TTIP: Protect our privacy in EU-US trade deal or ELSE, snarl MEPs MEPs have called on American and European negotiators to guarantee citizens’ right to privacy in an international trade deal. Members of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee said last week that an “unambiguous, horizontal, self-standing provision” in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) must …
TTIP will be ratified everywhere except the USA. But they will expect the other sides to stick to it rigorously, while completely ignoring it themselves.
The Extradition Act surely should show that America makes bi-lateral agreements so that it can lean on the other side to implement them and then ignore them at its end.
Entering into any sort of trade agreement with the USA is basically equivalent to giving the US government sovereignty over part of your legislation with nothing in return. That's been their position for the last I don't know how long and I've no doubt they will stick to it.
The crux of the matter is that as far as the relevant law is concerned the US technically offers the same protection to individuals' data as the EU. All the stuff that is classed as "personal/private data" under that law is subject to roughly the same procedures and safeguards, including Spook Action. Peeps will need to go through Channels to get at it, for which the procedures are more or less the same as well.
In a case of "Law is always 10 years behind Reality" the laws in question do not offer the same protection to metadata. Which is where the problem lies, since the use of metadata has evolved to the point where it can just as easily identify a single person as, say, credit card details, yet the use of said metadata is not yet treated as such in existing laws.
This is a huge, and widely (ab)used loophole which is in desperate need of Fixing, but until that happens, no actual law is broken, as any lawyer/state attorney would be quick to point out. Questionable? Yes. Not within the spirit of existing regulation? Definitely. But unlawful? No.
“...unambiguous, horizontal, self-standing provision”
What in hell does that mean?
Now if it was a vertical, self-standing provision" it might make a little more sense. It must be one of those things that have got lost in translation.
Another thing, "...the EU Parliament could hold the Commission to ransom." I'm not sure if that is the way to put it. More like the EU Parliament is actually doing what it was elected to do i.e. to oversee the EU Commission and keep it in check.
I think we need all the help we can get looking at the prime movers of this secretive and potentially disastrous treaty that is being cooked up out of our sight.
For those who would like to see the end of the 'EUSSR' and who are also acolytes of the yellow and purple messiah who just lurves TTIP --- only those with something to hide are frightened of having thier data available to the the highest bidder (or those with a contract).
UKIP are not in favour of the EU negotiating a trade deal with the USA in secret and are the only party to say so; in fact, UKIP are the only party that does not recognise a legitimate role for the EU in negotiating trade agreements or doing anything else on the UK's behalf; get up to speed with events or stick to bits and bytes.
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