TTIP meetings - secrecy: WikiLeaks raises reward for details on TTIP

WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to collect reward funds to be given to people, who can provide insider information on the planned EU-US trade deal, also known as TTIP. Donations are already pouring in.

By early afternoon, the whistleblowing website had already collected about a fifth of the target sum, with contributions coming from former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and many others.

Critics of the planned trade deal have been worrying it may water down consumer protection provisions and allow companies to block undesirable regulation. But relevant details of the draft agreement have not been made available to the public.

TTIP "remains secret almost in its entirety, closely guarded by the negotiators," WikiLeaks wrote in an online post. "WikiLeaks is taking steps to ensure that Europeans can finally read the monster trade deal."

Read more: WikiLeaks raises reward for details on TTIP | Business | DW.COM | 11.08.2015

EU-US Trade Negotiations - lack of transparency: A brief history of the TTIP: Stop this corporate plunder - by Colin Todhunterr

The corporate jargon surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal is about ‘protecting’ investment’, reducing ‘unnecessary’ barriers and ‘harmonising’ regulations that supposedly deter free trade between the US and the EU.

In principle, the notion of trade that is free and fair sounds ideal. But, across the world, the dominant ideological paradigm allows little scope for neither. Markets are rigged , commodity prices subject to manipulation  and nations are coerced , destabilised  or attacked  in order that powerful players gain access to resources and markets.

On 11 October, over 400 groups across Europe took to the streets to demonstrate against the TTIP, which has just ended its seventh round of talks in Washington. While some groups are accused by supporters of the TTIP of being ideologically driven in their opposition, it is not ideology that drives this opposition.

It is sceptism and suspicion fuelled by the prevailing pactices and actions of powerful corporations and their ideological brand of neoliberalism and rampant privatisation. The secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding the TTIP fuels this suspicion. The public has not been allowed to know who set the agenda for the negotiations or what specifically is being negotiated supposedly its our behalf?

The public is expected to put up and shut up and leave it all to those who know best: EU officials with their deep-seated conflicts of interest and big business. It has been mainly through leaked documents and recourse to freedom of information legislation that the public has gained insight into the nature of the negotiations.

When questioned about the nature of the group, the European Commission (EC) said it had no identifiable members and stated that “several departments” contributed to the discussion and the reports of the (memberless) group. It even stated that there was no document containing the list of authors of the reports. A request by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) to disclose membership/report authors was met with the response: “Unfortunately we (the EC) are not in a position to provide you with the information requested.” 

CEO argued that the group should be subject to the transparency requirements set up in EC’s rules on ‘expert groups’, including transparency about who participated.

The US wants all so-called barriers to trade, including highly controversial regulations such as those protecting agriculture, food or data privacy, to be removed. Even the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement must also reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated chickens and hormone-treated beef .

Read more: A brief history of the TTIP: Stop this corporate plunder

NSA spying: Obama announces "limits" on surveillance program

U.S. President Barack Obama is calling for ending the government's control of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans, and he promises that "we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies."

The president said Friday he will end the program "as it currently exists." He called for extending some privacy protections to foreign citizens whose communications are scooped up by the U.S.

But Obama also said he believes critics of the program have been right to argue that without proper safeguards, the collection could be used to obtain more information about the private lives of Americans and open the door to more intrusive programs.

Obama warned, however, that "we cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies." He added, "We know that the intelligence services of other countries — including some who feign surprise over the Snowden disclosures — are constantly probing our government and private sector networks."

Key questions about the future of the surveillance apparatus remain. While Obama wants to strip the NSA of its ability to store the phone records, he offered no recommendation for where the data should be moved.

Instead, he gave the intelligence community and the attorney general 60 days to study options.
He also immediately ordered intelligence agencies to get a secretive court's permission before accessing such records.

Privacy advocates say moving the data outside the government's control could minimize the risk of unauthorized or overly broad searches by the NSA.

NSA spying: Obama announces questionable limits on surveillance program - World - CBC News

PRISM: Edward Snowden: saving us from the United "Stasi" of America - by Daniel Ellsberg

Dasniel Ellsberg says: "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that includes the Pentagon Papers, for which I was responsible 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, and with the broadest possible interpretation. This makes mockery of the rule of law, let alone of the bill of rights. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: "It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp."

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is a nonsense – as is the oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. The fact that their leaders were briefed on this and went along with it, without question, only shows how broken the system of accountability is in this country."

As one of the  founders of the US,  James Madison wrote:

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

When national security is invoked in the United States, that is what we now have. In effect, Congress has delegated its responsibilities and powers to the executive. The oversight structure has been shown to be a total sham: the congressional committees concerned have been totally co-opted. They are simply black holes of information that the public needs to know.

The surveillance revealed by Snowden's disclosures exposes this executive coup: that this is done with Congress briefed, but without the ability to resist or even debate the measures openly, makes a mockery of the separation of powers. What has been created is the infrastructure of a police state.

I do not say that the United States is a police state. We have not seen the mass detentions that would complete that process. But given the extent of this invasion of people's privacy, we do have the electronic and legislative infrastructure of one. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement – like the one we had against the war in Vietnam – I fear for our democracy. If the government had then had the capability that it has now, I do not doubt there would have been mass detentions. These powers are extremely dangerous.

Read more: Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America | Daniel Ellsberg | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk