WARNING: BEING A CITIZEN OF A EU MEMBER COUNTRY DOES NOT MAKE YOU AN EU CITIZEN! NOR AN EUROPEAN CITIZEN! HANDLE WITH CARE!

A comprehensive transatlantic pact clearing the way for the unprecedented supply of private data on European citizens to the American authorities is to be promoted by France in support of the US-driven campaign to combat terrorism and transnational crime.

The French government is expected to use its six-month presidency of the EU, starting tomorrow, to build on 18 months of confidential negotiations between Washington and Brussels aimed at clearing the complex legal obstacles to the exchange of personal information with the Americans.

It will enable the Americans to access:
- the credit card histories,
- banking details and
- travel habits of Europeans,
although senior officials in Brussels deny US reports that the Americans will also be able to snoop on the internet browsing records of Europeans.

“This is outrageous,” said Sophie In’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP on the European parliament’s civil liberties committee. “This is about fundamental rights. But it has all been done in secret by civil servants behind closed doors.”

Full article from The Guardian here.

Mrs In’t Veld is on a good way to connect the dots. First thing would be to realise that it’s precisely the EU (from where she receives her monthly salary) that enables that kind of murky anti-futurism.