Next week, a new era will begin - the world of Donald Trump. Trump - a man who tweets his policy ideas, and was quoted as expressing admiration for dictators - will now hold the keys to the world’s most powerful and intrusive state surveillance system.
In Europe, we’re not beyond its reach - when we use US-based online services, or even simply travel by plane, American surveillance services get access to our private information. We have the right to be concerned - the EU has been famously unconcerned about handing our personal data over to the US.
Since 2011, an EU-US agreement makes all personal information about people travelling between EU countries and the US available to Homeland Security. A similar deal with Canada was recently called “illegal under EU law” by the EU court, because it violates our right to privacy protected in the EU treaties. We want to pressure the European Commission to suspend any agreement which includes mass transfers of European citizens’ personal data to the US, and double their efforts to safeguard our right to privacy.