is not we who have the backbones to bomb brown people "into freedom".
As in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and Syria?
Here is a tip for you. Over the years, Europeans, just like Americans and various Asian nations, have demonstrated their willingness to bomb people of all colors for many reasons, including to make their lands a colony, and lately to free them. It is happening right now.
Your sense of superiority is based on mistaken ideas, bad history, and bile.
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Is it more likely that the real issue is that there are people in numerous countries that are all playing on the same team? Hint: That team is not your own, and does not care about average citizens.
Consider what has happened after Germany was found complicit in helping the NSA spy on Germans. Merkel said "don't", and "stop", and both intelligence agencies took that to mean "don't stop". Nobody from either side has been prosecuted for treason, and nobody knows if the practices have changed (no evidence to
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So says the man from America. The country who's population literally could not care less that their own government is spying on them as well AND systematically removing their rights and dismantling their constitution. But you go on and talk about how stupid and cowardly we in the EU are. After all, we can see how strong your back bone is. After all, it is not we who have the backbones to bomb brown people "into freedom".
I wish I had mod points. I'd mod this up as far as I could.
From my perspective, you're absolutely right! What you point out are some of the reasons why a few of us left Amerika to experience real freedoms that can be found overseas. Not the fake freedoms that Amerika loves to blather on about, but not lift a finger to defend when they're taken away.
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So where did you go?
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I know you didn't mean it that way, but why would anyone lift a finger when their _fake_ freedoms are being taken away? :)
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Clearly I care, other wise we would not be having this discussion. I merely point out the leashed dog mentality of the EU when it comes to anything US wants. I hope that EU (well minus UK anyway) will do something. And by something i mean other then GCHQ, BND blah blah in competition with NSA as to who can exploit their citizens better... because as everyone already knows : we are #1, USA USA blah blah
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If you spent 5 whole minutes actually reading Slashdot lately, you'd see that a lot of us DO care about the government spying etc. etc. etc. "Caring" and "getting it fixed" are obviously two entirely different things.
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Nahhh, not gonna happen.
Are you now going to accuse me of being a man from America too?
(Handy hint - don't do that, you'd be very very wrong.)
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Q: Which European ally of American shot down Obama's attempts to launch military action on Syria rather spectacularly in parliament?
A: Britain.
Yes we have politicians all too quick to please the US, no we're not universally a US lapdog.
I'd say that was our spine growing moment quite honestly. Do we have a lot of work to do and a long way to go? sure, but we're working on it.
It's a battle for sure, but don't mistake the resurgence of atlanticists and euro haters like Liam Fox and UKIP for resurgent pro-Ameri
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It might be the few good decisions that are made that cast the bad ones in such a harsh light, and I'm paying more attention to the latter rather than the former. I get much of my UK news from the likes of HIGNFY, which are themselves far from unbiased. Bad news travels both further and faster.
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Haven't read the report, have we?
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Actually i was questioning the follow through, heck even B.O's panel told him to curb the NSA
Where? (Score:1)
I'm no expert in EU politics, but I know they meets in Brussels (Belgium), Luxembourg and Strasbourg (France), per Wikipedia. I also know, despite being a dumb amerikkkan, that none of those places are in Russia. Snowden will absolutely be captured if he appears in any of these places and would be a great fool to testify there.
Re:Where? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, if they're going to have him testify, they have diplomats collect him and bring him in on a plain covered by immunity, move him around in diplomatic cars, and house him in diplomatic residences.
Do you *really* think that it is impossible to basically "fuck you" and bring him there safely if there's the political will?
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Yes, in fact, I do. Political will tends to fade pretty quickly on the wrong end of a gun barrel.
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If America is going to choose to 'point a gun' at the entire EU, then you can pretty much expect the entire EU to kick the US out of military bases, and generally GTFO of town.
The EU also has their own guns.
Re:Where? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worse than that. The EU is where the US gets its guns from, because the US is too incompetent to make its own guns any more. Most police departments use Glocks, which come from Austria, and the US military is going to use an H-K rifle from Germany for their next-generation assault rifle. The US military already uses the Beretta M-9 for its standard sidearm: Beretta is an Italian company. All the best guns come from the EU (or Switzerland, which is surrounded by the EU): FAL in Belgium with their P90 submachine gun and F2000 rifle (standard rifle used by many countries' armies including Pakistan), H-K in Germany with their MP5 submachine gun used by lots of militaries and police departments including probably every US SWAT team, Glock in Austria, SIG in Switzerland, HS in Croatia, Steyr in Britain, I'm sure there's lots more. The US gunmakers mostly only make historical replicas (e.g. Colt 45s from the 1800s) and copies of aging and obsolete guns like the 1911 and the AR-15. When they want something new and innovative, they import it from Europe and rebadge it (like the Springfield XD series, made by HS in Croatia).
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aging and obsolete guns like the 1911 and the AR-15.
Whoa there! While I generally agree with much of the rest your post, them's fighting words! The M4 is still one of the most versatile and proven families of military rifles currently in use. It's come a long way since the old Vietnam-era M16's/AR-15's.
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It's still cursed with the direct-impingement system of operation (except for the variants that replaced that with a gas piston, but those are not common or normal, and are usually high-priced), which makes it extremely vulnerable to malfunctions if it isn't kept meticulously clean. That's not a good trait for a battle rifle.
The H&K G36, SIG 550, FN F2000, Steyr and others are all far superior weapons.
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The unreliability of AR direct impingement is greatly overstated. This is not to say that it's not a factor, but it's not the first rifle to be built around that concept, but the only one to have acquired a negative reputation. In truth, most AR failures have to do with magazines by a long margin - run something decent (like a PMAG or Lancer or even 20-round USGI) and you'll see most of the difference between AR and HK416 disappear already. For example, the infamous dust storm test where M4 shows 4x failure
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Oh the irony...oh the humor in your post. 2nd Amenders getting all robust about how in America (my country) wez gotz the rights to carry gunz and shoot em (at furners if need be), but we don't make the guns?
Is it the EU plan to keep sending guns over to us in the hope we all just shoot each other then later on they can "help" us rebuild.
Haven't figure out if your post makes me laugh, cry, or just feel that the world is just a little fucked up.
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Don't misinterpret my post: America *does* make guns, and lots of them. There's still lots of gun makers in America: Mossberg, Remington, Smith & Wesson, Colt, Ruger, Springfield (except for their imported XD line), Kimber, and dozens if not hundreds more smaller companies. I'm just pointing out how many of the better weapons, including many used by police forces and the military, come from Europe, not gun-happy America.
A lot of America's gunmakers (including most of those unnamed smaller companies, a
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just for the record: the Steyr Mannlicher GmbH & Co KG is an Austrian company with a 150-year history based in the city of Steyr in Upper Austria.
The 5.56mm Steyr AUG (Armee Universal Gewehr) has been designed for and adoped by the Austrian Austrian Army as the standard infantry rifle (StG77 - Sturmgewehr 77). In the US, you probably know the weapon from movies - it's the weapon of choice for bad guy Euro snobs and it occasionally can even be seen in SF movies due to its futuristic design.
ignatius
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Sorry, you're correct. I was thinking of some other bullpup rifle, whose name escapes me now, which is used by much of Britain's military. I think the Steyr is actually used in Australia, as well as Austria of course. (A quick look at the Wikipedia page for the AUG confirms it's used in Australia plus lots of other places.)
While looking at the Wiki page, I noticed another thing I'll use to bash the AR-15 so loved by Americans: it's not ambidextrous. The Steyr AUG is, as well as FAL's rifles, and probabl
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And interesting detail ist that Steyr was also supposed to get the contract for the new Autrian Army Pistol, however - after extensive tests and much to everybodys surprise - the contract finally got to a new contender with no prior experience in the design of handguns: Gaston Glock, who developed a new pistol from ground up: the Glock 17. It was the first handgun from Glock and became the P80 (which is the military designation) - the rest is history.
ignatius
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The British rifle you're thinking of is the SA80, otherwise designated as the L85 with a long barrelled LSW version the L86.
Unfortunately the SA80 isn't ambidextrous either and it had a lot of earlier problems jamming in sandy environments (as discovered in the first gulf war).
Nowadays it's a pretty nice weapon, but it's only got about another 10 years of service left in it currently anyway.
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In US, we know Steyr AUG (in its civilian incarnation [steyrarms.com]) as one of those things on the wall in your local gun shop that you really want to buy because it looks so nice (and you've heard good things about it), but cannot justify the $1.7k price sticker.
I do hope the prices drop down now that they've got some solid competition on form of Tavor, though.
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It's worse than that. The EU is where the US gets its guns from, because the US is too incompetent to make its own guns any more. Most police departments use Glocks, which come from Austria, and the US military is going to use an H-K rifle from Germany for their next-generation assault rifle. The US military already uses the Beretta M-9 for its standard sidearm: Beretta is an Italian company.
At least as far as all the military contracts go, the requirement is that the winner manufactures them in the USA. So M9, M249, M27 IAR, M4A1 etc are all made in US, even though the plants are owned by Beretta, FN etc.
For law enforcement and civilian firearms this is not always the case, but a lot of European companies still end up manufacturing those things in US. It's the biggest market, and it's cheaper to make it right here where they sell most of them than to export/import them across the Atlantic. FN
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At least as far as all the military contracts go, the requirement is that the winner manufactures them in the USA. So M9, M249, M27 IAR, M4A1 etc are all made in US, even though the plants are owned by Beretta, FN etc.
Yes of course; the Chinese do something very similar, forcing companies to progressively move all production and know-how to China until they no longer need the vendor company at all. The US obviously doesn't quite go that far, since they never design their own guns or shed the foreign vendor
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At least as far as all the military contracts go, the requirement is that the winner manufactures them in the USA. So M9, M249, M27 IAR, M4A1 etc are all made in US, even though the plants are owned by Beretta, FN etc.
For law enforcement and civilian firearms this is not always the case,
Exactly. Which is why, btw. the Glock Pistols are used by the US-Police but not by the Army (afaik), as Gaston Glock flat out refused to have his guns produced under licence.
ignatius
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It's weird, but it's not a rule by any means. Canada has stronger gun-control laws too, but I don't know of any guns made there. Mexico has very strong gun-control laws, but I don't know of any guns made there either (and if they did, they'd probably suck; Mexico isn't exactly known for Swiss-level precision manufacturing). Japan has ultra-strict laws but they don't make guns either. China probably has very strong gun-control laws too, and while they do make guns, theirs generally suck (crappy AK-47 clo
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Canada has stronger gun-control laws too, but I don't know of any guns made there.
They don't have any gun manufacturers headquartered there, but they do have factories. Colt Canada is one obvious case, but e.g. Savage also manufactures their rifles for sale in Canadian market directly in Canada. Possibly some others, I'm not sure.
Designed in Canada, now, I can't think of anything modern.
Mexico has very strong gun-control laws, but I don't know of any guns made there either
There has been a trend of outsourcing manufacture of guns for US market to Mexico lately, actually, at least for cheap guns. I can't recall the exact model names, but I've seen a few.
They are also making
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That's like 20 years out of date. QBZ-95 is hardly an AK clone at this point, for example.
Wow, that QBZ-95 is very impressive-looking from the Wikipedia article. Looks much more advanced than the US military's standard rifles: bullpup design, 4-position selector (so you get both full-auto and 3-round-burst) and it looks like they put a lot of thought into making it more controllable during full-auto fire. Too bad we can't be as innovative as the Chinese....
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What's funny is that they actually make a civilian version of it (it even made it to Canada at some point). But, of course, we can't have it in US because of the Norinco import ban.
Note that it uses their own domestically designed and manufactured ammo, too. Not much info about that, unfortunately - all export models are chambered in whatever's popular in the corresponding market (usually 5.56), so there are no ballistic tests and such, and no way to validate their claims that it outperforms both 5.56 and 5
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While you have a good point about the H&K, your point about personal protection is pretty important: US companies do indeed make a lot of guns for personal/individual buyers, but (the point I was trying to make) they largely fail at making guns for US police agencies and the US military. You'd think government agencies in the gun-happy US wouldn't feel the need to go to anti-gun Europe to get guns, but they do. How many police departments *don't* use Glocks as their standard service-issue handgun? US
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The pinnacle of irony was when Colt lost the bid to manufacture M4A1 (which is kinda American design through and through) for the Army to FN.
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Yep, that seems pretty shameful really.
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So, you mean we're like the China or Mexico of the gun industry? We can put a bunch of people to work in a factory building stuff because our labor's cheap, but we're not smart enough to do the engineering work? Yeah, that sounds like a big achievement.
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That's only because job creation is one of the best arguments arms manufacturers have when placing bids with government etc. so sticking whatever bottom of the rung jobs you can in the bid country whilst keeping the highly paid jobs of design and testing back home and also returning the profits back home is not uncommon practice.
Even if you're doing the physical manufacturing work, you're still not retaining the design and engineering talent, and you're still not getting the lion's share of the financial be
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It is highly unlikely that the EU will kick out the US military. Having the US military there strengthens their own defenses, but that's not the main reason. The main reason is economic. Having a US base there dumps a huge amount of money into the local economy. Kicking out the US military would be economically devastating the the areas surrounding the bases.
The EU and US are allies and competitors at the same time. EU government agencies rarely pass up a chance to tweak the US government. People on b
Re:Where? (Score:4, Informative)
Or, if they're going to have him testify, they have diplomats collect him and bring him in on a plain covered by immunity, move him around in diplomatic cars, and house him in diplomatic residences.
The last time they thought that he was on a plane protected by diplomatic immunity, they grounded it and searched it [nbcnews.com] at the request of the United States. That's also why Julian Assange is still stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London: The UK authorities have made it clear that they will pull him out of a diplomatic vehicle if they try to transport him to Ecuador.
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Re:Where? (Score:5, Informative)
the plane that they grounded that time was headed to somewhere in Latin America (Cuba or Ecuador I think).
That would be Bolivia. Which, since it was Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane, is about as serious a diplomatic violation as you can get (imagine Russia or China grounding Air Force One and searching it).
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Nah, the Americans could tap into it. ;-)
The real tin-foil-hatters would say the US has injected a CG images into the stream to make him say different things. :-P
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The real tin-foil-hatters would say the US has injected a CG images into the stream to make him say different things. :-P
Hey, they have all the technology needed to do it, it's just a matter of whether they want to.
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No way , it's not like broadband is every where in Russia, and Skype is not even remotely a possibility !
The real question is , will Microsoft shut down Skype for the NSA so he can't testify ?
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Except, at the heart of this is, has America lived up to their treaty obligations or cared about insults to allies?
If the answer is "no", then finding out the scope of this might be considered something which trumps how America feels about letting him testify.
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Always keep in mind that the arrival of the future won't stop anytime soon, and it almost always has surprises in store. You may want friends around to help meet some of those surprises.
At the same time, when someone claims to be a friend, and then it turns out that they weren't anywhere nearly so friendly as they claimed to be, you may want to dump them and find better friends. Or, if no such friends are to be found, to increase your self-reliance. Better that then find that the "friend" is not actually a friend in need when that need comes.
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I don't know - did you have any particular nations in mind with your original post to which I replied? That part of it:
You may want friends around to help meet some of those surprises.
Re:Where? (Score:5, Informative)
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RTFA: The former US National Security Agency worker would testify by interactive video link from Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum.
Heh. Would be funny if the packets were routed via the US and patriotically "deep-inspected" by the NSA.
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Yeah, he's in Russia, possibly in an embassy somewhere. Good luck invading. There's still the possibility of dead-man information still unreleased. And his testimony will likely be public record, so the need to snoop it will be wasted effort. Even better, if they make it private, and the US reacts to something they should not have been privy to, well wouldn't that be the proof they've been looking for?
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I can just imagine how Putin would react if they caught a special forces team trying to nab him.
*makes popcorn*
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You're a bit more confident than I am. They won't grab him, but they might assassinate him. If they're feeling snarky they could use Polonium.
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well you see, in soviet russia telephone have you
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Read TFA.
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I also know, despite being a dumb amerikkkan, that none of those places are in Russia. Snowden will absolutely be captured if he appears in any of these places and would be a great fool to testify there.
I dunno, he might just use the phone, or a videoconference tool over the internet (not like he's discussing state secrets (well, not anymore really)). You might not be that dumb of an "amerikkkan", but you're not the most practical person in the US of A either. I'd urge you to become more practical before turning into an enemy of the state, should the thought ever cross your (or your governments) mind.
The former US National Security Agency worker would testify by interactive video link from Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum.
Right there in the article even.
Anyway, we'll see what happens. The article mentions that people are divide
Shoe on the other foot? (Score:3)
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I don't think you're recent on UK-EU relations; they're fairly complicated and not going all too well lately.
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The UK seems like they're the EU's red-headed stepchild these days.
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OK, I don't remember much about Callaghan's era, but remember everyone since then.
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GCHQ is essentially a branch of the NSA. The UK government is just as upset.
Of course they do (Score:3)
Of course they do, because part of the mandate is to look out for US commercial interests in general.
The problem is they use the same program to spy for the terrorists, as they do for the economic and political espionage.
Which means, unless the US is willing to carve out JUST the security stuff (which, they won't), every other country more or less has to block this program on the premise that it's just a widespread "spy on everybody, some of them might be security risks, some of it might be political intel, and some can be given to the corporations".
That's kind of the problem from the perspective of the rest of the world -- any form of cooperation with this spying has far broader ramifications than just national security.
Hell, people here routinely defend it, but increasingly you might see other world governments saying they won't allow you to do it any more (in which case, it will be done anyway, just in a more clandestine manner).
So obvious it can't be true (Score:1)
The ultimate goal with government spying -- besides securing a multi-billion dollar cash flow that can be leveraged for personal gain -- is merely to build a warchest of options for prosecution, should government need to prosecute a citizen in the future. And by "need to prosecute", I mean need to silence, emprison, or murder. Now that there are enough crimes to make every citizen a criminal, this is entirely possible. Ayn Rand had it exactly right: the reason why the law is so absurdly complex is to ensure
Uuuh (Score:1)
It's a trap!!!
He'd better not leave Russian (Score:2)
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You think they can't get him in Russia? They are terrified of the "Security" file he has. I suspect a lot more damaging stuff would get released if he suddenly disappeared.
Of course its economics (Score:4, Informative)
There was a story a few years ago that showed Boeing was successful in derailing an Airbus deal by using espionage and hacking to gather intelligence on the Airbus proposal, allowing Boeing to cut-in the proposition with their own submissions, finally realizing the deal at the expense of Airbus.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehicle#Industrial_espionage [wikipedia.org]
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It's not a story. Airbus is the one company I worked with that takes IT security actually seriously and is ready to spend considerable amounts of money, time and effort on getting it right.
Having read the report, the main points are: (Score:5, Informative)
A quick synopsis (so may contain stuff to quibble over) but the meat appears to be the action list (read the original document - link in article - for the rest):
Action 1: Adopt the data protection package [europa.eu]
Action 2: Set up an overall agreement ensuring 'proper redress mechanisms' for EU citizens where data is passed to the US for law enforcement purposes.
Action 3: Suspend 'safe harbour' (covering personal data) until the US comply with 'EU highest standards'
Action 4: Suspend the 'TFTP' (Terrorist Finance Tracking Package) until a) Action 2 complete b) the EU have looked into it
Action 5: Worth quoting in full: "Protect the rule of law and the fundamental rights of EU citizens, with a particular focus on threads to the freedom of the press and professional confidentiality (including lawyer-client relationships) as well as enhanced protection for whistleblowers".
Action 6: Develop a european strategy for IT independence (that'll send cold shivers down the spine of certain US companies).
Action 7: Develop the EU as a reference player for a democratic and neutral governance of the internet (my translation: currently it's a US party, we want in on that).
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7 Develop the EU as a reference player for a democratic and neutral governance of the internet
That sounds pretty simple. Just start up some new root servers with new high-level domains, say:
biz. fct, grp instead of com, edu, org
REPLACE ICANN!
Adopt the current standards without change for those domains, and then start tinkering. (Tinker while you only have a very few web pages.) Decide whether you want to be exclusively IPv6. Swtich to utf-8 identifiers, with some way to indicate whether or not the char
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Where capitalism was not an option, post WW2 reconstruction or NATO military considerations, the ability to wiretap would have shaped new telco infrastructure over decades.
Generations of senior staff, engineers, political leaders, academics must have understood how and why their regional/national telco system was been rebuilt or upgraded in
Calling Captain Obvious (Score:2)
...and that there may be other motives such as political and economic espionage
Jeez... Ya think? I'll spare us the rant about how much of that has already occurred and jump right to how ashamed I am that my country has embraced such activity on such a scale. I mean, I get that, in business "it's just business" is a tacit rationalization for doing anything that you can get away with to enhance the bottom line, but for my government, who is supposed to at least carry on the illusion that it represents my interests, to give that same excuse is just, well, shameful.
Legal action? (Score:4)
The document urges EU countries to take legal action against the breach of their sovereignty perpetrated through such mass surveillance programs.
What in the hell are they going to do? Tell the world-police on the... well, world-police?
I've been called troll for saying it in the past, but I'll try again here... If anything has come of "the Snowden release", it's only to inspire more hatred for the American government. This will always be taken out on the American people in the end. Assuming that 9/11 wasn't an inside job, and assuming that 9/11 was done by the people that were "charged" with doing so, could their reason have been hatred for "The People" of America, or "The Government" of America? And if that's the case, can we expect more of that same shit? Will it ever stop? Should American forever live in fear, based on the bullshit steps taken by it's "protective" government to stop such actions? It's so silly there aren't words to describe it without seeming like a troll.
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You can't distinguish between the government and the people when dealing with international policy. You elected them, it's your responsibility to depose them if they don't represent you any more. Otherwise it must be assumed that you consent to what they ate doing, even if you don't agree with it, because you consent to be ruled and don't mass protest it.
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Look man, 11 September 2001 was performed directly as a response to Bill Clinton's cruise missile attack of training camps in Afghanistan in 1998. Bin Laden's response to those attacks (paraphrased) was, "We can not afford 5 million dollar cruise missiles but we can use your airplanes as cruise missiles and attack you like you have attacked us."
Drop the conspiracy shit. There are plenty of conspiracies, such as the conspiracy to hide the fact that Bin Laden ever made such a direct reference to what he was g
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The internet has grown up, and you should to.
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And you're giving him/her what he/she wants.
Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the EU members will think that.
However, there is a major difference between say, Germany and America. The difference is, the German public will freak out and actually take to the streets.
I am reasonably sure that Germany would exit the EU if such a program was installed.
Same is true for France. They say that France is one of the few countries who does democracy right. The government is scared shitless of the people. Not the other way around like in the US where people fear their government. Hell, in France they will burn an entire city over a small issue.
Of course in England, they are even more willing to give up their rights than Americans.
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
Of course in England, they are even more willing to give up their rights than Americans.
Some of us are apathetic, the rest are incensed are to how our government is acting as the USA's poodle.
Re:Perhaps (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you have that reversed.
Some of us are incensed, the rest are apathetic to how our government is acting as the USA's poodle.
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"Same is true for France."
That seems doubtful. French 'intelligence' is just as bad as the NSA, but without having to break their law to do it.
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Are there any English-speaking countries that don't suck like that?
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A rule of thumb is the smaller the country, the less interested it is on spying on it's citizens. This isn't guaranteed, of course. It's also true that the more honest the police are, the less the country is interested in spying on its citizens...but this can be hard to determine.
OTOH, ALL governments are interested in spying on their citizens. No exceptions. Not even at the city level. How much they do about it varies. The larger and more powerful they are, the more they do about it.
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No, but if all Americans, Brits, Aussies and Kiwis who are dissatisfied with their governments spying on them were to move to, say, Iceland, there would be one. ~
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Perhaps the EU members will think that. However, there is a major difference between say, Germany and America. The difference is, the German public will freak out and actually take to the streets. I am reasonably sure that Germany would exit the EU if such a program was installed. Same is true for France. They say that France is one of the few countries who does democracy right. The government is scared shitless of the people. Not the other way around like in the US where people fear their government. Hell, in France they will burn an entire city over a small issue. Of course in England, they are even more willing to give up their rights than Americans.
Exactly!
Further, Germany and France use physical assets to do the bulk of their spying. Not that they don't need or use electronic spying, too. It's just that physical assets are much better at targeting the actual, real "bad guys" than, well, America's three letter agencies seem to credit them with.
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I believe it was O2 that gave a little information to the German police without a warrant in the 90s. There was a total public shit fit.
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Of course in England, they are even more willing to give up what's rightfully theirs to Americans.
FTFY
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Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
I am reasonably sure that Germany would exit the EU if such a program was installed.
I did not say that the German government did not WANT to spy. Sure they do. All governments want to spy, be they western or not.
The point is, the population would freak out if it actually came out that the government was spying on every German and what they did.
Look, I will be the first to admit it. Germans are about the stingiest people I ever met. I have only lived here for about 5 years, but that much is clear. "Hey, why don't you have a clothes dryer?". response: "Why should I pay 200€ for what the sun does for free!" Classic German thinking. Save save save save. That is a good thing though.
Now, I know 3 different people who have canceled their family trips to the US over this matter. These are already paid for trip with no chance to get the money back.
The fact is, they are afraid of the US government. They are afraid that the TSA will confiscate their notebooks because the agent would like to have a new one. Or copy all their private information.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/18/tsa-to-download-your-itunes/ [washingtontimes.com]
Re:Perhaps (Score:4, Insightful)
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actually this is about the US stealing our economy and basically doing insider-trading/pre-knowledge trading, basically the US could face billions if not trillions of dollars in international sanctions (which will end up back where it belongs, in Europe)...
so once again, do some research before you say something retarded.
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