The row over the routine interception of internet traffic by the US National Security Agency, with the help of UK spymasters and their GCHQ listening centre came to the doors of the European Commission as the Pirate Party, led by Swedish MEP Amelia Andersdotter delivered a petition demanding action.

The pirates say that the UK has breached Article 16 of the EU treaty by violating the protection of individuals and their personal data.

“It’s not extremely difficult to see if anyone’s tapping the undersea cables,” says Andersdotter, noting that surveillence can me, itself, monitored.

They are also asking for increased punishment of offenders, arguing that costly punishments, or imprisonment can make the idea of snooping on people too risky.

2The big problem is that we’ve made it mandatory for all of the public procurement to be done via electronic systems” says the MEP, adding that “by definition the systems are not resistant to tampering. We know that there is a large scale rigging of defence contracts,” she says, “But if it’s say a harbour contract in Marseilles who can say if it is rigged?”

“Security agencies can make small scale changes” she adds, saying that nobody will know. “these contracts add up to 25% of Europe’s Gross Domestic Product” she adds.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed that US and UK agencies are tapping the fibre-optic cables that carry all internet traffic and share data under a programme called Tempora. Most of the world’s data traffic uses these cables.

They argue that the wholesale monitoring, apart from being bad for business – as industrial espionage is a large part of state espionage, as well as in the private sector – it is bad for citizens and breaches Article 16 of the Treaty, which reads, “Everyone has the right to protection of personal data concerning them.”

As New Europe left, the protestors were still hoping for someone to collect the petition but had been informed “They’re all at lunch.” Andy Carling