NSA: European Hypocrisy Summed Up in One Court Decision

Soon after the uncovering of the NSA spying scandal, in June 2013, we explained that France was particularly involved because of international cooperative agreements regarding the fight on terrorism. In fact, in 2004 a parliamentary report denoted that the United States “has unmatched capacity in regard to intelligence gathering compared to the Europeans” but that “the sharing of information ‘intercepted’ by the U.S. intelligence services (…) seems very satisfactory.”

In other words, and with only slight exaggeration: The NSA does not have the right to spy on Americans that are on American territory and the Europeans do not have the right to spy on Europeans on their own territory … but they have the right to exchange information with each other that they deem interesting. This explains the pusillanimous (actually baffling) reactions of the European governments against the NSA, which are intended to obscure the fact that the Europeans too have surveillance programs. Europe has a direct interest in the NSA continuing to spy on its citizens.

This hypocrisy was summed up in a court decision at The Hague, Holland. According to ITWorld, the Dutch Department of Justice judged that Holland could legally obtain from the NSA all the data that it could not legally collect itself.

The United States Is Presumed To Respect Human Rights

Several plaintiffs, lawyers, privacy groups and journalists had filed a complaint against the Dutch government, requesting that the Dutch Intelligence Services (AIVD and MIVD) not obtain data by means of international cooperation that had been collected without respect to European and Dutch privacy rules.

But the court has decided that the cooperation is legal, and it allowed the government to collect data under the American law, which is judged as respecting international conventions regarding human rights protection. Please do not laugh.

Worse still, the court found that the receipt of “mass” collected data was more respectful of human rights if it specifically targets individuals. The decision was considered “incomprehensible” by the plaintiffs, who have already announced their intention to appeal.