Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-30-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20000330.2.4-017"2
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"Madam President, first of all, I am delighted that the Council and the Commission have delivered a clear opinion today regarding the Echelon problem. In the past, a great many parliamentary questions have been simply ignored. The present statement is therefore a step in the right direction, albeit only the first of what need to be quite a few such steps. We must now calmly consider what measures are to be taken in order to protect the European economy effectively. Less helpful in this regard are the hasty proposals tabled by the four smaller groups in this House. When I read in the proposal put forward by the Technical Group of Independent Members about fears of a “Super Echelon” which will apparently use surveillance techniques to gain control of the whole of the information society, then this shows with how little understanding of the facts the present state of affairs is being approached. What we have here is not Huxley’s “brave new world” taking shape, but merely industrial espionage.
With its proposal to establish a committee of inquiry, an alliance of Greens and of Members from the Left and Right of the political spectrum clearly want, however, to use Parliament as an arena for James Bond-style games. Who, I wonder, would call for a committee of inquiry? The American President or the head of the British secret service, who is not even known in Britain? What is this committee supposed to find out? The fact that Echelon exists and is also used for industrial espionage is something which we have known at least since the interview with former CIA Director Mr Woolsey on 7 March of this year. No, the time for investigations and debate is past. Now, we must act. In addition to frank words with our American and British friends, we need a European encryption system, independent of the United States, with which to protect our data.
We must put this subject on the agenda of the next session of the World Trade Conference. We must develop a code of conduct which guarantees compensation in the event of espionage systems’ being misused, and we must make it clearer to our businesses than we have done so far that they themselves are called upon to safeguard their own data through encryption. In contrast to a committee of inquiry, which in this case would serve no purpose, this would be a constructive initiative.
Madam President, I have issued this statement on behalf of Mr von Boetticher who, because of a bereavement, had to travel back to Germany yesterday."@en1
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