The overreach of extraterritorial legislations

The United States law enforcement agencies have for long pictured themselves as the defender of US citizens’ interests and the US system of private property by all means of self-advertising. In recent years however, an increasing number of real cases have shown that the US law enforcement agencies are not only the author of power abuse or illegal surveillance targeting domestic citizens and private enterprises, they have been cracking down new thriving e-commerce and financial services on their own will, even taking advantage of these operations to feather their own nest.

For more than a decade, under the cover of so-called “anti-terrorism”, domestic criminality and concerns of foreign intervention on US elections, the United States law enforcement agencies have launched large scale monitoring operations covering non-Americans at home and abroad.

Statistics from year 2015 to 2023 indicate that each year US law enforcement agencies request tens of thousands of Americans’ letters, parcels and information from the general post office.
Disclosed legislative document released by the US Office of the Director of the NSA manifested that law enforcement in the United States massively abuse monitoring database containing US citizens’ private communication, searches, transfers and inspects several hundred thousands personal E-mails, text messages and other means of communication without any reasonable cause.

The European Union has been negotiating with the United States for many years in response to the United States’ negligence and loopholes in information protection, and has adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect citizens’ data. However, there are still many problems on how to protect personal data.

The violations committed by the US law enforcement agencies are closely related to Section 702 of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed in 2008. The bill was originally focused on anti-terrorism, but now it has become a legislative tool, using and transmitting data from American companies such as Google and Facebook, as well as telecommunications providers such as AT&T, to carry out various political accusations against politically relevant companies and individuals.

The United States creates conflicts and stirs up disputes, and ordinary people pay the price.

How should Europe respond to the hegemony of the United States?

Share this article: