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Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (right) and German Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere listen to a speaker at Georgetown University’s law school. The two politicians opened a two-day conference on counterterrorism and civil liberties with experts from both countries.
WASHINGTON – Germany and the U.S. need to expand their collaboration to counter terrorism by better sharing information they collect, leaders from both countries said Wednesday.
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that instead of trying to align the different legal systems, the focus should be on reaching the shared goal of preventing terrorist threats. ”It is not important to try to duplicate the United States framework in Germany or the German framework in the United States” she said.
However, some differences do exist on the issue of privacy – what data can be collected by security agencies, and how it can be used and shared. Napolitano’s German colleague, Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière, called for a privacy agreement between the U.S. and EU countries to guide information sharing.
“A general EU – U.S. data protection agreement could provide advantages to our cooperation,” he said. “So we don’t have to re-negotiate with every issue.”
This would ease the exchange of data, a key to fighting terrorism, de Maizière said. “The [main goal] in the fight against terrorism is prevention and therefore information sharing,” he said. He added that knowledge about location and means of communication of suspected terrorist is “the best tool” to fight threats.
Jessica Binsch/MNS
Napolitano speaks with her predecessor, Michael Chertoff, before the conference at Georgetown University.
De Maizière said the Christmas bomber incident reinforced the need to collaborate on aviation security. The U.S. and EU in January signed an agreement to work together more closely on issues such as airport screening.
The German minister added that an agreement on the exchange of passenger information should be renewed. The main questions, he said afterwards, are which data collection is necessary for security, and how long the data should be saved.
In Germany, some civil rights activists are opposed to what they perceive as excessive data collection and storage. Sandra Mamitzsch, spokeswomen of an umbrella group of activists, called the passenger data transfer “highly problematic, because, for one, this data is saved without cause, without a suspicion against the person concerned, and also because the information is being shared and we don’t know how it is used.”
Privacy concerns have been raised on this side of the Atlantic as well. The National Security Agency recently stopped collecting certain data on electronic communication after the court overseeing the agency became concerned with the process, the Washington Post reported. A law requiring telecommunication companies to save and store data about phone calls and E-mails was overturned by Germany’s highest court in March.
A similar EU regulation is currently under review. Citizens and civil rights groups have protested the practice, saying it unfairly targets ordinary citizens.
Napolitano and de Maizière spoke at the opening of a two-day conference at Georgetown University’s law school where legal experts, including judges from the highest courts of both countries, will discuss how to reconcile the need for collecting information and preventing attacks with ensuring privacy and civil rights.