E.U. votes to shut down 2 data-sharing programs after PRISM leaks

The U.S. government may soon be feeling more consequences from the leak of its surveillance programs. The European Union voted yesterday to end two data-sharing agreements if the U.S. didn’t “suspend and review” those programs that “violate the fundamental right of E.U. citizens.”

The E.U. voted 483 to 98 in favor of ending the data collection programs if these demands are not met, according to ZDnet. The two data collection programs at hand are the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and the Passenger Name Record (PNR). As their names suggest, data collected under these programs including banking information as well as travel data. They began soon after the attacks on September 11, 2001 as an attempt to track and watch terrorist activity around the world.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":775233,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"security,","session":"D"}']

However, last month Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton, revealed a major US government surveillance program called PRISM. Snowden released a slide deck of information about the program that showed the NSA sending secret court orders to top tech companies demanding data about online communications, photos, video, audio files, and more.

A separate court order document sent to U.K.-based The Guardian revealed that the U.S. government has been collecting all call data from calls originating in the U.S. and terminating abroad, or those calls wholly originating and terminating in the U.S. The “data” in question included the time of the call, how long it lasted, and the phone numbers of those involved in the call.

These revelations haven’t just left American citizens feeling their privacy rights are being violating. Foreign entities have also voiced their discontent and are seemingly now taking action.