The European Parliament shoots down the EU/US SWIFT agreement to protect civil liberties. The European Parliament said NO to an agreement to share bank transfer data between the EU and United States that was meant to fight terrorist financing.
MEPs voted against the agreement with the US so called “SWIFT” by 378 votes to 196. authors Alessio PisanòFreelance Journalist based in Brussels twitter: @AlessioPisano SWIFT is the name of the Belgian based financial company that handles 80% of all international financial transactions from some 208 countries. After 9/11 SWIFT information became a target for the US intelligence community in its investigation of possible terrorist financing.
EU Open-Source Tech Support Falls Short. SWIFT: Security strikes data protection. To remind you of the American view, SWIFT is about the fight against international terrorism with the help of European bank data.
“The threat of terrorism the United States and the European Union are facing is ongoing, and with this agreement, all our citizens will be safe”, Obama said in a written statement in which he naturally welcomed the approval by the European Parliament. The financial services authority SWIFT, which is based in Belgium, is now able again to transmit data on cross-continental bank transfers of EU citizens and companies to the United States starting 1st August 2010 – for a whole five years.
With that, the name, address and bank details of a European bank customer can be determined as soon as they transfer money to non-EU countries. The Gallo Report. What is the Gallo report?
Named after its rapporteur and French Member of Parliament (MEP) Marielle Gallo, this text includes a set of non-binding conclusions and recommendations on the protection of intellectual property rights in cyberspace. But what is this report really about? It’s difficult to put things in perspective, since the different stakeholders are dagger drawn with each other, reflecting their sensitivity on this topic, by their politics or civil society representatives (see JEF-France press release as a good example of this).
Overall, it should be noted that the report’s proposals are vague and ambiguous. Indeed, it calls on the one hand for “private consumers not to be required to prove the legitimacy of reproductions of [their] original products”, but at the same time recommends the adoption of ”additional non-legislative measures" which would therefore completely escape political control. An eventful adoption A text which contrasts with previous positions. The patent of discord. Multilingualism The problem stems from the hypothetical reform of European patents, which would facilitate the creation of patents inside the EU, but which would involve some linguistic problems: according to the current proposal, the documents concerning the patent request must be produced in English, French or German.
Italy, at first in favour of the monolingual proposal (which would have privileged the English language), has now joined Spain in opposing this proposal, which would penalize in particular the small and medium enterprises, which do not have the necessary financial resources to translate to/from French and German. The European single market: an utopia when it comes to roaming. A Commission proposal: from price cap to increased competition When it comes to roaming, the current system of price caps is respected by mobile companies but we can only regret that due to the lack of competition, the prices are in fact kept just under this cap.
As a result, calling and even more downloading data from another European country is so expensive that 72% of travelers, when they land, limit the use of their cellphone or simply shut it down. This is highly problematic for a free movement area and in fact limits the reality of it since people face a major inconvenience when traveling. To overcome this situation, the European Commission made a proposal that focuses on increasing competition while keeping a system of price cap for a transitory period (until 2016) in order to protect the consumer. ACTA and the EU: Dangerous bedfellows? Just a fortnight earlier, French MEP Kader Arif resigned as his post as European Parliament rapporteur for ACTA, claiming that the treaty “goes too far” by restricting internet freedom and is a “masquerade.”
M. Arif added that he believes that in its current form the treaty is ineffective and dangerous for civil liberties. Neelie Kroes: Information is the new oil! Why is the European Commission interested in open data?
Is data really « the new oil »? The most interesting thing for the European Commission is that so much can de done with so little when it comes to data. Opening up data that is already collected, that taxpayers have already paid for, is right for transparency, and is the cheapest way we know to unlock innovation potential. It’s the best way we know to help Europeans create the jobs and economic growth that we so desperately need. So yes, data really is the new oil. New businesses can be built on the back of these data, on the new possibilities to analyse and visualise data from different sources. 2. It’s for each EU member state to decide exactly what they want to release.
Business registers have been a source for many profitable new businesses over the past 20 years, and there are great transparency examples like OpenCorporates. The lowering of charges brings in new types of users, particularly SMEs. 3. 4.