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6 Jul, 2014

EU mulls cyber defense against US surveillance – DW.DE

As a key component of its official cyber security strategy, the European Union has explicitly emphasized the importance of protecting basic rights as its member states and the private sector bolster defenses against digital attacks.

Written in the pre-Snowden era, the document does not address the potential risk posed to EU citizens’ personal data by the intelligence agencies of allied nations. Europeans’ personal data was allegedly compromised by an old and trusted partner – the United States – and by the the United Kingdom, an important member state of the bloc.

Since adoption of the cyber security strategy in April of 2013, some EU officials have begun to explicitly identify surveillance by the US National Security Agency, or NSA, as a threat. Neelie Kroes, the EU’s digital agenda commissioner, welcomed initiatives in the US aimed at scaling back the NSA’s surveillance operations.

“But we also need to ask ourselves the right questions,” Kroes said in a speech at a cyber security summit last February. “Not why the US wanted to bug the phones of so many. But: ‘How did they manage to succeed?’ Why are we so unprepared and unsecured against such threats?”

Read the rest: EU mulls cyber defense against US surveillance | Europe | DW.DE | 03.07.2014.