From the top of the hill, I see a blotch of navy blue and khaki green against the backdrop of a Biblical landscape. There are about 30 police officers and soldiers in full riot gear. They huddle together on opposite sides of the road. All is silent for a moment, then a rock comes flying and they race after the youth who has flung it. A loud and percussive pop reverberates around the valley and a fog of tear gas fills the air. It is a typical Friday afternoon in East Jerusalem.
Two years have passed since the last time I was here in the Silwan district, on the cusp of the Old City. The tension is more palpable and there are more Israeli flags here now, a sure sign that Palestinians are being driven from their homes by force.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a community leader, says he had been expected in court a few days earlier. The Israeli authorities want to take over more than 80 Arab houses to make way for the City of David park. That park is promoted by Zionist extremists who claim to have unearthed a royal palace from 3,000 years ago. The court hearing on the project was called off at the last minute because the judge handling the case committed suicide.
The Diab family are paying a heavy psychological price for their efforts to save their homes. Last month the Israeli police turned up at his front door in the early hours of the morning. They arrested his 19-year-old son, alleging that he had been throwing stones. Diab followed them to the police station. “They took my ID and I waited for four hours,” he tells me. “One said: ‘I want to cut your tongue because what you say is dangerous’. I said: ‘All people have the right to speak. Me and my children are against the demolition of our home but we are non-violent people.’”
Diab had to pay 2,000 shekels (€400), more than the average monthly wage for a Palestinian worker, to have his son released. Arrests of children and adolescents are common in Silwan; in early February, police also nabbed a 42-year-old woman, who they found alone when they broke into her house. The habitual use of tear gas means that locals often feel they are smothering. The metal canisters containing tear gas are collected by residents after they have been fired. A recent inspection of such canisters found that some had past their “use-by” date almost five years ago. Israeli forces still fired them, even though doctors have warned that tear gas becomes more toxic after it expires. The tear gas grenades are manufactured by Combined Systems Incorporated, a firm based in New Jersey. Although promotional catalogues describe them as non-lethal, Jawaher Abu Rahmah died at the beginning of January after she inhaled tear gas during a protest against the massive wall Israel has built in the West Bank.
On paper, the European Union is opposed to the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem. In a secret report, that was leaked to the press last month, EU diplomats protested at Israel’s expropriation of Arab property. This is in contravention of international law; the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into the territory that it occupies. Of more than 500,000 Israel settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories, about 190,000 live in East Jerusalem, the report noted.
The apparently strong stance of these diplomats is not replicated by other EU bodies. In their report, the diplomats criticised the way a pro-settler group El’ad has been tasked with managing the archaeological sites Israel regards as central to the City of David scheme. “The organisation has entered into a partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) which is paid directly by El’ad to physically carry out the excavations without Palestinian involvement or international oversight,” the report said.
The same IAA is among the participants in Euromed Heritage, an EU-funded scheme allocated €13.5 million between 2008 and 2012. That is despite how the authority is located in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem. This is just one example of how the EU is failing to live up to its legal obligations not to confer any recognition on Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967. Europol, the EU’s police office, is examining ways of cooperating with the Israeli police, despite how its national headquarters are also in East Jerusalem.
Catherine Ashton personifies the inconsistency of the EU’s approach. As the Union’s foreign policy chief, she has issued several statements against the expansion of Israeli settlements here. Yet she has embraced the political architects of the expansion. When she chose the Middle East for her first working trip abroad of 2011, she exulted in how EU-Israel relations are “strong and solid” and voiced hope they will become even stronger in the months ahead. She is scheduled to discuss the practical aspects of these links with Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, this week.
There is much talk here about the uprising in Egypt that caused Hosni Mubarak’s downfall. The Israeli government is petrified by the turn of events. Israel had relied on Mubarak to abet its crimes, particularly to enforce the blockade on Gaza. It is too early to say what the Cairo protests will mean for Palestine but the discomfiture of the Israeli elite offers at least some hope.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 20-26 February 2011
Showing posts with label Europol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europol. Show all posts
Monday, February 21, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
The truth about terror
What is the first image that pops into your head when you hear the word “terrorist”? Does he have a bushy beard and a swarthy complexion? Is he Muslim?
Statistics do not prop up this stereotype. According to Europol, only 0.4% of “terrorist attacks” either carried out or thwarted in the EU between 2006 and 2008 could be attributed to “Islamists”. Most of the 500-per-year such incidents considered by the EU’s police office were the work of “separatist” groups in France and Spain. (The data was collated before the Basque organisation ETA announced a ceasefire in September last year).
If the problem is so confined to pockets of Europe, why do our politicians misrepresent it as a global threat? And why has it become synonymous with Islam, when most of its practitioners in this continent come from a Christian background?
More to the point, what is terrorism? It wasn’t until 2002 that the EU had a collective definition of the concept. Activities deemed as “terrorist” included those with the objective of “seriously intimidating a population” and “seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a society.”
While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – both supported by all or many EU governments – fulfil all those criteria, the definition had a condition attached. Actions by a state or its army could not be considered as terrorist, it said.
So the official position of the EU is that terrorism is violence by the powerless, not the powerful. Given that the EU’s aversion to violence is so selective, it can be no great surprise that the Union is not only unwilling to tackle the root causes of “terrorism” but is tacitly eager to sustain the problem.
In July 2010, the European Commission issued a paper celebrating the “main achievements” of its “counter-terrorism policy”. Several of the “achievements” listed have little to do with terrorism as it is defined by the EU. These included the introduction of the European arrest warrant, which largely facilitates extradition for offences of a non-political nature. Poland, the top user of the arrest warrant system, has even invoked it in cases of petty theft.
But there is a more sinister side to the story than an effort to claim credit where it is not due. The same paper intimates that the “war on terror” can yield new business opportunities for European firms through “public-private partnerships”. Moreover, it trumpets how €1.7 billion has been allocated to “security” projects between 2007 and 2013 under the EU’s “framework programme” for scientific research. As I document in my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel, many of these research grants involve surveillance equipment that is being tested in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. (Israel is the main foreign beneficiary of the Union’s research activities).
Later this week the Commission will take new steps to make sure we are all spied on. The EU’s executive is scheduled to approve new measures on the transfer of data for airline passengers flying into the Union. This will be the newest addition to a process initiated not in Europe but in Washington. Following the atrocities of 11 September 2011, George W Bush demanded that the EU hand over details about each person who travels to America.
Like lackeys, our governments and institutions are constantly repackaging the Passenger Name Record (PNR) dossier, despite how it was struck down by the European Court of Justice in 2006. The deficiencies in America’s data protection regime have not been remedied since then. Indeed, Viviane Reding, the EU’s justice commissioner, protested in December about “an apparent lack of interest on the US side to talk seriously about data protection”.
That tantrum aside, Reding has a track record of capitulating to Big Brother when the going gets tough. During 2010, she first expressed misgivings about the bulk transfer of bank account data for European citizens to the US, then gave her blessing to that transfer, after some minor concessions were granted. The concessions did nothing to address how America’s privacy legislation only offers protection against unlawful data processing to US citizens, not to foreigners.
Her colleague Cecilia Malmström, the home affairs commissioner, has a comparable reputation for flip-flopping. When she was a humble MEP in 2005, Malmström spoke eloquently of how liberty should not be sacrificed in the name of security. She opposed another law – it, too, demanded by Bush – forcing phone and internet companies to retain records on each call made or email sent by their customers. Developing extensive systems for such espionage “would be a very major encroachment on privacy, with a high risk of the systems being abused in many ways,” she said, adding: “The fact is that most of us, after all, are not criminals.”
Now that she has been promoted, Malmström has declared the exact same measures as “useful for fighting crime”. She has become so wedded to power that she tramples on the civil liberties she used to defend.
Privacy is recognised as a basic entitlement by the European Convention on Human Rights. This continent’s not-too-distant history should remind us how dangerous it is to deny that right. The former military dictatorship in Greece, for example, used to monitor the population’s political leanings by checking what newspapers they read.
If our politicians want to interfere with privacy, they need solid reasons to do so. The “war on terror” is a lousy excuse.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 30 January – 5 February 2011.
Statistics do not prop up this stereotype. According to Europol, only 0.4% of “terrorist attacks” either carried out or thwarted in the EU between 2006 and 2008 could be attributed to “Islamists”. Most of the 500-per-year such incidents considered by the EU’s police office were the work of “separatist” groups in France and Spain. (The data was collated before the Basque organisation ETA announced a ceasefire in September last year).
If the problem is so confined to pockets of Europe, why do our politicians misrepresent it as a global threat? And why has it become synonymous with Islam, when most of its practitioners in this continent come from a Christian background?
More to the point, what is terrorism? It wasn’t until 2002 that the EU had a collective definition of the concept. Activities deemed as “terrorist” included those with the objective of “seriously intimidating a population” and “seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a society.”
While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – both supported by all or many EU governments – fulfil all those criteria, the definition had a condition attached. Actions by a state or its army could not be considered as terrorist, it said.
So the official position of the EU is that terrorism is violence by the powerless, not the powerful. Given that the EU’s aversion to violence is so selective, it can be no great surprise that the Union is not only unwilling to tackle the root causes of “terrorism” but is tacitly eager to sustain the problem.
In July 2010, the European Commission issued a paper celebrating the “main achievements” of its “counter-terrorism policy”. Several of the “achievements” listed have little to do with terrorism as it is defined by the EU. These included the introduction of the European arrest warrant, which largely facilitates extradition for offences of a non-political nature. Poland, the top user of the arrest warrant system, has even invoked it in cases of petty theft.
But there is a more sinister side to the story than an effort to claim credit where it is not due. The same paper intimates that the “war on terror” can yield new business opportunities for European firms through “public-private partnerships”. Moreover, it trumpets how €1.7 billion has been allocated to “security” projects between 2007 and 2013 under the EU’s “framework programme” for scientific research. As I document in my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel, many of these research grants involve surveillance equipment that is being tested in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. (Israel is the main foreign beneficiary of the Union’s research activities).
Later this week the Commission will take new steps to make sure we are all spied on. The EU’s executive is scheduled to approve new measures on the transfer of data for airline passengers flying into the Union. This will be the newest addition to a process initiated not in Europe but in Washington. Following the atrocities of 11 September 2011, George W Bush demanded that the EU hand over details about each person who travels to America.
Like lackeys, our governments and institutions are constantly repackaging the Passenger Name Record (PNR) dossier, despite how it was struck down by the European Court of Justice in 2006. The deficiencies in America’s data protection regime have not been remedied since then. Indeed, Viviane Reding, the EU’s justice commissioner, protested in December about “an apparent lack of interest on the US side to talk seriously about data protection”.
That tantrum aside, Reding has a track record of capitulating to Big Brother when the going gets tough. During 2010, she first expressed misgivings about the bulk transfer of bank account data for European citizens to the US, then gave her blessing to that transfer, after some minor concessions were granted. The concessions did nothing to address how America’s privacy legislation only offers protection against unlawful data processing to US citizens, not to foreigners.
Her colleague Cecilia Malmström, the home affairs commissioner, has a comparable reputation for flip-flopping. When she was a humble MEP in 2005, Malmström spoke eloquently of how liberty should not be sacrificed in the name of security. She opposed another law – it, too, demanded by Bush – forcing phone and internet companies to retain records on each call made or email sent by their customers. Developing extensive systems for such espionage “would be a very major encroachment on privacy, with a high risk of the systems being abused in many ways,” she said, adding: “The fact is that most of us, after all, are not criminals.”
Now that she has been promoted, Malmström has declared the exact same measures as “useful for fighting crime”. She has become so wedded to power that she tramples on the civil liberties she used to defend.
Privacy is recognised as a basic entitlement by the European Convention on Human Rights. This continent’s not-too-distant history should remind us how dangerous it is to deny that right. The former military dictatorship in Greece, for example, used to monitor the population’s political leanings by checking what newspapers they read.
If our politicians want to interfere with privacy, they need solid reasons to do so. The “war on terror” is a lousy excuse.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 30 January – 5 February 2011.
Monday, November 22, 2010
EU police court abusers in Colombia and Israel
Every once in a while I listen to Computer World, the 1981 album by Kraftwerk, Düsseldorf’s pioneers of electronic music. As the record’s trance-inducing title track opens, I am always struck by the prophetic nature of its lyrics. “Interpol and Deutsche Bank, FBI and Scotland Yard,” a vocoder deadpans, kicking off three infectiously repetitive verses which capture how much modern technology has been shaped by a paranoid nexus of security and commerce.
From early next year, The Hague is scheduled to host a new “hub for criminal information”, according to a document I have had the misfortune of reading. Europol, the EU’s police cooperation body, will move into a stylish headquarters, with glass walls and exhibits of contemporary art. This supposed temple of transparency has been designed to motivate all who enter to fight such scourges as cybercime and credit card fraud, the aforementioned document intimates.
It would be comforting if we could sleep knowing that the police act in the best interests of humanity. But Europol’s brief history is crammed with instances where human rights are disregarded so that its staff can concentrate on narrowly-defined threats.
Originally limited to the illicit drug trade, Europol has adroitly exploited George W Bush’s “war on terror” to carve out a bigger mandate for itself and greater uses for its vast databases. One of the more unsavoury consequences of its growing responsibilities is that it has struck up alliances with repugnant regimes.
In September, Europol signed an agreement to deepen its cooperation with Colombia. Under it, personal data on “known and suspected criminals” may be exchanged with the Bogota authorities, to ensure that there is “solidarity and common purpose in the fight against all kinds of terrorist activity,” Europol’s director Rob Wainwright said.
Colombia, it should be noted, interprets the category “suspected criminal” liberally. Alvaro Uribe, who stepped down as the country’s president in August, has accused human rights activists of being “rent-a-mobs at terrorism’s service”. Throughout his eight years in power, he allowed a culture of impunity to flourish, where trade unionists could be intimidated and murdered without anyone being brought to justice. Investigators of extrajudicial executions by state forces documented over 3,000 such killings – frequently of peasants - between 2002 and 2009, with officers reportedly rewarded with money or promotion. Yet while Uribe took disciplinary action in some cases, he was generally dismissive of the evidence gathered.
Abuses by the Colombian state have not only been targeted at the country’s own nationals. Papers obtained by the Colombian public prosecutor have shown how its secret service, the DAS, has been spying on political campaigners and devised a strategy for “neutralising” a number of individuals and institutions critical of Bogota’s record of repression. Among those mentioned were French and German citizens and the European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights.
The 1995 convention regulating Europol’s activities forbids it from processing data that has been obtained through human rights abuses. If this clause was respected Europol would not have signed a cooperation pact with Colombia. Nor would it be negotiating a similar agreement with Israel, Colombia’s best friend in the Middle East. (Israel is the top supplier of weaponry to Colombia).
Europol was given the go-ahead to open cooperation talks with Israel by the EU’s governments in 2005. Although these have not yet led to a formal cooperation accord being finalised, there are strong indications that one could be endorsed by both sides in the near future.
As part of a broader EU policy of mollycoddling Israel, Europol appears willing to overlook the routine use of torture against Palestinian detainees. Although Israel has ratified the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture, the Israeli high court ruled in 1999 that members of the security forces could not be prosecuted if they used coercive methods in “ticking bomb” situations. That loophole has been perceived as a gaping one by Israel’s attorney general who has happily given the army ample legal cover to avail of it, research by Human Rights Watch has concluded.
Photographs posted on Facebook during the summer, meanwhile, depicted a female Israeli soldier posing cheekily beside blindfolded Palestinians. Even if these offered a chilling reminder of how US soldiers in Iraq behaved in the Abu Ghraib scandal, anti-torture watchdogs have made clear that they are the tip of the iceberg. Each year Israel locks up an average of 700 Palestinian children. A recent investigation by Defence for Children International found that out of a sample of 100 such children, 69% were beaten and kicked and 12% threatened with rape or another form of sexual assault in 2009.
Europol’s eagerness to do business with the Israeli police is all the more troubling given how that force has its national HQ in East Jerusalem. In the past few weeks Catherine Ashton, the Union’s foreign policy chief, has criticised the construction of new Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, describing them as illegal under international law. Allowing Europol to work closely with an Israeli police force that is actively seeking to uproot Palestinians from their homes would amount to effectively conferring approval on Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. It would be a dereliction of the duty of non-recognition, a core legal principle under which governments must not give their blessing to illegal activities.
Surely, it’s time Europol realised that law enforcers are not above international law.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 21-27 November 2010
From early next year, The Hague is scheduled to host a new “hub for criminal information”, according to a document I have had the misfortune of reading. Europol, the EU’s police cooperation body, will move into a stylish headquarters, with glass walls and exhibits of contemporary art. This supposed temple of transparency has been designed to motivate all who enter to fight such scourges as cybercime and credit card fraud, the aforementioned document intimates.
It would be comforting if we could sleep knowing that the police act in the best interests of humanity. But Europol’s brief history is crammed with instances where human rights are disregarded so that its staff can concentrate on narrowly-defined threats.
Originally limited to the illicit drug trade, Europol has adroitly exploited George W Bush’s “war on terror” to carve out a bigger mandate for itself and greater uses for its vast databases. One of the more unsavoury consequences of its growing responsibilities is that it has struck up alliances with repugnant regimes.
In September, Europol signed an agreement to deepen its cooperation with Colombia. Under it, personal data on “known and suspected criminals” may be exchanged with the Bogota authorities, to ensure that there is “solidarity and common purpose in the fight against all kinds of terrorist activity,” Europol’s director Rob Wainwright said.
Colombia, it should be noted, interprets the category “suspected criminal” liberally. Alvaro Uribe, who stepped down as the country’s president in August, has accused human rights activists of being “rent-a-mobs at terrorism’s service”. Throughout his eight years in power, he allowed a culture of impunity to flourish, where trade unionists could be intimidated and murdered without anyone being brought to justice. Investigators of extrajudicial executions by state forces documented over 3,000 such killings – frequently of peasants - between 2002 and 2009, with officers reportedly rewarded with money or promotion. Yet while Uribe took disciplinary action in some cases, he was generally dismissive of the evidence gathered.
Abuses by the Colombian state have not only been targeted at the country’s own nationals. Papers obtained by the Colombian public prosecutor have shown how its secret service, the DAS, has been spying on political campaigners and devised a strategy for “neutralising” a number of individuals and institutions critical of Bogota’s record of repression. Among those mentioned were French and German citizens and the European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights.
The 1995 convention regulating Europol’s activities forbids it from processing data that has been obtained through human rights abuses. If this clause was respected Europol would not have signed a cooperation pact with Colombia. Nor would it be negotiating a similar agreement with Israel, Colombia’s best friend in the Middle East. (Israel is the top supplier of weaponry to Colombia).
Europol was given the go-ahead to open cooperation talks with Israel by the EU’s governments in 2005. Although these have not yet led to a formal cooperation accord being finalised, there are strong indications that one could be endorsed by both sides in the near future.
As part of a broader EU policy of mollycoddling Israel, Europol appears willing to overlook the routine use of torture against Palestinian detainees. Although Israel has ratified the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture, the Israeli high court ruled in 1999 that members of the security forces could not be prosecuted if they used coercive methods in “ticking bomb” situations. That loophole has been perceived as a gaping one by Israel’s attorney general who has happily given the army ample legal cover to avail of it, research by Human Rights Watch has concluded.
Photographs posted on Facebook during the summer, meanwhile, depicted a female Israeli soldier posing cheekily beside blindfolded Palestinians. Even if these offered a chilling reminder of how US soldiers in Iraq behaved in the Abu Ghraib scandal, anti-torture watchdogs have made clear that they are the tip of the iceberg. Each year Israel locks up an average of 700 Palestinian children. A recent investigation by Defence for Children International found that out of a sample of 100 such children, 69% were beaten and kicked and 12% threatened with rape or another form of sexual assault in 2009.
Europol’s eagerness to do business with the Israeli police is all the more troubling given how that force has its national HQ in East Jerusalem. In the past few weeks Catherine Ashton, the Union’s foreign policy chief, has criticised the construction of new Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, describing them as illegal under international law. Allowing Europol to work closely with an Israeli police force that is actively seeking to uproot Palestinians from their homes would amount to effectively conferring approval on Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. It would be a dereliction of the duty of non-recognition, a core legal principle under which governments must not give their blessing to illegal activities.
Surely, it’s time Europol realised that law enforcers are not above international law.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 21-27 November 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Bowing to Big Brother - in America
Private information on innocent citizens will be handed over to U.S. law enforcement authorities under an agreement slated for approval by the European Parliament this week.
In February, members of the Parliament (MEPs) rejected a plan to allow data on everyday bank transactions be given to the U.S., citing concerns over fundamental civil rights. Four months later, however, MEPs are expected to endorse the same plan July 8, having been granted a small number of concessions.
The whole affair has its roots in a U.S. move to snoop on data held by Swift, a Belgian-based company that facilitates exchanges between banks, following the 11 September 2001 atrocities. Under the pretext of tracking the “money trail” of terrorists, the Washington authorities used subpoenas to gain access to Swift’s data. Yet even though personal details on millions of individuals were transferred across the Atlantic, the public was not informed that such transfers were taking place until a report appeared in The New York Times during 2006.
Eager to allow the transfers continue, the European Union’s governments accepted an accord designed to give Washington the necessary legal cover in November last year. This accord drew an angry response from civil liberties watchdogs, who pointed out that people whose data was abused would have no means of seeking redress. America’s privacy legislation only offers protection against unlawful data processing to U.S. citizens and residents, not to outsiders under scrutiny by the U.S. authorities.
The Parliament’s revolt against that accord was prompted in large measure by how MEPs felt they had been excluded from talks over the accord’s content and by their desire to exercise new powers under the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which gives them a greater say in many policy areas. As a result, the Union’s governments and Barack Obama’s administration in the U.S. sought to address some of their concerns. A few modifications to the agreement have been made, including a provision for stationing an EU official in Washington to monitor the accord’s implementation.
But privacy campaigners say that the core deficiencies in the agreement have not been remedied.
“The fundamental points that were rejected by the Parliament the first time are in the text again,” Joe McNamee from the group European Digital Rights said. “It seems that what the Parliament has been searching for is a way of backing down. The amount of data involved remains pretty much the same.”
The data held by Swift includes the names of bank account holders and the numbers of those accounts. Because the volume of information concerned is so vast, the EU’s own Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx has protested that the measures envisaged in the November accord “interfere with the private life of all Europeans”. There are no guarantees that data will no longer be stored after a certain length of time or after it has been proven to be of no benefit in an investigation, he has observed.
Alexander Alvaro, a German Liberal MEP who has been tasked with drafting the Parliament’s official response to the accord, said that he and his colleagues “have got clear concessions” since February. The EU official sent to Washington will be able to block the transfer of data if it is being abused, he claimed.
Although his stance is being supported by a majority in the Parliament, some MEPs are continuing to voice serious misgivings. Opponents say that the agreement is illegal because it violates the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. All EU countries are required to respect that convention.
Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green, said: “Nothing has really changed. All sorts of personal data concerning innocent European citizens are still being sent to the U.S.”
Rui Tavares, a Portuguese left-wing MEP, said European citizens will be discriminated against as a result of the agreement. “We know full well that this doesn’t change American law and that it doesn’t go through the American Congress,” he added.
Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP who specialises in civil liberties, said she was only supporting the revised accord because she did not believe it would be politically possible to hammer out a better deal. “There is no reason for jubilation but it is the least bad option,” she added, warning that the accord’s shortcoming left it vulnerable to legal challenges.
As part of the changes to the agreement, the EU has undertaken to set up its own “terrorism finance tracking programme”, so that it can analyse bank transactions within Europe. Supporters of the accord say that this step should enable the Union to eliminate the bulk transfer of data to the Americans.
The latest agreement also gives Europol, the EU’s police cooperation agreement, a role in its implementation. But privacy campaigners point out that Europol is not a data protection body and that it will have a chance to request access to data for its own investigations. “Europol has been given an incentive not to restrict the amount of data transferred,” said McNamee from European Digital Rights.
This is not the first time that the European Parliament has succumbed to pressure to approve controversial measures that the U.S. has sought as part of the “war on terror” declared by its former President George W. Bush. In 2005, for example, MEPs accepted sweeping measures to make telecommunications firms retain details of all phone calls and email messages made and sent by ordinary citizens.
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 7 July 2010
In February, members of the Parliament (MEPs) rejected a plan to allow data on everyday bank transactions be given to the U.S., citing concerns over fundamental civil rights. Four months later, however, MEPs are expected to endorse the same plan July 8, having been granted a small number of concessions.
The whole affair has its roots in a U.S. move to snoop on data held by Swift, a Belgian-based company that facilitates exchanges between banks, following the 11 September 2001 atrocities. Under the pretext of tracking the “money trail” of terrorists, the Washington authorities used subpoenas to gain access to Swift’s data. Yet even though personal details on millions of individuals were transferred across the Atlantic, the public was not informed that such transfers were taking place until a report appeared in The New York Times during 2006.
Eager to allow the transfers continue, the European Union’s governments accepted an accord designed to give Washington the necessary legal cover in November last year. This accord drew an angry response from civil liberties watchdogs, who pointed out that people whose data was abused would have no means of seeking redress. America’s privacy legislation only offers protection against unlawful data processing to U.S. citizens and residents, not to outsiders under scrutiny by the U.S. authorities.
The Parliament’s revolt against that accord was prompted in large measure by how MEPs felt they had been excluded from talks over the accord’s content and by their desire to exercise new powers under the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which gives them a greater say in many policy areas. As a result, the Union’s governments and Barack Obama’s administration in the U.S. sought to address some of their concerns. A few modifications to the agreement have been made, including a provision for stationing an EU official in Washington to monitor the accord’s implementation.
But privacy campaigners say that the core deficiencies in the agreement have not been remedied.
“The fundamental points that were rejected by the Parliament the first time are in the text again,” Joe McNamee from the group European Digital Rights said. “It seems that what the Parliament has been searching for is a way of backing down. The amount of data involved remains pretty much the same.”
The data held by Swift includes the names of bank account holders and the numbers of those accounts. Because the volume of information concerned is so vast, the EU’s own Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx has protested that the measures envisaged in the November accord “interfere with the private life of all Europeans”. There are no guarantees that data will no longer be stored after a certain length of time or after it has been proven to be of no benefit in an investigation, he has observed.
Alexander Alvaro, a German Liberal MEP who has been tasked with drafting the Parliament’s official response to the accord, said that he and his colleagues “have got clear concessions” since February. The EU official sent to Washington will be able to block the transfer of data if it is being abused, he claimed.
Although his stance is being supported by a majority in the Parliament, some MEPs are continuing to voice serious misgivings. Opponents say that the agreement is illegal because it violates the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. All EU countries are required to respect that convention.
Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green, said: “Nothing has really changed. All sorts of personal data concerning innocent European citizens are still being sent to the U.S.”
Rui Tavares, a Portuguese left-wing MEP, said European citizens will be discriminated against as a result of the agreement. “We know full well that this doesn’t change American law and that it doesn’t go through the American Congress,” he added.
Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP who specialises in civil liberties, said she was only supporting the revised accord because she did not believe it would be politically possible to hammer out a better deal. “There is no reason for jubilation but it is the least bad option,” she added, warning that the accord’s shortcoming left it vulnerable to legal challenges.
As part of the changes to the agreement, the EU has undertaken to set up its own “terrorism finance tracking programme”, so that it can analyse bank transactions within Europe. Supporters of the accord say that this step should enable the Union to eliminate the bulk transfer of data to the Americans.
The latest agreement also gives Europol, the EU’s police cooperation agreement, a role in its implementation. But privacy campaigners point out that Europol is not a data protection body and that it will have a chance to request access to data for its own investigations. “Europol has been given an incentive not to restrict the amount of data transferred,” said McNamee from European Digital Rights.
This is not the first time that the European Parliament has succumbed to pressure to approve controversial measures that the U.S. has sought as part of the “war on terror” declared by its former President George W. Bush. In 2005, for example, MEPs accepted sweeping measures to make telecommunications firms retain details of all phone calls and email messages made and sent by ordinary citizens.
•First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 7 July 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
When law enforcers have an illegal headquarters
Talks aimed at reaching an intelligence-sharing agreement between the European Union and Israel have skirted around the location of Israel’s national police headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem.
In 2005, the EU decided that Europol, its law enforcement office, should negotiate a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. Although Europol stated last year that a draft accord had been completed, it has now acknowledged that the question of Israeli police basing their headquarters on Palestinian land has not been properly addressed. “The negotiations so far have not touched upon the issue of the location of the main office of the Israeli police in East Jerusalem,” a Europol spokesman said.
The issue is highly sensitive because the Union has never recognised Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem and has opposed Israel’s policy of evicting Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the neighbourhood where Israel’s police and public security ministry are headquartered. A report by EU diplomats from March last year complained about a marked acceleration in the pace with which Israeli settlements are being built in East Jerusalem as part of a deliberate policy to sever it from the remainder of the West Bank. “Israel is, by practical means, actively pursuing the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem,” the report said.
Israel is one of several countries – including Russia, the U.S. and Canada – to have entered into talks on sharing information with Europol. As part of an eventual agreement, Europol would expect to have representatives stationed in Israel’s police headquarters. Such a move would involve a reversal of a decades-old EU policy as it would mean a de facto recognition of Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem.
An alliance of Palestinian trade unions and campaign groups urging a global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel argued that an EU-Israel police cooperation agreement would violate international law.
Michael Deas, European coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, said his group had recently received legal advice from a barrister. This opinion concluded that any state that acted to legitimise Israel’s control of Palestinian territories would be directly contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention, a 1949 law written in response to Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.
Deas added that an EU-Israel police accord would follow a series of moves to involve Israel intimately in some of the Union’s key political and economic policies in recent years. Israeli arms companies that supplied some of the deadliest weapons used in the war against Gaza in 2008 and 2009 and makers of surveillance technology for illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the West Bank are among the beneficiaries of the Union’s multi-billion euro “framework programme” for scientific research, he noted. He also likened Israel’s systematic denial of basic rights to Palestinians to the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa for much of the twentieth century.
“If the European Union signs an agreement to share intelligence with the Israeli police force, it would only further entrench its active complicity in Israel’s occupation and apartheid system,” he said.
Under the 1995 convention that covers Europol’s activities, the office is not permitted either to process information that has been obtained in a manner that violates human rights.
While Israel’s High Court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods used against detainees should be prohibited as they clearly consisted of torture and ill-treatment, allegations of widespread torture persist. A December 2009 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) found that complaints of torture are frequently glossed over by the authorities. Out of more than 600 complaints submitted by torture victims since 2001, not one had led to a criminal investigation, according to the report.
Amnesty International’s latest annual report indicates, too, that torture of Palestinian detainees by Israel’s General Security Service is rife. Practises allegedly used include beatings, placing detainees in “stress” positions designed to cause them pain and discomfort, and forced sleep deprivation. Despite the 1999 court ruling, Israel still allows torture in cases where it is deemed “necessary”, Amnesty noted.
A further snag is that the EU’s own data protection officials regard Israel’s privacy laws as inadequate. In a 2009 paper, the officials said that linking Europol’s databases with those run by the Israeli police would breach the Europol convention. Israel was found not to respect data protection standards to which Europol is legally bound such as requirements that the collection of data should not be “excessive” and that it should not be stored indefinitely.
Jelle van Buuren from Eurowatch, a civil liberties organisation, said that Europol wishes to have strong links with Israel and other countries it deems as strategic partners so that it can curry favour with the Union’s governments.
“Getting formal cooperation agreements with other countries would strengthen Europol’s position vis-à-vis (EU) member states,” he added. “Europol wants to be a European intelligence hub.”
•First published by Inter Press Service, 30 June 2010 (www.ipsnews.net)
In 2005, the EU decided that Europol, its law enforcement office, should negotiate a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. Although Europol stated last year that a draft accord had been completed, it has now acknowledged that the question of Israeli police basing their headquarters on Palestinian land has not been properly addressed. “The negotiations so far have not touched upon the issue of the location of the main office of the Israeli police in East Jerusalem,” a Europol spokesman said.
The issue is highly sensitive because the Union has never recognised Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem and has opposed Israel’s policy of evicting Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the neighbourhood where Israel’s police and public security ministry are headquartered. A report by EU diplomats from March last year complained about a marked acceleration in the pace with which Israeli settlements are being built in East Jerusalem as part of a deliberate policy to sever it from the remainder of the West Bank. “Israel is, by practical means, actively pursuing the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem,” the report said.
Israel is one of several countries – including Russia, the U.S. and Canada – to have entered into talks on sharing information with Europol. As part of an eventual agreement, Europol would expect to have representatives stationed in Israel’s police headquarters. Such a move would involve a reversal of a decades-old EU policy as it would mean a de facto recognition of Israel’s takeover of East Jerusalem.
An alliance of Palestinian trade unions and campaign groups urging a global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel argued that an EU-Israel police cooperation agreement would violate international law.
Michael Deas, European coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, said his group had recently received legal advice from a barrister. This opinion concluded that any state that acted to legitimise Israel’s control of Palestinian territories would be directly contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention, a 1949 law written in response to Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.
Deas added that an EU-Israel police accord would follow a series of moves to involve Israel intimately in some of the Union’s key political and economic policies in recent years. Israeli arms companies that supplied some of the deadliest weapons used in the war against Gaza in 2008 and 2009 and makers of surveillance technology for illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the West Bank are among the beneficiaries of the Union’s multi-billion euro “framework programme” for scientific research, he noted. He also likened Israel’s systematic denial of basic rights to Palestinians to the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa for much of the twentieth century.
“If the European Union signs an agreement to share intelligence with the Israeli police force, it would only further entrench its active complicity in Israel’s occupation and apartheid system,” he said.
Under the 1995 convention that covers Europol’s activities, the office is not permitted either to process information that has been obtained in a manner that violates human rights.
While Israel’s High Court ruled in 1999 that some interrogation methods used against detainees should be prohibited as they clearly consisted of torture and ill-treatment, allegations of widespread torture persist. A December 2009 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) found that complaints of torture are frequently glossed over by the authorities. Out of more than 600 complaints submitted by torture victims since 2001, not one had led to a criminal investigation, according to the report.
Amnesty International’s latest annual report indicates, too, that torture of Palestinian detainees by Israel’s General Security Service is rife. Practises allegedly used include beatings, placing detainees in “stress” positions designed to cause them pain and discomfort, and forced sleep deprivation. Despite the 1999 court ruling, Israel still allows torture in cases where it is deemed “necessary”, Amnesty noted.
A further snag is that the EU’s own data protection officials regard Israel’s privacy laws as inadequate. In a 2009 paper, the officials said that linking Europol’s databases with those run by the Israeli police would breach the Europol convention. Israel was found not to respect data protection standards to which Europol is legally bound such as requirements that the collection of data should not be “excessive” and that it should not be stored indefinitely.
Jelle van Buuren from Eurowatch, a civil liberties organisation, said that Europol wishes to have strong links with Israel and other countries it deems as strategic partners so that it can curry favour with the Union’s governments.
“Getting formal cooperation agreements with other countries would strengthen Europol’s position vis-à-vis (EU) member states,” he added. “Europol wants to be a European intelligence hub.”
•First published by Inter Press Service, 30 June 2010 (www.ipsnews.net)
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