Alexander Hanff

Privacy Advocate
Poland
Jos Manuel Barroso
President of the European Commission
1049 Brussels, Belgium
Friday, 07 June 2013

Urgent Privacy Alert

Dear President Barroso,
Breaking newsi across the globe over the past 24 hours has illustrated that EU citizens data
is being subjected to arbitrary surveillance and intelligence analysis by the National Security
Agency in the United States under a programme known as PRISM.
Under this intelligence initiative it is reported that Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook,
Paltalk, AOL, Skype (now Microsoft), YouTube (now Google) and Apple have been subjected
to legally-compelled collectionii [of data] probably under the Business Records provision
of the PATRIOT Act (and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) by means of providing direct
access to their core infrastructure to the National Security Agency.
Given that hundreds of millions of European citizens use services provided by the corporate
entities named in the scandal, this means that EU citizens data has been subjected to a
level of surveillance which significantly infringes on their fundamental and constitutional
rights under the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, Directive on Privacy and
Electronic Communications 2002/58/EC (amended by 2009/136/EC), European Convention
on Human Rights and the Lisbon Treaty.
Given the magnitude of the allegations currently circulating throughout the international
press, it is critical that the European Commission revoke the Safe Harbour status of the
United States of America as it is clear that companies either transferring European citizens
data from Europe to the United States; or companies which are incorporated in the United
States and collect personal information from European citizens but do not export that data
out of Europe are unable to meet the required guarantees on the security and privacy of
that data as required under the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC.
Revocation of Safe Harbour status for the United States should happen immediately and all
companies as mentioned above should be required to immediately cease co-operation with
the National Security Agency with regards to access to European citizens data.
The European Commission should also begin discussions with the relevant US trade officials
and the current Presidential Administration in Washington to ensure that European citizens
fundamental rights are rigorously enforced in the future. If the United States refuse to
honour European fundamental and constitutional rights, then their corporations should be

denied access to the data of European citizens and European markets until such time as the
United States Government cease their unlawful surveillance of European citizens.
As President of the European Commission, I urge you to deal with this matter immediately
and to recognise the severity of the situation.
Sincerely,

Alexander Hanff
Privacy Advocate

i
ii

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/prism-tech-giants-shock-nsa-data-mining