EU Commissioner: We Don’t Want U.S. Reading Our Mail and Listening to Our Phone Calls

While it is not yet clear that the NSA spying revelations will lead to any substantive change in the United States, the growing scandal is poised to spark even stronger data protection laws in Europe.

European Union Vice President and Commissioner Viviane Reding said that efforts to strengthen existing privacy laws have gotten a boost from attention to the PRISM and other NSA data gathering efforts. “It was a wake-up call, thanks to the Americans,” Reding said, speaking at the DLDwomen conference in Munich. We do not want the U.S. government to listen to every phone call we make and read every e-mail, Reding said. “Data protection in Europe is a fundamental right,” Reding said. “Strong rules allow trust and, in the Internet world, without trust you cannot go ahead.”