EU official 'satisfied' with US spying assurance

Europe has pressed the US for greater detail on the Prism surveillance programme and was told that data collection on Europeans was not conducted in "bulk" but only in cases of strong suspicion of individual or group involvement in terrorism, cybercrime or nuclear proliferation.

At a meeting of US and EU justice and law enforcement officials in Dublin, Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said she was satisfied that US collection of metadata via the Verizon mobile phone network was "mainly an American question".

The much bigger issues raised by Edward Snowden's leaks concerned the NSA gathering data from social media and internet servers across Europe in flagrant breach of EU data protection regulations.

Reding said the US and the EU had agreed to set up a working group of security experts to grapple with the implications for the European public.

"Considering Prism, the US answers to the questions I have raised were the following: it is about foreign intelligence threats," Reding said.

"Prism is targeted at non-US citizens under investigation on suspicion of terrorism and cybercrimes. So it is not about bulk data mining, but specific individuals or targeted groups. It is on the basis of a court order, of an American court, and of congressional oversight," Reding said.