All Parties In Austrian Parliament Support Resolution Calling For Action Against NSA And GCHQ Spying

from the largely-symbolic,-still-significant dept

Tue, Mar 24th 2015 1:05am — Glyn Moody

However much the US government might hope otherwise, there is still widespread concern in Europe about the activities of the NSA and its Five Eyes friends. Here's the latest proof of that: a joint motion signed by all political parties in the Austrian parliament, against illegal surveillance (via Netzpolitik). The Parliament's own summary of what the motion contained reads as follows (original in German): The recent revelations of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden have now acted as a call to action for the six parliamentary groups. In a resolution introduced jointly, they express their support for tackling seriously the illegal spying by the US foreign intelligence NSA, its British counterpart GCHQ and other foreign intelligence services. In their opinion, the [Austrian] government should exhaust all available diplomatic options, and diligently pursue violations of the Austrian Criminal Code. In addition, the MPs urge taking steps at the European level to promote the technological independence of Europe in the field of information and communication technology.

In the justification for the motion, reference was made to the recently-discovered "cyberbug", presumably attributable to the NSA. With this new malware, which cannot be detected by anti-virus software, and can even survive wiping the hard disk undamaged, it is possible for encryption to be circumvented, for example. The Members find equally worrying the theft of millions of electronic encryption keys from the Dutch SIM card producer Gemalto.
Although the motion in itself is unlikely to achieve much, it's a clear indication of continuing anger among European politicians at the activities of the NSA and GCHQ in spying on innocent members of the public, and undermining key elements of telecommunications infrastructure. If nothing else, it's a timely reminder that there are plenty of unresolved issues here, and that they are likely to have serious ramifications on US-EU relations in the future, not least in areas like Safe Harbor and TAFTA/TTIP.

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Filed Under: austria, austrian parliament, gchq, nsa, privacy, surveillance

16 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 2:05am

Maybe EU countrys could say we will sign no more
trade agreements until the hacking of eu telecoms and nsa ,gchq Mass surveillance stops ,
IF U Want to spy on some one get a court order.
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- tqk (profile), 24 Mar 2015 @ 9:12am
  
  Re:
  That's silly, and childish. The NSA's job is to spy, and they're good at it. "Know thy enemy" is a time honoured practice. It's simple self-defence. Far too many wars have been started because one side didn't understand what the other side's problem was.
  
  I object to non-USA governments and politicians helping them. "Five-eyes" is an atrociously bad idea for the citizenry outside the US. It's simply laziness. They're like sycophants following and cheering on their bully of a leader.
  
  Those trade agreements ought to be opposed by everyone, including the USA. They're protectionist bludgeons promulgated by special interests who are bribing corrupt politicians and governments, in opposition to whole countries' consumers and economies. Outside the US, we should be looking at our own credulous (or corrupt) politicians for letting this happen to us, not blaming the US (or NSA) for doing its job attempting to protect US citizens.
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  - Padpaw (profile), 24 Mar 2015 @ 12:33pm
    
    Re: Re:
    The problem there being its not about protecting US citizens but blackmailing and profit for those in charge of the NSA
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    - tqk (profile), 24 Mar 2015 @ 2:05pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      The fact that your gov't and its institutions are no longer under control (if they ever were) is not my problem (yet). It's yours. Our problem (outside the USA) is that our governments are falling into the USA's trap and helping it get away with such travesties. That makes me angry. We don't need to be part of Five-eyes. Every minute we are just makes us look like valid targets for your many enemies. I don't recall any of our elected representatives campaigning on the many wonderful benefits of becoming a vassal state of The New Roman Republic.
      
      The fact that the NSA is screwing over US citizens as well at the same time is tragic, but irrelevant for us. You've allowed it to happen to yourselves, and it's none of our business to interfere. All I want for us is to cut off that diseased limb (our gov't helping yours) so it doesn't end up killing us.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 3:51pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        That's the rub though. It IS your problem or if it's not it WILL be cause there's no "if" only "when" and "cutting off the diseased limb" wouldn't help cause the problem is it's already infected you most likely.
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        tqk (profile), 24 Mar 2015 @ 5:29pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        There's lots of stuff going on up here over C-51 (our PATRIOT Act in the works). So far, so good. Remember, our military may be armed with napkins and toothpicks, but we'll still kick your asses all the way to Sunday. [Thanks John F. :-)]
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 2:33am

"Because that's what we wanted to do...
.. and they've beaten us to it" they should add. The only thing the politicians are worried about is losing this race, nothing more. Snowden is just an excuse - would Austria give him free pass and protection from US government?
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 2:48am

This IS just posing for the public. Politicians, by their nature, would NEVER give up a chance to peak through your keyhole. They have the fever and there's only one cure.

Really, this is up to the public to ensure that politicians who can't keep themselves under control are disposed of. Stop allowing them to create laws that only apply to dumb-bunny plebeians, to be enforced by goons who are paid for with every last scrap of our tax dollars.

If I can think of any more dystopian concept, please bring it up because it will happen as long as people DO NOthing!
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- David, 24 Mar 2015 @ 2:57am
  
  Re:
  This IS just posing for the public.
  
  But in the long run it is advisable to adjust the realities to the posing. The posing is done in order to placate the populace. If the posing turns out to be effective, it makes sense to follow through in order not to blow up afterwards.
  
  Take a look at Obama who won two elections with the most transparent election lies in history. He's not endearing Democrat voters to his party. Together with Romney he probably did the most compelling campaign for voting third party ever.
  
  When alternatives are readily available (and few countries have election systems where third party voters are as heavily punished as in the U.S.), politicians are under a bit of pressure to maintain some recognizable relation between their posing and their acts.
  
  So it's a good start that they need to pose for sane privacy protections.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 3:21am

I wonder if anyone is ever going to acknowledge that the actions being taken by the various intelligence agencies have pretty much risen past acts of intelligence gathering, past espionage and are now at the level of actual war-like actions.
Probably not.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 3:58am

I can already hear what their response is going to be:

"If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear."
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 4:08am
  
  Re:
  And every privacy organization, advocate, and tech organization will respond: "Everyone's got something to hide hence why you want to spy on us!
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 4:16am

Sometime in the near future the news shall report...
Austrian government is declared terrorist sympathizers by the USG (by the behest of the NSA) and by Great Britain (again by the behest of the GCHQ). Great Britain and the USG calls for heavy embargoes against the country of Austria with many sovereign companies agreeing.

It's sad when sarcastic crap like I spewed above could very well become a possibility thanks to stupidity and power hungry mongrels.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 4:51am

one other thing it shows is the way the UK has fallen into bed with the USA, against it's partners in the EU. i am surprised that there hasn't been some action taken by the EU against the UK for that. how can it be a member of the EU club, but spy on all it's other members, it's allies, reporting it's findings to a nation thousands of miles away? isn't that being a traitor? it ought to know that when shit hits fan, the UK will be dropped by the USA like a red hot turd and with no friends in the EU, being alone would not be very nice. almost all industries have been bought out by overseas nations, with the UK not producing anything to even keep it's people in water and energy. bad moves but were they done intentionally?
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2015 @ 6:16am

Something needs to be done about illegal intelligence appratus. Other agencies may have similar or worse practices.
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Padpaw (profile), 24 Mar 2015 @ 8:00am

of course that's why they recently passed their 1 warrant to spy on the whole countries internet bill right.
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