Poor Mr Holder

For John, BLUF:  The EU equivalent of the US Attorney General wants answers.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

In yesterday's International Herald Tribune is an article, " E.U. Official Pushes U.S. to Explain Its Surveillance, about Dr Viviane Reding,♠ the EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, sending a letter to Mr Eric Holder, our Federal Attorney General.  In the letter, as described by reporter James Kanter, Ms Reding poses nine questions and asks for serious answers.  Here is the first part of the longish article:

BRUSSELS — Amid a growing outcry over American snooping on foreigners that threatens to cloud European-U.S. trade talks and President Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, the European Union’s top justice official has demanded in unusually sharp terms that the United States reveal what its intelligence is doing with personal information of Europeans gathered under the Prism surveillance program revealed last week.

Viviane Reding, the Union’s combative commissioner of justice, told Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter sent on Monday evening that individual citizens of European countries had the right to know whether their personal information had been part of intelligence gathering “on a large scale.”

In the letter, seen Tuesday by the International Herald Tribune, she also asked what avenues were available to Europeans to find out whether they had been spied on, and whether they would be treated similarly to U.S. 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,” Mrs. Reding wrote.

Speaking for a continent where snooping carries ghastly echoes of fascist or communist regimes, Mrs. Reding challenged Mr. 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.

One might well ask what cudgel the EU has to bring Mr Holder to actively respond.  The answer is trade agreements.  That and President Obama's upcoming trip to Europe.

In Berlin, where Mr. Obama will speak next week before the Brandenburg Gate, privacy is a highly sensitive political issue and the Prism revelations have stirred a furor.

“You can be sure that this will be one of the things the chancellor addresses when President Obama is in Germany,” said Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Angela Merkel, who grew up in the former Communist East.

Germany’s interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, said his ministry wants to establish whether any Germans’ right to privacy had been infringed and is preparing a “catalog of questions” for its American counterparts.

The views of the Europeans will not likely influence decisions of the US Administration and the US Congress, although jurists such as former Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall have urged US Courts to consider the views of judiciaries overseas.  But, it will complicate diplomacy and international trade.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  A Doctorate from the Sorbonne, in human science.  Her career before going into politics was journalism.