US must clarify reports of spying on EU offices, European Parliament says

Martin Schulz, the head of the European Parliament

Sun Jun 30, 2013 7:57AM GMT

The head of the European Parliament has demanded that the United States provide full clarification over a report disclosed by American whistleblower Edward Snowden alleging that Washington spied on EU offices.

Martin Schulz said on Saturday that the revelation would have severe impacts on the ties between the EU and the US if proven true.

“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations,” Schulz stated.

German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday that the leaked documents showed that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington, New York and Brussels.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel: "If these reports are true, it's disgusting.”

"The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies. We must get a guarantee from the very highest level now that this stops immediately," said Asselborn.

Former US defense analyst Wayne Madsen told Press TV on Saturday that some European countries, including France, Germany, Spain and Britain, have secret agreements with Washington to hand over the private data of their citizens to the National Security Agency.

Snowden is currently in a transit zone at Domodedovo International Airport in the Russian capital, Moscow, after the United States revoked his passport to prevent him from travelling further. Snowden has asked Ecuador for asylum.

In the beginning of June, Snowden leaked documents, which revealed that the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been secretly gathering information of American citizens and other people all around the world.

CAH/HSN/HMV

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ABC NEWS.net

US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine

Related Story: Ex-CIA worker revealed as US spy agency whistleblower

Related Story: Snowden still holed up in Moscow airport

Map: United States

 

The United States has been accused of bugging European Union offices and accessing EU computer networks, according to secret documents cited in German magazine Der Spiegel.

The allegations are based on a "top secret" document from the National Security Agency (NSA), dated September 2010, that was allegedly stolen by fugitive Edward Snowden.
The document, which has been seen in part by Der Spiegel journalists, is said to outline how the NSA listened to conversations and phone calls by bugging EU offices.
It also details how the agency spied on internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations.
Without citing sources, the magazine also reported that security officers at the EU had noticed several missed calls and traced them to NSA offices within the NATO compound in Brussels more than five years ago.
A spokesman for the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence had no comment on the story.
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, says if the report is correct it will have a "severe impact" on relations between the EU and the United States.

Read More  Here

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History Repeats Itself ? : The Glass-Steagall Act was only made possible because a Senate committee had exposed the dumb, risky and at times criminal behavior of banks in the run-up to the Great Depression. The outrage paved the way for the law.

August 2, 2012 by desertrose  

Splitting the Financial Giants It’s Time To Break Up Massive Banks!

International

AFP

A demonstrator at a 2011 day of global protest in London: Banks should not be allowed to get too big to fail.

For decades, America’s Glass-Steagall Act ensured a clean division of commercial and investment banking. But its repeal paved the way for the global financial world. Today politicians should restore the dual banking system to help ensure that banks that are too big to fail do not exist in the future.

The banks are blackmailing us, Sigmar Gabriel, the head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party wrote in a position paper for his party. But with the fuss over Gabriel’s partly justified and partly exaggerated claim, one hopes that the most important words spoken last week will not get lost in the noise.
Those words were from Sandy Weill, who for eight years was the decisive figure at Citibank, the major American bank. This is the same Sandy Weill who forged a financial empire and successfully fought against just about every regulation that has been thrown at the banking sector. His messagetoday? Split up the massive banks.
What Weill is calling for is a return to rules that already once served the world well. They were conceived during the 1930s financial crisis and then disposed of during the liberalization frenzy of the 1990s.
The Glass-Steagall Act is the name of the law that divided the banking world into two categories.
The first is banks that are dedicated to the classic business of managing customer deposits and issuing loans making them systemically relevant. These banks must be protected and, in an emergency, rescued by the state.
The second is investment banks, which too often have no problem at all with any risky business that comes its way as long as it promises to deliver profits. Weill believes that if things go awry at the investment banks that no one should be too quick to bail them out. These banks would be smaller and no longer the financial Goliaths that they are today. What is deemed too big to fail, would be deemed too large to even be allowed to exist in the future.
America, as well as the entire financial world, is discussing Weill’s proposal.
And not without reason, either — after all, the US banker was one of the people who pushed Bill Clinton in 1999 to repeal Glass-Steagall. He even has a plaque in his office celebrating himself as “The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall.”
The proposal still doesn’t have enough backing, despite support in many quarters including those in a number of Germany’s top boardrooms, such as reinsurance giant Munich Re, whose chairman, Nikolaus von Bromhard, also wants to eliminate the design flaw. The SPD’s Sigmar Gabriel wants to as well.
More Pros than Cons
Objections have been raised from all sides (including the editorial staff of SPIEGEL’s business and economics desk). They argue, for example, that the case of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy shows that nothing can be radically changed. Eventually, the investment bank, whose collapse triggered the financial crisis, should have been rescued in some way or other, they argue. That may be true, but only under the current system.
If a strict division of banks had been in place, it is highly unlikely that Lehman would have been able to drag the entire financial world along with it into the abyss. And, yes, such a division would create problems for an institution like Germany’s Deutsche Bank, which as both an investment and commercial bank would be forced to pursue a new business model. Still, the advantages by far outweigh the disadvantages.
So far, any halfway sensible reform of the financial world has failed because of opposition from Wall Street, the City of London or political forces like Germany’s business-friendly Free Democratic Party. Politicians still believe they can honor their pledge to stop the kind of banking excesses that led to the crisis, but so far nothing has happened.
It may be true that the old dual banking rules wouldn’t be able to function today as they were written decades ago, but they could be adjusted to fit with the current financial world. It would require craftsmanship, but it could and must happen quickly.
Incidentally, the Glass-Steagall Act was only made possible because a Senate committee had exposed the dumb, risky and at times criminal behavior of banks in the run-up to the Great Depression. The outrage paved the way for the law. Sometimes history repeats itself. Glass-Steagall served the world well for decades and it would have been better if it had never been repealed.
It is high time to correct this error.

Georg Mascolo is editor in chief of DER SPIEGEL.

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