E.U. May Force MI5 to share Intelligence - Green response

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2512219/New-European-spying-proposals-threaten-British-security.html

 

I am bloggining today to express my concern over our intelligence services being forced to share intelligence with the USA.

 

There is a feeling in America that they have to be autocratic abroad so they can enjoy more freedoms at home, but following the strangely named Patriot Act, much of the celebrated freedoms and liberties enjoyed by Americans were stripped away. Therefore one has to ask, now more than ever: Is this a state that we can trust with loads of confidential and intimate information?? To ask the question is to answer it.

 

And we know that the intelligence agencies often get it wrong.  When you consider the excesses of the CIA since the 1950s – they planned assassinating Fidel Castro by placing an exploding shell on a beach he frequented, by poisoning a cigar that would kill him if smoked, by spiking him with LSD so he would humiliate himself in public, and by poisoning him so his beard would fall out so he would lose the support of the Cuban public – the term "intelligence agencies" almost seems to be an oxymoron.  And more recently, they of course got it so utterly wrong when they made the case for war in Iraq by saying Saddam had WMDs he could launch against Western targets with no more than 45 minutes warning.

 

Should the UK now share their intelligence with the US?  Should the UK provide sensitive information to the US who would have a monopoly on intelligence, with no obligation for them to share theirs with us?  ...Or is it time for us to keep our intelligence to ourselves, and for us to decide which pieces we send to the US, and which pieces we'll keep to ourselves?   

 

I say the latter. I pledge that, as your MEP, I would fight hard to stop any deal that would see European intelligence routinely sent over to the States.