E.U. Panel Invites Snowden to Testify on Privacy Breaches
By DAN BILEFSKY
A parliamentary committee asked Edward J. Snowden to speak via video about protecting citizens’ privacy.
PARIS — A European Parliament committee has invited Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked classified government documents
and is now in hiding in Russia, to testify via video link as part of an
investigation into how to protect the privacy of European citizens.
The
Parliament’s Justice and Civil Liberties Committee voted 36-2 with one
abstention on Thursday to seek testimony from Mr. Snowden, whose
exposures of the reach of surveillance activities by the United States on even its closest allies
has raised global awareness about privacy issues and deeply embarrassed
the Obama administration. Mr. Snowden has become a hero among civil
liberty advocates in both Europe and the United States.
However,
some dissenting voices in the Parliament tried to block the invitation,
with some conservative members calling Mr. Snowden a scourge who had
put national security at risk and others warning that inviting him could
undermine Europe’s relations with the United States.
Mr.
Snowden “has endangered lives,” said Timothy Kirkhope, a British member
from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.
The
investigation by the European Parliament, the European Union’s only
directly elected body, is aimed at drafting policy recommendations to
help safeguard the privacy of Europeans and to improve the security of
information technology systems. No date for the testimony has been
proposed, and it remained unclear on Thursday whether Mr. Snowden would
accept the invitation.
The testimony would be done by video so Mr. Snowden would not have to leave Russia, where he has been granted a year’s asylum, and risk extradition to the United States, where he has been charged with espionage and theft.
The revelations by Mr. Snowden, which began in June and showed that the N.S.A. had been spying on European Union offices
and had gained access to internal computer networks, deeply angered
European politicians. The subsequent revelation that the N.S.A had tapped the mobile telephone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany aroused further anger and calls for the European Union to take a tougher stance against the American spying.
Members of the European Parliament expressed their anger last year by nominating Mr. Snowden for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought,
considered Europe’s top human rights award. It has been bestowed on
luminaries like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and Nelson Mandela of
South Africa. Mr. Snowden lost out on the prize, which was awarded in
November to Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani campaigner for girls’
education, who was shot by the Taliban.
Mr.
Snowden has already made an appearance of sorts at the Parliament. In
October, Jesselyn Radack, a former ethics adviser to the United States
Justice Department and a government whistle-blower, read a statement that she said had come from Mr. Snowden.
She quoted him as saying that “the surveillance of whole populations,
rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights
challenge of our time.”
Last month, Mr. Snowden offered to help Brazil investigate American spying on its territory, in what appeared to be part of a proposal in which Brazil would grant him political asylum in return.
In an open letter
to the Brazilian people published by the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper,
Mr. Snowden inveighed against the N.S.A.and the United States
government. “Six months ago, I revealed that the N.S.A. wanted to listen
to the whole world. Now, the whole world is listening back, and
speaking out, too. And the N.S.A. doesn’t like what it’s hearing,” he
wrote. “Until a country grants me permanent political asylum, the U.S.
government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak out.”copy http://www.nytimes.com
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