MUNICH: The trust between the European Union and the United States has been lost following the recent US spying scandals, Vice President of the European Commission (EC) Viviane Reding said.
The recent scandal was a “wakeup call,” Reding told a conference in Munich on Monday, also referring to a law already drafted in Europe to protect personal data from government surveillance.
“We do not want the US government to listen to every phone call we make and read every email,” said Reding.
Reding said the draft law includes four key building blocks around one central statement, namely clear rules for a clear internet and the choice for individuals to give out his/her data or not.
The proposed law came after US whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that Washington has been engaged in extensive espionage activities on a global scale, which have also targeted EU offices and European citizens.
The disclosures caused global outrage with demands by several countries of full clarification from the US.
Moreover, the revelations showed that Great Britain’s three main spying agencies also used advanced technology to access transatlantic fiber-optic cables, which carried phone calls and internet traffic across the world. The retrieved tapped information was also shared with the US Nationals Security Agency (NSA), which is at the heart of the US spying scandal.
