The European Union's chief justice official has written to the U.S. attorney general demanding an explanation for the collection of foreign nationals' data through its Prism spy program.
In a letter seen by Reuters, the European commissioner for justice and fundamental rights,Viviane Reding, said she had serious concerns about the possibility that U.S. authorities had accessed European citizens' data on a vast scale.
Reding has pushed hard for stronger privacy rules in Europe throughout her mandate. In 2012,she sought to introduce measures that would have set up barriers for foreign judicial authoritiesto access data about European citizens.
But EU officials say the proposals were diluted by her counterparts in the EuropeanCommission, the EU executive, because of concerns such laws would strain relations with theUnited States at a time when the EU was preparing for talks on a free-trade deal withWashington.
"I would request that you provide me with explanations and clarifications on the PRISMprogramme, other U.S. programmes involving data collection and search, and laws under whichsuch programmes may be authorised," Reding wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder.
U.S. officials have confirmed the existence of a secret programme to draw data from theInternet, code-named Prism, which according to documents leaked to the Washington Post andBritain's Guardian newspaper has given them access to data from firms such as Google,Facebook and Skype.
Reding has tried to make it more difficult for U.S. authorities to obtain data from Europeantelecoms and technology companies by introducing stricter requirements such as the approvalfrom a judicial authority.
"In-house people didn't want to create any possible tension with the U.S.," an EU official said,referring to opposition inside the European Commission to Reding's proposals in 2012.
Holder and Reding will meet in Dublin on Friday at a scheduled ministerial gathering.
Detailed questions
In her letter, Reding asks Holder to explain whether EU citizens were targeted under Prism, howbroad U.S. access to the data would have been and how EU companies and citizens canappeal against the monitoring of their private correspondence.
EU officials have for several years asked the United States to explain how laws such as thePatriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act affect EU citizens andcompanies. The European Parliament, in particular, has become vocal about limiting datasharing and protecting privacy.
Since 2011 the European Commission has tried to negotiate a transatlantic data protectionagreement that would limit U.S. access to European data.
The talks have stalled partly over the issue of what rights EU citizens had on U.S. soil, acommission official told Reuters earlier this week.
EU officials also are debating whether data protection should be included in negotiations for anEU-U.S. free-trade deal on which formal talks are expected to begin next month.
European businesses have warned that without legal certainty, technologies which rely on dataprotection such as cloud computing will not be able to grow in Europe.
Companies considering adopting cloud technology still cite security as their biggest concernand European officials say they are aware that Europe's cloud market hinges on privacy.
"The storage of the data in the foreign servers and related legal uncertainty constitutes a realimpediment," a Commission official said.
Lobby groups in Brussels say they need to know which set of laws - EU or U.S. legislation - theyshould follow.
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