A U.S. judge calls for end to NSA wiretapping, while in Europe it continues with very little opposition
A federal judge has ordered Washington to halt the National Security Agency's program of domestic eavesdropping, saying it violated the U.S. Constitution. Yesterday's ruling marked a setback for President George W. Bush's administration, which has defended the program as an essential tool in its war on terrorism. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said the warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program violates free-speech rights, protections against unreasonable searches and the constitutional check on the power of the presidency. "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," Judge Taylor said in a 44-page ruling.
In Europe, however, Big Brother is not being opposed to listen — and being allowed to hear more and more. The Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Germany put Italy at the top of the European wiretapping list followed by the Netherlands, using figures published by governments or information from parliamentary debates. The Netherlands secret service, known by its acronym AIVD, has gained vast powers since 9/11. Italy presently has the highest number of wiretaps per capita, 76 per 100.000 inhabitants. The Netherlands, where the government passed sweeping measures that lowered the threshold for bugging and surveillance, follows closely on the second place with 62 and Switzerland gets a third place with 32. Austria has the lowest number in Western-Europe with 9 wiretaps per 100.000 inhabitants.
In 1997, the Turkish parliament set up a telephone bugging committee to investigate allegations of government phone taps. The Committee confirmed that the Security Directorate listens in on all telephone communications, including cellular calls. In a secret fifty-page report documenting government bugging of telephones, the then acting Security Director Kemal Celik, confirmed allegations that the Security Directorate listens in on all telephone communications, including cellular calls.
The statistics show a remarkable low figure for the Anglo-Saxon countries. The USA apply only 0,5 wiretaps for the given number of inhabitants. These statistics show that Italy engages into wiretapping about 140 times more often then the USA when compared to the number of inhabitants. Research from the Dutch ministry of Justice shows that the 10.000 wiretaps per year in the Netherlands rarely lead to evidence that can be used in court. Wiretapping seems to be very heavily used as a tactical instrument during police investigations. The Max Planck report does not go into details on the ultimate use of wiretaps by US and British intelligences services or spy systems like Echelon.
“There is clearly a legitimate role for surveillance, it’s a question of what the safeguards are,” said Ben Ward, associate director of the European and Asian division of Human Rights Watch. Still, the complaints in Europe are remarkedly muted compared to the criticism that has arisen in the U.S. Congress and among civil liberties groups over the Bush administration’s surveillance operations.
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