Immediately Suspend EU-US Data Transfer Agreement
„DIE LINKE already three months ago pointed to the surveillance problem as regards bank account and flight passengers‘ information and asked the EU to suspend the agreement. The agreements on data protection and the rights of the persons affected laid down in SWIFT, PNR, and „Safe Harbour“ aren’t worth the paper they are written on. It is good that this slowly seems to be realized in the European Parliament, while the German government still sticks to downplaying and covering-up,“ declares Jan Korte, board member of the faction DIE LINKE in Bundestag. „The disclosures of the last months demonstrate, that the US-American and British total surveillance has absolutely nothing to do with the fight against terrorism but with economic and strategic interests and spying of the population.“ Korte continues:
„The European Parliament is on the right way. But it is insufficient to half-heartedly threaten to suspend the SWIFT agreement. All EU data transfer agreements, such as the Prüm Convention, regulating among other things access to the DNA database of the Federal Criminal Police Office and databases filing fingerprints, as well as directives regarding police data exchange and criminal procedures, have to be included. All agreements and directives should be independently examined as soon as possible. The spying of NSA and British GHCQ – which does not even stop at friendly governments and diplomatic institutions – eventually has to have consequences. The European Parliament should – as political lesson from the disclosures of Edward Snowden – clearly position itself against a further erosion of the state of law and democracy, and immediately suspend the EU directive on data retention. We need a paradigm shift in the German and European domestic and security policy which aims at the personal and individual development of the citizens.“