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EU-UK-GCHQ-USA-NSA: DATA SURVEILLANCE: Edward Snowden's testimony to the European Parliament inquiry and Q & A session transcript

07 March 2014

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"I believe that suspicionless surveillance not only fails to make us safe, but it actually makes us less safe. By squandering precious, limited resources on "collecting it all," we end up with more analysts trying to make sense of harmless political dissent and fewer investigators running down real leads. I believe investing in mass surveillance at the expense of traditional, proven methods can cost lives, and history has shown my concerns are justified."

"“One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers. These efforts to interpret new powers out of vague laws is an intentional strategy to avoid public opposition and lawmakers’ insistence that legal limits be respected, effects the GCHQ internally described in its own documents as "damaging public debate”"

See the full text: Edward Snowden's testimony to the European Parliament inquiry and Q & A session transcript (pdf)

Plus: Snowden: NSA pressures EU members to change laws (New Europe, link) and Edward Snowden wants asylum in EU (euobserver, link)

The EP plenary session will discuss (Tuesday) and consider amendments (vote Wednesday): Report on the US NSA surveillance programme, surveillance bodies in various Member States and their impact on EU citizens’ fundamental rights and on transatlantic cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs (pdf): Rapporteur: Claude Moraes MEP

See Statewatch Observatory (June 2013 - ongoing): EU-UK-GCHQ-USA-NSA: Data surveillance

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