Europe takes US to task for spying

Viviane Reding,EU commissioner of justice,told Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter that citizens of EU countries had the right to know whether their information had been part of intelligence gathering “on a large scale.”

She asked what avenues were available to Europeans to find out whether they had been spied on,and whether they would be treated similarly to US citizens in such cases. “Given the gravity of the situation and the serious concerns expressed in public opinion on this side of the Atlantic,you will understand that I will expect swift and concrete answers,” Reding wrote.

Speaking for a continent where snooping carries ghastly echoes of fascist or communist regimes,Reding challenged Holder to answer a list of detailed questions by Friday,when they are expected to speak face-to-face in Dublin at a ministerial meeting scheduled before the Prism spy operation came to light.

In Berlin,where Obama will speak next week before the Brandenburg Gate,privacy is a sensitive political issue and the Prism revelations have stirred a furore. “You can be sure that this will be one of the things the chancellor addresses when Obama is in Germany,” Steffen Seibert,spokesman for Angela Merkel,who grew up in the former Communist East,said. Hans-Peter Friedrich,said his Interior Ministry wants to establish whether any Germans’ right to privacy had been infringed and is preparing a “catalog of questions” for its US counterparts.

Tech giants seek nod to reveal data requests

SAN FRANCISCO: Google,Facebook and Microsoft have asked the US government for permission to reveal details about classified requests they receive for personal information of foreign users. They made the request after revelations about the NSA’s secret Internet surveillance programme for collecting data from technology firms like e-mails,photos and chats.

Google acknowledged it had received FISA requests and said it had complied with far fewer of the requests than it received. Facebook and Microsoft did not discuss the requests they had received but,like Google,said they wanted to publish information on their volume and scope.