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Comment by outside1234 | Hacker News Reader

Right, because France or Germany aren't spying on anyone.

it's more like they are not as big, paranoid, weaponized and violent than the US, so basically they spy less and kill less people as a result of the spying.

And also they have those pesky European Court of Human Rights and International Court of Justice overseeing them.

(Not everything if pink tho, some EU countries don't want GMO and Brasil and Argentina bet big on it)

Explain to me, a European citizen, sitting in Europe how I am protected against any of the same measures in the US? Forget GCHQ for a second, lets pick say... the Swedish FRA law, the Swedish Titan Traffic Database, the Denmark/Sweden DNS filter (some of the systems I mention have had little or delayed scrutiny from the outside). So how does any European court prevent that from happening in practise? How do these systems throw a spanner in the works?

It seems to me, perhaps I am a pessimist, that these EU systems mean about as much as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in principle it should mean everything but in practise it means sweet fuck all. Trade treaties might have more weight but I think the US holds more cards than we do as far as that is concerned.

http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Cases_list_2013_ENG.pdf

you are welcome.

Thanks very much but I was asking about how any systems we have prevent these things from happening, they don't seems to be your answer. No preventions, just consequences... sometimes, assuming the parties aren't too big for consequences or the issues touch on trade factors. Great, but that's the same deal everyone in a moderately free country has all over the world. Show me the case law for Sweden, the UK, NL, Germany, France being taken to court for collecting and processing information, because some of those countries have been doing this in a public fashion for years.

You don't think handing over EU citizen data to the US is a violation of EU policy? Tell me again about how I'm protected again?

I am protected when it comes to local issues, perhaps, but if Germany, Sweden, France, NL, UK etc. decide they are going to keep tabs on things I do online if my traffic enters their territories then European protections are just fluff. At least that's how it seems to me seeing as none of these things are going to change and there are clear violations with respect to privacy in existing European Law (and I'm not just talking about GCHQ here).

It's a bit like slavery being illegal in just about every single country on earth. What an amazing achievement to have everyone on the same page on something important, except on the ground we have more slaves right now than ever before. Every second chocolate bar you've ever bought was probably tainted in slavery. Those protections don't mean anything unless the stakeholders care and the law is enforced. If it is not enforced, its not really a law.

Right now at least.

WWII and the French colonial period make anything American right now look pretty soft touch.

France? I'm not sure the NSA has ever blown up any Greenpeace ships, for instance.

Lisbon is in Portugal. I don't think they have money for spying (unless they get financed by the NSA, which isn't that unlikely).

Maybe Portugal doesn't (I doubt it), but unless they have some means of preventing any traffic from going through most of the countries that do, it doesn't make a difference.

Well, it does make the BND happier I suppose.

EDIT: As it happens, a quick Google search reveals that not only does Portugal have its own out of control electronic surveillance program, it is also collaborating closely with the NSA as a Tier B nation.

Yeah, I should have expected that.

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